Note 80 — Chapter III · The Savage State of the Industrial Arts

For an extreme case of this among living communities, see Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. i, pp. 242–250, where the generalisation is set down (p. 248) that “the rudimentary stage of culture through which these tribes have passed, and in some cases are still passing, may perhaps be more accurately described as a wood and bone age than as an age of stone,” in as much as the evidence goes to show that before they began to get metals from the Malays their only implements of a more durable material were “the anvil and hammer (unwrought) ..., the whetstone, chips or flakes used as knives, and cooking stones.” From the different character of their environment this recourse to wood and bone could scarcely have been carried to such an extreme by the savages of the Baltic region.