26 
DISCOVERIES AT A VILLAGE OF THE STONE AGE. 
considerable depth, in some places as much as a foot or 
eighteen inches. 
But while on the one hand these conditions point to a 
period anterior to the discovery of America, or at least of the 
region of Acadia, by the “ White Race,” as the time when 
the shores of the Boeabec ceased to be occupied by the people 
whose remains we have examined ; on the other hand, their 
sojourn on its banks, when compared with the whole length 
of the Stone Age, was both recent and short. 
In the Old World, the Stone Age has been divided into 
two great periods — the Palaeolithic, or the time when man- 
kind used implements and weapons of chipped stone only, and 
the later Neolithic, when weapons of ground stone were also 
employed. The length of time embraced in the earlier of these 
periods is very great. Since its beginning the river valleys in 
Western Europe have been very much deepened, and the 
courses of the rivers in some cases changed. Man, who at first 
hunted the Siberian elephant, the rhinoceros, the cave bear and 
other large animals now extinct, used at first large and roughly 
made axes of chipped stone. Subsequently he found his 
large game chiefly in the horse and reindeer, and the stone- 
pointed spear became more prominent as a weapon of offence. 
In later times, but still while using no stone implements but 
those made by chipping, he hunted various wild animals more 
nearly like those which existed in Europe in the times of the 
ancient Romans. His weapons now were made smaller and 
lighter. Such in outline was the condition of man in the 
Palaeolithic Age. 
The Neolithic period of Europe, or the time when man in 
that region used weapons of ground and polished stone, is of 
a later date than the Palaeolithic times I have glanced at. 
No such continuous history of man in America is yet 
known, for the subject is only now receiving the attention 
which has been bestowed upon it in Europe for many years, 
and the landmarks of the older civilization of the Old World 
seem to be wanting in the New. When the American Indian 
of this region first became known to Europeans he was still 
in the Stone Age, but his weapons and his arts were such as 
