Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/360

340 ABCH2EQLOGY but in total ignorance of the influence of fire or the use of alloys. But wholly distinct from its rude Indian tribes, North America had its semi-civilised Mexicans and South America its more highly civilised Peruvians, who had learned to mine and smelt the ores of the Andes, and make metallic alloys wherewith to fashion for themselves bronze tools of requisite hardness for quarrying and hewing the iolid rock. With these they sculptured the statues of their gods, and reared palaces, temples, and pyramids, graven with elaborate sculptures and hieroglyphics by a people wholly ignorant of iron, which have not unjustly suggested many striking analogies with the megalithic art of ancient Egypt. The huacas, or tombs of the Incas of Peru, and also their royal depositories of treasure, have disclosed many remarkable specimens of elaborate metal- lurgic skill, bracelets, collars, and other personal orna ments of gold ; vases of the same abundant precious metal, and also of silver ; mirrors of burnished silver, as well as of obsidian ; finely-adjusted silver balances ; bells both of silver and bronze ; and numerous common articles and tools of copper, or of the more efficient alloy of copper and tin, all illustrative of the arts and civilisation of a purely bronze age. 4. The fourth or Iron Period is that in which the art of smelting the ores of the most abundant metal had at length been mastered ; and so iron superseded bronze for arms, sword-blades, spear-heads, axes, daggers, knives, &c. Bronze, however, continued to be applied to many pur poses of personal ornament, horse furniture, the handles of swords and other weapons ; nor must it be overlooked that flint and stone were still employed for lance and arrow-heads, sling-stones, and other common purposes of warfare or the chase, not only throughout the whole bronze period, but far into the age of iron. Tho discovery of numerous arrow-heads, or flakes of black flint, on the plain of Marathon, has been assumed with good reason to point to the use of such rude weapons by the barbarian host of Darius ; and the inference is confirmed by the facts which Herodotus records, that Ethiopian auxiliaries of the army of Xerxes, ten years later, were armed with arrows tipped with stone. The essential change resulting from the maturing of the iron period lies in the unlimited supply of the new metal. Had bronze been obtainable in sufficient quantity to admit of its application to the endless purposes for which iron has since been employed, the mere change of metal would have been of slight significance. But the opposite was the case. The beautiful alloy was scarce and costly ; and hence the arts of the neolithic period continued to be practised throughout the whole duration of the age of bronze. But iron, though so abundant in its ores, requires great labour and intense heat to fuse it ; and it needed the prolonged schooling of the previous metallurgic era to prepare the way for the discovery of the properties of the ironstone, and the processes requisite to turn it to account. Iron, moreover, though so abundant, and relatively of comparatively recent introduction, is at the same time the most perishable of metals. It rapidly oxidises unless protected from air and moisture, and hence few relics of this metal belonging to the prehistoric period have been preserved in such a state as to illustrate the skill and artistic taste of the fabricators of that last pagan era, in the way that the implements of the three previous periods reveal to us the habits and intellectual status of those older times. But the iron is the symbol of a period in which pottery, personal ornaments of the precious metals, works in bronze, in stone, and other durable materials, supply ample means of gauging the civilisation of the era, and recognising the progress of man in the arts, until we come at length to connect their practice with definite historical localities and nations, and the names of Egypt and Phoenicia, of Gadir, Massilia, the Cassiterides, and Noricum, illuminate the old darkness, and we catch the first streak of dawn on a definite historical horizon. Thus, with the mastery of the metallurgic arts is seen the gradual development of those elements of progress whereby the triumphs of civilisa tion have been finally achieved, and man has advanced to wards that stage in which the inductive reasonings of the archaeologist are displaced by records more definite, though not always more trustworthy, as the historian begins his researches with the aid of monumental records, inscriptions, poems, and national chronicles. Within the later iron period, accordingly, we reach the era of authentic history. There is no room for doubt that, whatever impetus the Roman invasion may have given to the working of the metals in Britain, iron was known there prior to the landing of Julius Caesar. Within this archaeological period, however, the examples of Roman art and the influences of Roman civilisation begin to play a prominent part. To this period succeed the Saxon and Scandinavian eras of invasion, with no less characteristic peculiarities of art workmanship, as well as of sepulchral rites and social usages. In these later periods definite history comes to the aid of archaeological induction, while those intermediate elements of historical re-edification, the inscriptions on stone and metal, and the numismatic series of chronological records, all unite to complete a picture of the past replete with important elements for the historian. The connection between archceology and geology has been indicated, but that between archaeology and ethnology is of much more essential significance, and is every day being brought into clearer view. By the investigation of the tombs of ancient races, and the elucidation of their sepulchral rites, remarkable traces of unsuspected national affinities are brought to light ; while a still more obvious correspondence of arts in certain stages of society, among races separated alike by time and by space, reveals a uni formity in the operation of certain human instincts, when developed under nearly similar circumstances, such as goes far to supply a new argument in proof of the unity of the human race. The self-evident truths confirmatory of the principles upon which this system of primitive archaeology is based, may be thus briefly summed up : Man, in a savage state, is to a great extent an isolated being ; co-operation for mutual and remote advantage, except in war and the chase, is scarcely possible ; and hence experience at best but slowly adds to the common stock of knowledge. In this primitive stage of society the implements and weapons which necessity renders indispensable are invariably sup plied from the sources at hand ; and the element of time being of little moment, the rude workman fashions his stone axe or hammer, or his lance of flint, with an ex penditure of labour such as, with the appliances of civilisa tion, would suffice for the manufacture of hundreds of such implements. The discovery of the metallurgic arts, by diminishing labour and supplying a material more susceptible of varied forms as well as of ornamentation, and also one originating co-operation by means of the new wants it calls into being, inevitably begets social progress. The new material, more over, being limited in supply, and found only in a few localities, soon leads to barter, and thence to regular trade ; and thus the first steps towards a division of labour and mutual co-operation are made. So long, however, a.s the metal is copper or bronze, the limited supply must greatly

restrict this social progress, while the facilities for working