210 THE STONE AGE — PAST AND PEESENT. 



doorways; the vertebree they use form ortars^ in wliicli they 

 pound their sun-dried fish, and of this, with the mixture of 

 a little corn, they make bread, for, though they have no iron, 

 they have mills. And this is the less wonderful, seeing that 

 they can get the mills from elsewhere, but how can they di'ess 

 the millstones when worn down? with the stones, they say, 

 with which they sharpen their arrows and darts [of wood, 

 with points] hardened in the fire. Of the fish, part they cook 

 in ovens, but most they eat raw, and they catch them ia nets 

 of palm -bark." ^ 



Though direct history gives but partial means of proving the 

 existence of a Stone Age over Asia and Europe, the finding of 

 ancient stone tools and weapons, in almost every district of 

 these two continents, proves that they wei-e in former times in- 

 habited by Stone Age races, though whether in any particular 

 spot the tribes we first find living there are their descendants 

 as well as their successors, this evidence cannot tell us. How, 

 for instance, are we to tell what race made and used the ob- 

 sidian flakes which were found with polished agate and carne- 

 Han beads under the chief corner-stone of the great temple 

 of Khorsabad ? All through Western Asia, and north of the 

 Himalaya, stone implements are scattered broadcast through the 

 land. Further east, the account of the lightning-stones, just 

 quoted from the Encyclopfedia of Kang-hi, goes to prove that 

 stone implements are found in China, and therefore that the 

 inhabitants once made and used them ; and this inference espe- 

 cially makes it probable that the legend of stone weapons 

 having been once in use may be a piece of genuine traditional 

 history. 



Japan abounds in Stone Age relics, of which Yan Siebold 

 has given drawings and descriptions iu his great work f and 

 his own collection at Leyden is very rich in specimens. The 

 arrow-heads of obsidian, flint, chert, etc., are of types like those 

 found elsewhere. Their presence is sometimes accounted for 

 by stories that they were rained from the sky, or that every 



1 Strabo, xr. 2, 2. 



2 Ph. Fr. V. Siebold, Nippon, Arcliiv zur Besclireibung von Japan ; Leyden, 

 1832, etc., part ii. plates xi. to xiii. pp. 45, etc. 



