Palaeolithic type, were found in Africa from Egypt southwards,
where in such parts as Somaliland and Cape Colony they lie about on the
ground, as though they had been the rough tools and weapons of the rude
inhabitants of the land at no very distant period. The group in fig. 11
in the Plate shows the usual Somaliland types. These facts tended to
remove the mystery from Palaeolithic man, though too little is known of
the ruder ancient tribes of Africa to furnish a definition of the state
of culture which might have co-existed with the use of Palaeolithic
implements. Information to this purpose, however, can now be furnished
from a more outlying region. This is Tasmania, where as in the adjacent
continent of Australia, the survival of marsupial animals indicates long
isolation from the rest of the world. Here, till far on into the 19th
century, the Englishmen could watch the natives striking off flakes of
stone, trimming them to convenient shape for grasping them in the hand,
and edging them by taking off successive chips on one face only. The
group in fig. 12 shows ordinary Tasmanian forms, two of them being finer
tools for scraping and grooving. (For further details reference may be
made to H. Ling Roth, _The Tasmanians_, (2nd ed., 1899); R. Brough
Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_ (1878), vol. ii.; _Papers and
Proceedings of Royal Society of Tasmania_; and papers by the present
writer in _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_.) The Tasmanians,
when they came in contact with the European explorers and settlers, were
not the broken outcasts they afterwards became. They were a savage
people, perhaps the lowest in culture of any known, but leading a
normal, self-supporting, and not unhappy life, which had probably
changed little during untold ages. The accounts, imperfect as they are,
which have been preserved of their arts, beliefs and habits, thus
present a picture of the arts, beliefs and habits of tribes whose place
in the Stone Age was a grade lower than that of Palaeolithic man of the
Quaternary period.

[Illustration: PLATE

FIG. 1. FIG. 2. FIG. 3 FIG. 4. FIG. 5. FIG. 6. FIG. 7. FIG. 8. FIG. 9.
FIG 10. FIG. 11. FIG. 12.]

The Tasmanian stone implements, figured in the Plate, show their own use
when it is noticed that the rude chipping forms a good hand-grip above,
and an effective edge for chopping, sawing, and cutting below. But the
absence of the long-shaped implements, so characteristic of the
Neolithic and