Fig. 57.—a, Egyptian battle-axe; b, Egyptian falchion; c, Asiatic sabre; d, European sheath-knife; e, Roman culter; f, Hindu bill-hook.
When metal came into use, the forms of the stone implements were imitated in copper, bronze, or iron, and though the patterns were of course lightened and otherwise improved to suit the new material, it may be plainly seen that the stone hatchets and spear-heads in museums are the ancestors (so to speak) of the metal ones made ever since. But also the use of metal brought in new and useful forms which stone was not suited to. An idea of these important changes may be gained by careful looking at the series of metal cutting-instruments in [Fig. 57]. We begin with a, which is an Egyptian bronze battle-axe, not very far changed from the stone hatchet. But b, the bronze falchion carried also by Egyptian warriors, is a sort of axe-blade with the handle not at the back, but shifted down; this convenient alteration could not have been made in the stone hatchet, which would have broken in the shank at the first blow, while in metal it answers perfectly. It may very well have been such transformed hatchets that led to the making of several most important classes of weapons and tools, in which a blade with stout back and front edge is fixed to a handle below it for chopping, slashing, or cutting. Among these are all the various forms of the sabre or scimitar, represented by c, all our ordinary knives, represented here by the European sheath-knife d, and all cleavers, represented by the Roman culter e. Nor does the development stop here, for the group of instruments to which our bill-hook belongs is made with a concave edge, as in the Indian form, f, and this again leads on to the still more curved forms of the sickle and the scythe, which are not drawn here. Thus there is some reason to suppose that all these instruments, whether tools or weapons, or such as, like the bill-hooks of the early English and the modern Malays, served alike for peace and war, may have all originated from the early metal hatchet, which itself is derived from the still earlier hatchet of stone.
Fig. 58.—a, Stone spear-head (Admiralty Is.); b, stone spear-head or dagger-blade (England); c, bronze spear-head (Denmark); d, bronze dagger; e, bronze leaf-shaped sword.
From the early stone spear-heads another set of weapons seem to have gradually arisen, as may be seen in [Fig. 58]. Looking at the spear from the Admiralty Islands, a, the head of which is a large flake of obsidian, it is plain that such a spear, when the shaft is broken off short, becomes a dagger. In fact one often cannot tell whether the flint blades of shapes like b, which are dug up in Europe, were intended for mounting as spears or as daggers. Now the brittleness of stone was against the use of stone blades more than a few inches long, but when metal came in, the blades could be made long, taper, and sharp, thus developing into two-edged daggers of deadly effect. In old Egyptian pictures warriors are seen armed with spear and dagger, these two weapons having blades of similar shape, so that the dagger may be described as a large spear-head with a hilt to grasp in the hand. It seems as though the metal dagger, by further lengthening, passed into the two-edged sword, a weapon impossible in stone. To give an idea how this may have come about, [Fig. 58] shows three specimens from the bronze-period of Northern Europe, where it is seen how the spear-head c may have been lengthened into the dagger d, and that again into the leaf-like sword e. Straight two-edged swords may of course be used for cut or thrust, or both. But on placing side by side a one-edged sabre and a two-edged broadsword or rapier, it will now be seen that though both are called swords, and are fitted up with similar hilts, hand-guards, and sheaths, they are nevertheless two weapons of separate nature and origin, the sabre being a transformed hatchet, while the rapier is a transformed spear. This last spear-type, of which one modern development is the bayonet, has mostly served for warlike purposes. Yet it is not unknown as a peaceful implement, as may be seen in African two-edged knives, which are evidently derived from spear heads; and also in the instrument which our surgeons, conscious of its original model, call the little spear or lancet.
To proceed to other kinds of tools. Thorns, pointed splinters of bone, or flint flakes worked to a point ([Fig. 54] g), served early tribes of men as borers. The saw probably invented itself from a jagged flint flake, which afterwards became the more artificial flint saw, [Fig. 54] h. Thus the men of the Stone Age had in rude and early forms some of the principal tools, which were improved upon in the ages of metal. It is interesting to look in Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians at the contents of the Egyptian carpenter’s tool-basket, where the bronze adze, saw, chisels, &c. show traces of likeness to the old stone implements. On the other hand, this Egyptian set of tools, and still more those of the ancient Greek and Roman carpenters, come remarkably near those we are using at this day. One difference which kept the ancient carpenters below ours was that they had not got beyond nails, never having seized the idea of the screws which are so essential to modern construction, nor of such tools as the screw-auger and gimlet, which depend on the screw for their action. Among the ancient cultured nations of Egypt and Assyria, handicrafts had already come to a stage which could only have been reached by thousands of years of progress. In museums may still be examined the work of their joiners, stonecutters, goldsmiths, wonderful in skill and finish, and often putting to shame the modern artificer. Of course these results were obtained by the ancient craftsman with what we should consider a wasteful expenditure of labour. The use of steel and other improvements have given the modern workman great advantages, and what is more, the modern world has utterly outstripped the ancient in the use of machines, as will be more fully seen presently when the examination of the simpler instruments has been gone through.
To continue the survey of weapons. The cudgel or club is hurled by the hunter or warrior, as when the Zulu will bring down an antelope at a surprising distance with a throw of his round-headed club or knob-kerry, and the Turk till modern times used to throw his mace in battle. The sporting use outlasts the warlike, and even in England the fowler’s throwing-cudgel is not unknown in country parts, where it is called a squoyle. A flat thin club made curved or crooked by following the branch it is cut out of has been liked by sportsmen of various nations for its destructive whirling flight, as where the old Egyptian fowler may be seen in the pictures flinging his flat curved throw-stick into the midst of a flight of wild-duck. The Australians not only throw wooden clubs and blades as weapons in this ordinary way, but make and throw with surprising skill a peculiar light curved blade which has been called the “come-back” boomerang, which veers in its course and returns to the thrower, in ways which may be seen by cutting boomerangs out of a visiting-card and flipping them. Again, it is evident that stones flung by hand must have been among man’s first weapons. A simple instrument for lengthening the arm and accumulating momentum is the sling, which is so generally known even among the lowest tribes of man, that it is probably of great antiquity.
Fig. 59.—Australian spear thrown with spear-thrower (after Brough Smyth).