Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/472

394 fragment of iron. On the other hand, the use of stone is still retained, even among ourselves, when that substance is well adapted for the purpose to be accomplished; thus our modern corn-mill does not greatly differ in material or principle from the ancient stone quern.

"Nevertheless, the entire question is by no means so simple as some writers would have us believe that archæologists imagine it to be. I doubt whether anyone but the writer of 'Non-Historic Times' thinks that we 'flatter ourselves with the idea that because we have succeeded in arranging some thousands of bits of stone or bronze in glass cases, that therefore we understand the history and the manners and customs of long vanished races of men.'

"At the very outset of the inquiry we find that there is no absolute uniformity in the sequence, or duration of the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron Periods. In some regions the Stone Period has lingered on much longer than in others, whilst in certain countries there appears to be no evidence of the existence of a Bronze Period. But, in every country there seems to have been a Stone Period, although it does not follow that the ancestors of the present occupants of the soil were the stone-using people.

"In some instances even, two stone-using races may have succeeded each other, as in New Zealand.

"It must not be supposed that these Periods indicate with precision the state of culture arrived at by any given race or tribe. The degree of civilisation to be attained by a people would depend upon many other circumstances than their acquaintance with, or ignorance of, the use of metals. Foremost among these would be the possession of domesticated animals, the practice of agriculture, and such sub-division of labour as would lead to traffic and commerce. Any attempt, therefore, to form a general scale of civilisation founded upon the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron Periods can scarcely be satisfactory.

"The system proposed by Mr. Tylor, which connects the Stone Period with savagery, the Bronze with barbarism or low civilisation, and the Iron with that of the middle level of civilisation and onwards, is perhaps the least open to objection. It will be generally conceded that men in their Stone Period live in a state of savagery, but, as Mr. Tylor himself has pointed out, the pre-historic people who lived in their Swiss pfahlbauten, although in their Stone Period, possessed domesticated animals, cultivated cereals, raised flax, and practised the arts of spinning and weaving.

"On the other hand, the iron-using Kaffir and Hottentot are in general culture actually below, instead of above, the standard attained by the bronze-using Mexican and Peruvian.

"Mr. Hodder Westropp has proposed to connect the earlier, or chipped Stone Period (Palæolithic), with the hunting phase; the later, or rubbed Stone Period (Neolithic), with the herdsman phase; and the Bronze Period with the agricultural phase of life.