Page:The American Indian.djvu/162

118 The fine sculptures of the Maya were executed with stone tools. We can safely assume, therefore, that all the stone work of the New World belongs strictly to a stone age and was such as could, and in the main was, accomplished without the use of metal tools.

Our next task is to enumerate the most distinctive types of stone artifacts and their respective distributions. The most universal is the arrow-head, which, though of many varieties, tends to take the generalized triangular form. The notched head is found in both continents, but is strikingly absent from Eskimo collections. By paying minute regard to size, secondary form, and materials, it has been possible to draw some distinctions between the arrow-heads from different parts of the two continents, but such study has not advanced to a point where a summary can be made. The fact is that the difficulties of observing consistent distinctions are so great as to be discouraging. Nor do we find any great divergence from the arrow-heads of the Old World, for somewhat similar notched forms are common in Neolithic deposits. On the other hand, the fact that they do not occur in Paleolithic culture may have a significant bearing upon the history of our continent.

Lance heads and even knives are often indistinguishable from arrow-heads except as to size. Another closely related instrument is the drill. If we add to these, scrapers and a few gravers, we about exhaust the list of analogous tools.

Chipping, in particular, lends itself to fanciful productions and we often find in our collections from both continents many unusual objects. This work has been greatly stimulated by the modern tourist trade.

While the celt and the gouge from America cannot readily be distinguished from those of Neolithic Europe, or any other part of the world, the grooved ax (Fig. 77) is so far unique, though a single specimen has been found in China. Yet its distribution in the New World is rather restricted, even if we include all implements hafted by a groove. For we find this