museum is a great collection of stone tools arranged in sequence of
perfection, beginning with the coarsest and rudest and advancing to the
highest products of art of this kind. That collection is arranged solely
with reference to the development of the flint and stone implements as
tools for a certain use. The sequence is very convincing as to the
interpretation put on the objects, and also as to the strain towards
improvement. Time and place are disregarded in the arrangement. The
earliest specimens in the series are very rude, and only expert opinion
could justify their place amongst artifacts. It reminds us of what we
are told about specimens of Australian "tomahawks." It is said of such a
weapon from West Australia that if it was "found anywhere divested of
the gum and handle, it is doubtful whether it could be recognized by any
one as a work of art. It is ruder in its fashioning, owing principally
to the material of which it is composed, than even the rude, unrubbed,
chipped cutting-stones of the Tasmanians."[190] With regard to these
stone implements of the Tasmanians Tylor said that some of them are
"ruder in make than those of the mammoth period, inasmuch as their edges
are formed by chipping only one surface of the stone, instead of both,
as in the European examples." The Tasmanians, when they needed a cutting
implement, caught up a suitable flat stone, knocked off chips from one
side, partly or all around the edge, and used it without more ado. This
they did under the eyes of modern Europeans. Tylor showed, "from among
flint instruments and flakes from the cave of le Moustier in Dordogne,
specimens corresponding in make with such curious exactness to those of
the Tasmanians that, were they not chipped from different stones, it
would hardly be possible to distinguish those of recent savages from
those of European cavemen. It is not strange that experienced
archaeologists should have been at first inclined to consider a large
portion of the Tasmanian stone implements exhibited as wasters and
flakes, or chips, struck off in shaping implements." These stones had no
handle. They were grasped in the hand.[191] In the Oxford museum may be
seen side by side flint shapes from St. Acheul, Tasmania, India, and the
Cape of Good Hope: All the paleolithic implements which we possess, even
the oldest and rudest, belong far on in a series of which the antecedent
members are wanting, for the art, if recognized, is seen to be ad