Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/680

used, and many are preserved in collections; stone implements and arrow heads are found with the bronze, showing that the former serviceable material was still used. The later Swiss villages and many tumuli or mounds belong to this period. Bones of the domestic animals and cultivated plants are found instead of wild ones; the piles of the villages are cut squarely with metal, and not irregularly by stone or charred by fire; the pottery shows marks of the wheel; gold, amber, and glass were used for ornamental purposes, though silver, lead, zinc, and iron appear to have been unknown; there were no coins in use, and there are no signs of writing or inscriptions; skins were worn, though tissues of flax and wool were also used; the ornamentation is geometrical, consisting of lines, circles, zigzags, and triangles, much as is now seen on the mats made by the tribes of central Africa; the handles of the arms and bracelets indicate a small race. The use of bronze proves commerce, and the tin must have been brought from Cornwall, and copper must have been used before bronze. As copper implements are not found in western Europe, it is probable that the knowledge of bronze was introduced into and not discovered in Europe; it could not have been introduced from Italy, as the Romans never entered Denmark, and such implements have rarely been found in Italy, and none of the peculiar leaf-shaped bronze swords, so common now in the north, are seen in southern museums. If such are of Phœnician origin, as Prof. Nilsson maintains, it must have been before their historic period, as they were familiar with iron from the earliest known times.—After a transition period, during which bronze was used with iron, as proved by iron instruments with bronze handles, though never the reverse, we come to the iron age, which leads directly to the historic. In this the weapons and cutting instruments were generally made of iron; such were in use by the Britons at the time of the Roman invasion; coins were employed, and silver was used for ornamentation of the person and of implements; the pottery was much better, and the weapons were more artistically made and ornamented. Neither bronze nor stone weapons were used in northern Europe at the beginning of our era, and the people of the north and west were considerably above the savage state. The resemblance of the rude implements in the old and in the new world, in the same stage of civilization, is very striking.—M. Lartet makes only two prehistoric ages, the stone and the metal. The stone age he divides into—1, that of the extinct mammals, like the mammoth and the cave bear; 2, that of the migrated existing animals, the reindeer epoch; 3, that of the domesticated existing animals, the polished-stone age. The metal age he subdivides into the bronze and the iron ages. According to him, primitive man lived in a comparatively cold, barren, and wet earth, presenting no fruits for his sustenance, and no opportunity for agriculture; essentially predaceous and carnivorous, an eater of raw flesh, and a cannibal, like many savage races of the present day; with small skull and brain, retreating forehead and prominent jaws, short but robust, below even the New Zealander and Australian of to-day; and paying a great and superstitious respect to the dead. In the reindeer period there was an advance, as shown by the more symmetrical though unpolished weapons, but as yet no agriculture; the great mammals began to disappear, and to be replaced by smaller and more useful forms. The mastodon was evidently known to the founders of the Central American cities, and its figure is pictured on their walls; as the mastodon survived the mammoth, the former came down almost to the historic period. During the reindeer epoch the glaciers again advanced, and the climate became cold, though to a less degree and for a shorter time than before; after this came another warmer period, when the glaciers melted, causing the floods which as deluges enter into the traditions of so many nations; then the great mammals were exterminated, and the reindeer and the arctic animals retreated to the north, where they have since remained. In the next epoch, with a continued mild climate, man became agricultural, had polished implements, and made the dog his companion. In the bronze age man made still greater advances, domesticating animals, cultivating grains and fruits, and smelting metals, especially copper. The iron age insensibly merges into the historic period. The mound-builders M. Lartet considers intermediate in civilization between the polished-stone and the bronze epochs of Europe, not in time, but in stage of advancement; they lived in towns, and were not only hunters, but miners, potters, weavers, agricultural, artistic, and commercial. The stone, bronze, and iron ages do not indicate definite periods of time in man's civilization; every race goes through these ages, some more rapidly than others. Some eastern nations had probably passed out of their stone age at least 3,000 years B.C.; some in northern and central Europe were in this age when Cæsar subjugated Gaul; the Sandwich islanders were in their stone age in the time of Capt. Cook; the Esquimaux and the North American Indians generally are now in their stone age; it is simply the age of the infancy of the race. In America the copper preceded the bronze age; the latter existed when the Spaniards first visited Mexico and Peru. The mound-builders of the Mississippi valley used implements of pure copper, hammered cold, obtained from the region of Lake Superior; they preceded the Aztecs. Judging from the forests overlying this old civilization, the copper age must have been at least 1,000 years ago. Africa had no bronze age, passing from the stone to the iron age, on account of the exceptional occurrence of iron there, which the natives work skilfully both