ANCIENT AND MODERN MAN 391 



to prove their claim to such remote antiquity. - The mound 

 builders and Aztecs were human beings of times far yoimger 

 than those of the first men. 



The Old Stone age seems to have been a very long one 

 and is sometimes divided into the Mammoth Age, and the 

 Reindeer Age. 



The next general period was the Neolithic or Newer Stone 

 Age when man's weapons and implements were of polished 

 stone and he set up large stones as monuments and used 

 caves and grottoes for burial as well as for dwelling-places. 



Fig. 194. Skull cap of Pithecanthropus erectus, the fossil man-like ape 

 of Java. (Shown from above and in profile; from' Weltall u. Mensch- 

 heit.) 



This was not a long period but different races of man seem 

 to have arisen in it and there were great wars and migrations. 



Next came the Metal Age, usually subdivided into the 

 Ages of Copper, of Bronze, and of Iron, according to the 

 kind of metal chiefly used for implements. Thousands of 

 relics of these ages exist in the museums, and evidences of 

 much differentiation and dispersal of races, with varying 

 manners of life, are plain. 



From these ages, still prehistoric, man slowly emerges 

 into the light of decipherable history. The great variety 



