Primitive Man

by Louis Figuier

"All round the furnaces there have been found numerous remains of rough pottery; it is badly baked, and made without the help of the wheel, from clay which is mingled with grains of quartz—the pottery, in fact, which is called Celtic. Pieces of stag's horn have also been discovered, which must have been used for the handles of tools; also iron hatchets. One of them has a socket at the end made in a line with the length of the implement; it is an instrument belonging to the most remote period of the iron age. The others have transversal sockets like our present hatchets. One of the latter was made of steel so hard that it could not be touched with the file. With regard to coins, both Gallic and Roman were found, and some of the latter were of as late a date as that of the Constantines. The persistence in practising the routine of all the most ancient processes may be explained by the monopoly of the iron-working trade being retained in the same families. We have the less need to be surprised at this, because we may notice that the wood-cutters and charcoal-burners of our own days, when they have to take up their abode in a locality for any length of time, and to carry on their trade there, always make certain arrangements which have doubtless been handed down from the most primitive times. In order to protect their beds from the damp, they make a kind of shelf of fir-poles which is used as a bedstead. Some of them have two stories; the under-one intended for the children, and the one above for the parents. Moss, ferns, and dried grass form the mattress. Coverlets impossible to describe were made good use of, and some were even made of branches of fir-trees. These bedsteads take the place both of benches and chairs. A stone fire-place, roughly arranged in the centre of the hut, fills the double function of warming in winter and cooking the food all the year round. We may also add, that the fire, which is almost always kept lighted, and the ashes spread over the floor all round, preserve the hut from certain troublesome insects, which lose their lives by jumping imprudently into this unknown trap. The smoke finds no other issue but through a hole made in the roof."[40]

Such is the description given by M. Quiquerez of the iron furnaces of a really pre-historic character, those, namely, which are characterised by the absence of bellows. We think, however, that there must have been holes below the hearth which afforded access to currents of air, and, by being alternately open or closed, served either to increase or diminish the intensity of the draught. But bellows, properly so called, intended to promote the combustion and chemical reaction between the oxide of iron and the charcoal did not then exist.

The addition of the bellows to iron-furnaces brought an essential improvement to the art of the manufacture of iron.

Another improvement consisted in making, at the bottom of the stone receptacle where the fuel and the ore were burnt together, a door composed of several bricks which could be readily moved. At the completion of each operation they drew out, through this door, the cake of iron, which could not be so conveniently extracted at the upper part of the furnace, on account of its height. The hammering, assisted by several heatings, finally cleared the iron, in the usual way, from all extraneous matter, consolidated it, and converted it into the state of bar-iron fit for the blacksmith's use, and for the fabrication of utensils and tools.

These improved primitive furnaces are well-known to German miners under the name of Stucköfen ("fragment-furnaces"). They are modified in different ways in different countries; and according to the arrangement of the furnace, and especially according to the nature of the ferruginous ores, certain methods or manipulations of the iron have been introduced, which are nowadays known under the names of the Swedish, German, Styrian, Carinthian, Corsican, and Catalan methods.

The ancient furnaces for the extraction of iron may be combined under the name of smelting-forges or bloomeries.

The invention of siliceous fluxes as applied to the extraction of iron, and facilitating the production of a liquid scoria which could flow out in the form of a stream of fire, put the finishing stroke to the preparation of iron. The constructors next considerably increased the height of the stone crucible in which the fuel and the ore, now mingled with a siliceous flux, were placed, and the blast furnace, that is, the present system of the preparation of iron, soon came into existence.

But, there may be reason to think, neither of these two kinds of furnaces belongs to the primitive ages of mankind which are the object of this work. In the iron epoch—that we are considering—the furnace without bellows was possibly the only one known; the iron was prepared in very small quantities at a time, and the meagre metallic cake, the result from each operation, had to be picked out from among the ashes drawn from the stone receptacle.

Gold, as we have already said, was known to the men of the bronze epoch. Silver, on the contrary, did not come into use until the iron epoch.

Another characteristic of the epoch we are now studying is the appearance of pottery made on the potter's wheel, and baked in an improved kind of furnace. Up to that time, pottery had been moulded by the hand, and merely burnt in the open air. In the iron epoch, the potter's wheel came into use, and articles of earthenware were manufactured on this wheel, and baked in an unexceptionable way in an oven especially constructed for the purpose.