Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/480

402 remarkable that 'tongue-shaped' Palæolithic implements occur only in the valley-gravels.

"I believe also that implements of this type are found chiefly, if not only, in what are considered to be the older valley-gravels. On the other hand, 'scrapers' closely resembling, if not identical in type with, those of the Neolithic Period occur in profusion in cave-deposits of Palæolithic age, and are met with, although very sparingly, in the valley-gravels. We are, perhaps, scarcely in a position to say that archæologists have 'found no tools or implements of intermediate forms that might indicate a gradual improvement and progress from the rude Palæolithic types to the polished and elegant implements used by Neolithic man,' or that 'the one set of tools is sharply marked off from the other.'

"We are in the habit of pleading the imperfection of the geological record, but had all the stone implements used by man reached our time, we could from them have formed but a most inadequate notion of the various implements and weapons in use by him during the Palæolithic and Neolithic Periods. Take, for example, a trophy of weapons from Australia, and how inconsiderably would they be represented by the rudely-shaped hatchets and the few flakes used for edging the spears. What do they tell us of the boomerangs, the shields, the clubs, the throwing-sticks? Among the most zealous promoters of the 'development-theory' is Colonel Lane Fox, and few men possess anything approaching to his knowledge of the varying forms of implements and weapons in use by modern savages, as well as of those which were in use by pre-historic races of men. If we take a sufficiently representative collection of implements and weapons in use by the aborigines of Australia, we shall find that it is possible to trace back, by imperceptible graduations, the most complex and artificial form of boomerang, club, or shield, to a straight stick.

"This in the individual case is doubtless the result of direct development; and I believe that each tribe, when unmolested, has for the most part worked out for itself its own discoveries and inventions, and that comparatively few have been received by transmission from others. I say 'when unmolested,' because savagery loses confidence in itself in the presence of a higher civilization, and the savage becomes more or less dependent upon the arts of the higher and more favoured race.

"The Rev. R. H. Codrington, of the Melanesian mission, informs me that the art of making sails according to the native method is possessed in a certain island by but a single individual, and will perish with him; whilst, in another island, the method of making fish-hooks of the native pattern is already wholly lost. Mr. Codrington also adds that, so recently as in 1863, shell was the only substance used in the island of Mota for cutting-instruments; but that, in 1869, iron instruments (obtained by barter) had come into such general use there that the native-made shell instruments were only to be obtained with difficulty. We have, therefore, in the case of Mota a distinct retrogression in the industrial arts; the islanders are more helpless, more dependent upon European civilization, now than they were ten years since.

"But to return to the question of development of form, and of general