Primitive Man

by Louis Figuier

We have just given a representation of the workshop of a founder of bronze; but we must also state that in addition to these fixed establishments there must have existed, at the epoch of which we are speaking, certain itinerant founders who travelled about, carrying all their necessary utensils on their backs, and offered their services wherever they were required.

Every one is acquainted with the travelling-tinkers who, at the present day, make their way down from the mountains of Auvergne, the Black Forest, the Alps, or the Cévennes, and are called péirerous and estama-brazaïres in the south of France, and épingliers in other districts. These men are in the habit of working at separate jobs in the villages and even in the public places of the towns. Of course they travel with no more of the utensils of their craft than strict necessity requires; but, nevertheless, what they carry is sufficient for every purpose. A hollow made in the ground is the furnace in which they place the nozzle of their portable bellows, and they hammer the iron on a small anvil fixed in the earth.

Aided by these merely rudimentary means they execute pieces of metal-work, the dimensions of which are really surprising. They make nails and tacks, and even worm screws, repair locks, clean clocks, make knives, mend skimmers, and restore umbrella-frames. They make bronze rings out of republican décimes, and sell these popular trinkets to the village beauties.

Incomparable in their line of business, these men are unequalled in patching or re-tinning vessels made of tin and wrought or sheet-iron. The mending of crockeryware also forms one of their numerous vocations; and the repairing of a broken plate by means of an iron rivet is mere play-work for their dexterous fingers. But melting down and re-casting—these are the real triumphs of their art. The village housewife brings to them her worn-out pewter vessel, and soon sees it reappear as a new, brilliant, and polished utensil. Lamps, cans, covers, and tin-plates and dishes are thus made to reappear in all their primitive brightness.

The fusion and casting of bronze does not perplex them any more than working in tin. They are in the habit of casting various utensils in brass or bronze, such as candlesticks, bells, brackets, &c. The crucible which they use in melting brass is nothing but a hole dug in the earth and filled up with burning charcoal, the fire being kept up with the help of their bellows, the nozzle of which is lengthened so as to open into the middle of the charcoal. On this furnace they place their portable crucible, which is a kind of earthen ladle provided with a handle.

Their system of casting is simple in the extreme. The pressed sand, which serves them for a mould, is procured from the ditch at the side of the road. Into this mould they pour the alloy out of the very crucible in which it has been melted.

These itinerant metallurgists, these estama-brazaïres, who may be noticed working in the villages of Lower Languedoc, whose ways we have just depicted (not without some degree of pleasant reminiscence), are nothing but the descendants of the travelling metal-workers of the pre-historic bronze epoch. In addition to the permanent establishment of this kind—the foundries, the remains of which have been found in Switzerland, the French Jura, Germany and Denmark, there certainly existed at that time certain workmen who travelled about singly, from place to place, exercising their trade. Their stock of tools, like the objects which they had to make or repair, was of a very simple character; the sand from the wayside formed their moulds, and their fuel was the dry wood of the forest.

The existence, at this remote epoch in the history of mankind, of the itinerant workers in metal is proved by the fact, that practitioners of this kind were known in the earliest historic periods who had already to some extent become proficients in the art. Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver, was able in the wilderness to make a brazen serpent, the sight of which healed the Israelites who had been bitten by venomous snakes; and, during the retirement of the prophet to Mount Sinai, Aaron seemed to find no difficulty in casting the golden calf, which was required of him by the murmurs of the people. Itinerant founders must therefore have accompanied the Jewish army.

We have been compelled to dwell to some extent on the general considerations which bear upon the introduction of bronze among the ancient inhabitants of Europe who succeeded the men of the Stone Age. In the chapters which follow we intend as far as possible to trace out the picture of that period of man's history, which is called the Bronze Epoch, and constitutes the first division of the Age of Metals.