From the pastoral life, the barbarian, hampered by his flocks and herds, and no longer obliged to wander in search of food, settles down to a more stationary life, and by degrees takes to agriculture. Then, for the first time, he digs into the soil, and becomes acquainted with its mineral treasures. It has been proved by the discovery of quantities of carbonized grains of wheat, lumped together, in the Swiss lake-habitations of the stone age, together with the materials for preparing it for food, that a knowledge of agriculture preceded the general employment of bronze in that region,[190] whilst in Britain, and in Denmark also, bronze is almost invariably associated with evidence of domestication and agriculture.
The metals first employed would be those that are most attractive. Copper, in Europe, from the bright colour of its ores, would be noticed more readily than iron, which is often scarcely distinguishable from the soil, and requires greater temperature and more skilled labour to render it available than could be expected of a people emerging out of the savage state. It is not, therefore, surprising that in Europe, copper first, and subsequently its alloy, bronze, should have been employed before iron as a material for weapons. But in those countries where iron is found upon the surface in an attractive form, and in a condition to be easily wrought, we must for the same reason suppose that it would be used instead of copper in the earliest ages of metallurgy.
DEVELOPMENT OF FORM IN CELTS OF COPPER, BRONZE AND IRON.]
It is natural to suppose that, in the ordinary course of development, an age of pure copper must have intervened between the ages of stone and bronze. But implements of pure copper are comparatively rare, bronze being the metal almost invariably found following immediately upon the age of stone.[191] Notwithstanding the comparative rarity of copper tools, however, there is reason to believe that this metal was used in a pure state before the discovery of the alloy. According to Professor Max Müller, copper was the metal spoken of by Hesiod and Homer as the material generally employed for weapons in their time.[192] Mr. Rawlinson, in his _Five Ancient Monarchies_, says that the metallurgy of the early Chaldeans was of a very rude character, indicating a nation but just emerging from an almost barbaric simplicity, and that copper often occurs pure.[193] Copper implements, of a very early form, beaten into shape, occur not unfrequently in Ireland, as may be seen by specimens represented in Class A, Plate XVIII. They have also been found in Mecklenburg and in Denmark, and Klemm[194] says that they occur in Greece, Italy, Spain, Egypt, and Hindustan. At Maurach, in Switzerland, a copper celt was found in a lake dwelling, which Dr. Keller, notwithstanding this circumstance, attributes to the stone age.[195] In the lake dwelling of Peschiera, on the lake of Garda, several copper implements were discovered,[196] and in certain localities in Hungary copper implements are said to be as plentiful as those of bronze.[197] An axe of pure copper was discovered in Ratho Bog, near Edinburgh, under 20 feet of stratified sand and clay, and Dr. Wilson mentions that others have been found in Scotland.[198] Copper implements occur in Peru, to prove that, in the central parts of America also, the manufacture of bronze was preceded by the use of copper in a pure state; and in the ancient mines of Lake Superior we have distinct evidence of a stage of early metallurgy in which copper was used simply as a malleable stone, and beaten out into the form of implements without the aid of any alloy or a knowledge of the process of casting.[199] (See Plate XIX, figures 3, 4, 5, and 6.) When it is considered that without the admixture of a small portion of alloy of zinc or tin, copper is very difficult to melt, and can only be used by a laborious process of beating into form, and also what a great superiority bronze has over copper as a cutting material, whilst at the same time the process of fabrication is actually in some degree facilitated by the addition of tin, it is not surprising that on the first discovery of the advantages of this mixture, all the old implements of copper, wherever procurable, should have been taken to the melting-pot for conversion into bronze, and we should thus be left with such scanty evidence of the existence of an age of copper.