J. F. Campbell Collection > Archaeology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

ABORIGfNAI. TRACES. 29
been used by the early Hebrews in circumcision. Zip})orah, Moses'
wife, took a sharp stone, or stone knife, and cut off the foreskin of her
son. The like was done when Joshua renewed the same rite at Gilgal
in the cast border of Jericho ; Avhile a still more remarkable community
of feeling with the veneration of the ancient Egyptians for the other-
wise obsolete implement of stone, is discernible in its retention by the
priests of Montezuma as the instrument of human sacrifice.
The substitution of flint, stone, horn, and wood, in the absence of
metal weapons and implements, must be abundantly familiar to all,
in the customs of society when met with in a rude and primitive
condition. The Fins and Esquimaux, the African bushmen, and the
natives of such of the Polynesian Islands as are rarely visited by
Europeans, still construct knives and arrow-heads of flint or fish-bone,
and supply themselves with wooden clubs and stone adzes and ham-
mers, with little consciousness of imperfection or deficiency in such
appliances. Examples of such a state of arts and human skill might
be niultiplied from the most dissimilar sources. It seems, as has
been already remarked, to be a stage through which all nations have
passed, not without each developing a sufficient individuality to ren-
der their arts well worthy of investigation by their descendants. To
this primitive era of history we refer under the name of The Stone
Period.
In this state were the Scottish, and indeed the whole British ab-
origines, at an era much more remote than chronologists have been
willing to assign for the occupation of the island hy a human popula-
tion, and for a period the duration of which we are also able in some
degree to test.
There is one certain point in this inquiry into primitive arts which
the British antiquary possesses over all others, and from whence he
can start without fear of error, though I am not aware that its im-
portance in this view has heretofore been noted. From our insular
position it is unquestionable that the first colonist of the British
Isles must have been able to construct some kind of boat, and have
possessed sufficient knowledge of navigation to steer his course through
the open sea. Contrasting the aboriginal arts to which we have re-
ferred with the appliances of later navigators, it seems only reasonable
to conclude that the bark of the primeval Columbus, who led the way
from the continent of Europe to the untrodden wilds of Britain, dif-
fered no less from the caravel of tlie bold Genoese, than that did from