Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/221

Rh Though direct history gives but partial means of proving the existence of a Stone Age over Asia and Europe, the finding of ancient stone tools and weapons in almost every district of these two continents, proves that they were in former times inhabited by Stone Age races, though whether in any particular spot the tribes we first find living there are their descendants as well as their successors, this evidence cannot tell us. How, for instance, are we to tell what race made and used the obsidian flakes which were found with polished agate and carnelian beads under the chief corner-stone of the great temple of Khorsabad? All through Western Asia, and north of the Himalaya, stone implements are scattered broadcast through the land; while China, to judge from the slender evidence forthcoming, seems to have had its Stone Age like other regions.

Japan abounds in Stone Age relics, of which Van Siebold has given drawings and descriptions in his great work; and his own collection at Leyden is very rich in specimens. The arrow-heads of obsidian, flint, chert, etc., are of types like those found else- where. Their presence is sometimes accounted for by stories that they were rained from the sky, or that every year an army of spirits fly through the air with rain and storm; when the sky clears, people go out and hunt in the sand for the stone arrows they have dropped. The arrow-heads are found most abundantly in the north of the great island of Nippon, in the so-called land of the Wild Men, a population who were only late and with difficulty brought under the Mikado dynasty, and who belong to the same Aino race as the present inhabitants of the island of Yesso and the southern Kuriles. Consul Brandt says that stone arrow-heads are still used in North Japan, and that he has even seen in Yesso stone hammers and hatchets among the Ainos. In Japan, stone celts are frequently to be found in the collections of minerals of native amateurs, and they are dug up with other objects of stone. They seem only of average symmetry and finish. Here, again, the natives call such a stone celt a "thunderbolt," Rai fu seki, or Tengu no masakari, " battleaxe