the English used stone weapons at the battle of Hastings in 1066, and
the Scots led by Wallace did the same as late as 1288. Not until many
centuries after the beginning of the Christian era did the Sarmatians
know the use of metals; and in the fourteenth century we find a race,
probably of African origin, making their hatchets, knives, and arrows
of stone, and tipping their javelins with horn. The Japanese, moreover,
used stone weapons and implements until the ninth and even the tenth
century A.D.

But there is no need to go back to the past for examples. The Mexicans
of the present day use obsidian hatchets, as their fathers did before
them; the Esquimaux use nephritis and jade weapons with Remington
rifles. Nordenskiold tells us that the Tchoutchis know of no weapons
but those made of stone; that they show their artistic feeling in
engravings on bone, very similar to those found in the caves of the
south of France. In 1854, the Mqhavi, an Indian tribe of the Rio
Colorado (California), possessed no metal objects; and it is the
same with the dwellers on the banks of the Shingle River (Brazil),
the Oyacoulets of French Guiana, and many other wandering and savage
races. Pere Pelitot tells us that the natives living on the banks of
the Mackenzie River are still in the stone age; and Schumacker has
given an interesting example of the manufacture of stone weapons
by the Klamath Indians dwelling on the shores of the Pacific. It
has been justly said: "The Stone age is not a fixed period in time,
but one phase of the development of the human race, the duration of
which varies according to the environment and the race."[30]

In thus limiting our idea of the stone age, we may conclude that alike
in Europe and in America,[31] there has been a period when metal was
entirely unknown, when stones were the sole weapons, the sole tools