Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/223

Rh extinct, or absorbed in others, or of the Tatar population of Finland and Lapland, or of that unclassed race which survives in the Basque population about the Pyrenees, who, unlike the Finns and Lapps, cannot as yet claim relationship with a surviving parent stock.

As to our own Aryan or Indo-European race, our first knowledge of it, at the remote period of which a picture has been reconstructed by the study of the Vedas, and a comparison of the Sanskrit with other Aryan tongues, shows a Bronze Age prevailing among them when they set out on their migrations from Central Asia to found the Aryan nations, the Indians, Persians, Greeks, Germans, and the rest. A general view of the succession of metal to stone all over the world, justifies a belief that the Aryans were no exception to the general rule, and that they, too, used stone instruments before they had metal ones; but there is little known evidence bearing on the matter beyond that of a few Aryan words, which are worth mentioning, though they will not carry much weight of argument.

The nature of this evidence may be made clear, by noticing how it comes into existence in places where the introduction of metal is matter of history. In these places it sometimes happens that old words, referring to stone and stone instruments, are transferred to metal and metal instruments, and these words take their place as relics of the Stone Age preserved in language. Thus in North America the Algonquin names for copper and brass are miskwaubik and ozawaubik, that is to say, "red-stone" and "yellow-stone;" while the name e-reck, that is, "stone," is used by some Indian tribes of California for all metals indiscriminately. In the Delaware language, opeek is "white," and assuun is "stone;" so that it is evident that the name of silver, opussuun, means " white-stone," while the termination "stone" is discernible in uisauaasun, "gold." In the Mandan language, the words mahi, "knife," and mahitshuke, "flint," are clearly connected. Having thus examples of the way in which the Stone Age has left its mark in language, in races among whom