PREHISTORIC ECONOMIC GEOLOGY. 20 J 



while the Palaeolithic implements all (the rare axe type excepted) 

 have their cutting edge at the narrow end. 



3. The early iron stage, when the axes made of iron, were m 

 shape imitations more or less close of the best 



Early iron stage. fm . 



polished stone implements. There is much evi- 

 dence pointing to the fact that these two stages met and overlapped 

 each other, and that for a time the two implement-making industries 

 were carried on simultaneously. Eventually, of course, the great 

 superiority of the iron implements led to the cessation of the stone 

 chipping and polishing industry which must have been immensely 

 more laborious and time consuming. 



Of a copper or bronze stage no traces have come to my know- 

 ledge. For particulars of the finds of settlements 



«ta^e. C ° PPer ° r br ° nZe of the neolIthic and earI 7 ^on people, I would 



refer the reader to a paper I read before the 



Bengal Asiatic Society in 1887, 1 but I have since then collected a very 



large body of further evidence, which I hope to publish before very long. 



On the connection between the palaeolithic people and the neo- 



. . .. . lithic people by descent, the new evidence ob* 



Break in time be- r r j j 



tween the palaeolithic tained in Bellary is purely negative, but I have 

 and neolithic stages. 



since obtained other proofs in the valley of the 



Sabarmati river in Northern Gujarat, which appear to me to confirm 



very strongly the assumption put forward in the paper just referred 



to, and previously, 2 that a very great break in time lies between the 



palaeolithic and neolithic periods. 



The evidence now obtained is briefly this : That since the en- 



_ . , . tombment in a certain gravel deposit, forming 



Evidence in favour & 



from the alluvium of part of the old alluvium of the Sabarmati river 

 the Sabarmati river. . .. . . . . ^ . . .. 



of quartzite implements 01 the boutn Indian or 



Madras type, there elapsed a sufficient time for the accumulation 



1 Notes on some recent Neolithic and Palaelithico finds in South India. Journal, 

 Asiatic Society, Bengal, and a letter to the Secretary, Natural History Section, Vol. 

 LVI, Pt. II, No. 3, 1887, dated 26th November 1888, published the same year. 



2 See Madras Journal of Literature and Science, Vol. XV, for 1866, for an account 

 of the discovery of quartzits palaeolithic implements in the coast laterite. 



, ( 207 



