LIVE MAN FROM STONE AGE DISCOVERED.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 13 July 1912, Page 9

LIVE MAN FROM STONE AGE DISCOVERED.

HE TELLS HOW STONE AGE MEN BEHAVED.

Ishi is a stone age man, says Science Sittings. Although he is living in our time, he is not of us. He belongs to the paleolithic period. He is exactly 40,000 years behind the times. Ishi's introduction to civilisation vas the result of an accident. All his Lfe he had dwelt in the inaccessible fastnesses of Deer Creek, a rocky and precipitous canon in Tehema County, California. A few weeks ago a forest fire broke out in that region, and' Ishi had" to flee for his life. He was treed by dogs three miles from Oroville. His dis r covery there is regarded as one of the most impoi'tant anthropological finds of the age. In Ishi science sees for tbe first time in flesh and blood the stone age man, our knowledge of whom1 has hitherto been confined to fossil remains and the evidence affoi'ded ly piehistoric implements. I

According to Professor T. T. Waterman, of the University of California, who has kept Ishi under constant- observation since the day he was found, the conditions under which the savage has lived all his life correspond \i ecisely with those of prehistoric" man in the chipped 'stone period. Ishi never fashioned pottery. All his utensils were of stone. He mad 9 fhe ty rubbing between his palms a small round stick fitted into a groove in a cedar block. In this way ne can generate a flame in 50 seconds, He used a bow and arrpw tipped with stone, and lured wild animals to him by imitating their call.

When captured he wore thongs through his nose and ears, and a bearskin around his loins. In fishing he puts four sacred sticks or bits of wood into the water near the four corners of the net, and then calls the fish with a peculiar chant that insures success. In hunting bears he lies in wait- along their trail, and when a bear comes within 50ft. of him he calls it -in a language which it understands. The animal turns and faces h ( im on the trail, and he sends an arrow through its heart. The skins of his prey he uses as raiment.

Ishi is the sole survivor of the southern Yana tribe. He speaks a dialect distinct and peculiar, and, unlike that spoken by any other American Indian. The language spoken by the Mill' Creek Indians is really comprised of two languages, one spoken by the men and the other by the women. Nearly every word differs in its termination" or in some other way, according as it is uttered by males or females.

This unwieldly dualism of languages is almost unparalleled. It occurs among the Caribs, who were discovered in the West Indies by the successors of Columbus. Despite the fact that he lived under stone conditions, Ishi does not correspond to what the stone age man is presumed to have been, either mentally or physically. The Indian is remarkably bright, and in seven or eight years, Professor Waterman says, could probably absorb the knowledge possessed by the ordinary individual. He believes that originally the fire was stolen from a foolish god by the coyote, who is always a thief, and that "man stole the fire from the coyote. When a member of his tribe dies, he singes his black hair short with a live coal and pulls the whiskers from his face one by one.