221 



(d) THE TASMANIAN STAGE OF CULTURE. 



Few, if any, people that have survived in a savage con- 

 dition to historical times, have possessed so limited a range of 

 appliances as the natives of Tasmania. The only wooden 

 implements that they possessed were: — (a) a long stick, 

 pointed and hardened by fire at one end, and used as a spear ; 

 and (b) a so-called "waddy," which seems to have been used 

 chiefly in hunting game. When fighting, in addition to their 

 wooden spears, they are said to have picked up and thrown 

 at the enemy any loose stones that/ might be at hand. They 

 had, therefore, little use for stone implements. A rough 

 pebble, picked up on the beach, sufficed for breaking open 

 shell-fish or crushing marrow bones. Their requirements, so 

 far as stone implements were concerned, seem to have been, 

 to make nicks in the bark of trees to assist in climbing ; cutting 

 down the long, slender stems of the Melaleuca for their spears; 

 cicatrization; dividing up carcases; crescentic ("hollow") stone 

 scrapers were used to scrape off the bark and give smoothness 

 to their spears, and a stone scraper, with bevelled edge, was 

 used in the p reparation of animal skins. As prepared tools, 

 they may be reduced to two primary types : Cutting Tools 

 (which might be utilized in many incidental ways), and 

 Scraping Tools, for shaping wood implements or removing 

 fat, etc., in the curing of skins. 



After eliminating the foreign elements from the Tas- 

 manian artefacts, referred to above, what remains to the 

 Tasmanian Aborigine is a stone-cult of the simplest and most 

 limited character. Dr. E. B. Tylor says [xxvu., p. 340], "So 

 far as stone-implement-making furnishes a test of culture, the 

 Tasmanians were, undoubtedly, at a low palaeolithic stage, 

 inferior to that of the Drift and Cave men of Europe." 



For many years the oldest types of stone implements were 

 known as '"palaeoliths." They exhibited very definite types 

 within a limited range #f variation, as to form, and as they 

 were usually found (other than in caves) in the older river 

 drifts, implements of this particular type were generally 

 associated with such deposits and are often spoken of as 

 "drift" implements. In later years, worked stones that were 

 different from the "drift" type, but still very ancient and 

 associated with the remains of extinct mammalia, were found 

 in England and, more particularly, on the Continent, which 

 necessitated the subdivision of the Palaeolithic Age into several 

 successive stages, linking the earliest palaeolithic groups with 

 the dawn of the Neolithic Age. The chronological data, 

 marking off these successive stages, have been worked out, 

 principally, in relation to the prehistoric remains in France 

 and Belgium. 



