Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/277

Rh occurrence throughout the empire of stone celts, finished arrow-heads, and spear-points and pestles, is common. These might or might not have belonged to the Ainos, though, as similar forms occur in Yesso, the probability is that many of them at least are of early Aino manufacture. It is significant, however, to observe that the few stone implements found in the Omori beds are of the rudest manufacture; and, furthermore, that no shell-heap that I know of has revealed a less number, the two shown in Figs. 28 and 29 being made of a soft volcanic rock. Curiously enough, most of the other implements were made out of deer's-horns, only one being of bone (Fig. 21, evidently the end of a deer's metatarsal). An exquisitely finished arrow-point (Fig. 25) was fabricated out of a boar's tusk.

The bones of birds were not common. I searched in vain for traces of the great auk, the remains of which are so widely met with in Denmark and New England. Though ponderous shells of various species occur in the heap, no evidence was found that these were worked in any way.



A fragment of a spindle-whorl is shown in Fig. 18. A peculiar tablet, or brick of clay, curiously ornamented, is shown in Fig. 19. Nothing of the kind, so far as I know, has been found in the shell-heaps of other parts of the world. It is difficult even to conjecture its use.

The most important discoveries connected with the Omori deposits are the unquestionable evidences of cannibalism. Large fragments of the human femur, humerus, radius, ulna, lower jaw, and parietal bone, were found widely scattered in the heap. These were broken in precisely the same manner as the deer-bones—either to get them into the cooking-vessel, or for the purpose of extracting the marrow—in all respects corresponding to the facts cited by Wyman in proof of the evidences of cannibalism found in the Florida and New England shell-heaps.