Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority of some of the metals resulted in the substitution of them for stone as a material for cutting implements. Copper—the only metal which, while malleable, is hard enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by succeeding races in the Old World and the New. Implements of this material are found scattered over extensive regions. So desirable, however, did the hardening of the material appear for the improvement of the cutting edge that combinations with other metals were sought for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while that with silver appears to have been most readily produced in America, and was consequently used by the Peruvians and other nations.
The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores placed in the hands of man the best material for bringing to a shape, convenient for his needs the raw material of the world. All improvements in this direction made since that time have been in the quality of iron itself, and not through the introduction of any new metal.
The prevalent phenomena of any given period are those which give it its character, and by which we distinguish it. But this fact does not exclude the coëxistence of other phenomena belonging to prior or subsequent stages. Thus, during the many stages of human progress there have been men more or less in advance of the general body, and their characteristics have given a peculiar stamp to the later and higher condition of the whole. It furnishes no objection to this view that we find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an inferior culture supplanting in some cases a superior people. A case of this kind is seen in North America, where the existing “Indians,” stone-men, have succeeded the mound-builders, copper-men. The successional relation of discoveries is all that it is necessary to prove, and this seems to be established.
The period at which the use of metallic implements was introduced is unknown, but Whitney says that the language of the Aryans, the ancestors of all the modern Indo-Europeans, indicates an acquaintance with such implements, though it is not certain whether those of iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc., could not, it is thought, have taken place later than 3000 B. C.—a date seven hundred years prior, to that assigned by the old chronology to the Deluge. Those races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations, already civilized, and as distinct from each other in feature as they are now.
Improvement in Architecture. The earliest periods, then, were characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention and construction. Later, the efforts for defence from enemies and for architectural display, which have always employed so much time and power, began to be made. The megalithic period has left traces over much of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each other in the simplest form in Southern India, and the circles of stones planted on end in England at Stonehenge and Abury, and in Peru at Sillustani, are relics of that period. More complex are the great Himyaritic walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship of the Pelasgi in Greece and Italy. In the iron age we find granitic hills shaped or excavated into temples; as, for example, everywhere in Southern India. Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill is cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet in elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic cones, one thousand miles from the west coast of South America, in the bosom of the Pacific, possesses several colossi cut from the intrusive basalt, some in high relief on the face of the rock, others in detached blocks removed by human art from their original positions and brought nearer the sea-shore.
Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate and complex structures of Central America, of Cambodia, Nineveh and Egypt, represent the period of greatest display of architectural expenditure. The same amount of human force has perhaps never been expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions of beauty have been developed in architecture with increasing intellectuality.
Man has passed through the block-and-brick building period of his boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions of what is the true disposition of power for “him who builds for aye,” and learn that “spectacle” is often the unwilling friend of progress.
No traces of metallic implements have ever been found in the salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries in Arabia, the cities of Central America or the excavations for mica in North Carolina, while the direct evidence points to the conclusion that in those places flint was exclusively used.
The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise of mind, are the pursuit of the chase and the tending of flocks and herds. Accordingly, we find our first parents engaged in these occupations. Cain, we are told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground. Agriculture in its simplest forms requires but little more intelligence than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment is capable of higher development. If we look at the savage nations at present occupying nearly half the land surface of the earth, we shall find many examples of the former industrial condition of our race preserved to the present day. Many of them had no knowledge of the use of metals until they obtained it from civilized men who visited them, while their pursuits were and are those of the chase, tending domestic animals, and rudimental agriculture.