This is peculiarly true of North America, where copper was used extensively and fash ioned not only into useful but ornamental shapes, but it always supplemented and never replaced the use of elaborately chipped and polished stone artifacts. It is known almost to a certainty that the Indians were well sup plied with copper at the time of initial Euro pean contact, and some of it appears to have been mistaken for it by the • avaricious col onists. As metal, it was of use to the Euro peans and collected wherever possible for con version into vessels for culinary use. In this way was lost a vast amount of valuable eth nological material, which, had it been pre served, would have thrown much light on the status of the aborigine at that time.
The Bronze Age, however, was an enor mous step forward. It was earlier in Assyria than Egypt, probably from the Armenian cop per: the former introduced it by 5000 B.C.; the latter not fully till about 3000, and did not use it freely till 1600, only 500 years or so before iron displaced it. And in all countries stone implements were still used in sacrifices to the gods, who did not like new inventions. The hardness of the alloy of copper and tin seems to have been realized before its toughness and the many advantages given by ability to cast it; hence at first the stone tools and imple ments were simply copied in massive bronze, and were needlessly heavy and limited in pat tern. But as its properties became evident the tools were much lightened, and made thin yet stiff with embossed patterns, and various kinds invented which could not have been made in stone, as the sickle gouge, etc. The axe, or celt, was first made as a plain bronze wedge fastened by a thong, as with stone; then cast with a socket for the helve, an extraordinary gain in efficiency. There were light cups and kettles, knives and chisels, spear- and arrow heads, swords and daggers and bronze-bound shields and a mass of personal fastenings and adornments. Some of these were impossible in stone, as buttons, buckles and pins, necklets, bracelets, rings and earrings. A priceless col lection of these objects was found at Bologna, Italy, in the shape of the abandoned stock of an ancient bronze founder. The industrial ad vantage of this newly found hardness, tough ness and variety developed industries and trade immensely; it also made possible for the first time true stone architecture and engineering of hewn and dressed stone. No small branch of business in stoneless Egypt was the quarrying and transportation of stone for the public works from the southern rockier regions.
Megolithic remains, wherever they occur, have always riven rise to much speculation as to age and origin. If our present actual knowl edge of such antiquities in Europe and Asia lays bare the secret of their origin and approx imate date of construction, the same cannot be said of somewhat similar structures in North, Central and South America. Led by resem blances, real or fancied, these examples in American forests of masonry on a gigantic scale have been held to demonstrate the of that people of another continent, whose work aappearsp to have been the model for the American structure.
This is scarcely logical. Close resemblance may be accidental and the same thought may arise in minds that have no knowledge of the existence of another people than themselves. A rock-shelter or a limestone cavern may read ily suggest an artificial 'shelter of stone and once this thought arises, the steps toward elab orate, artistic and we may •add scientifically constructed buildings would inevitably follow. The engineering difficulties would be solved, if not everywhere in the same, always in a simi lar way, and no borrowing of ideas is called for.
As it cannot be shown that the climatic or physical conditions in the Americas was ever such that local advance was impossible among its native races, the ((influence" or actual pres ence of a foreign people is not called for to make plain the peopling of these continents, and the checkered careers of its various na races, tribes or whatsoever designation may be preferred in distinguishing them.
The Iron Age is the present (though the 19th century developed what is really a distinct era, the Steel Age, making possible many ad vances beyond those of iron), and the most of its course belongs to history. It originated from about 1200 to 1000 ac.— that strange period, in seeming the blackest in the calendar of the ancient world, when* the old civilization of Mesopotamia had under the Se mitic invaders, Egypt had sunk into decay, and barbarism seemed to have reasserted its reign over both the Eastern and Western world, yet in which lies the birth of perhaps the three greatest factors of human progress in historic times the use of iron, the alphabet, and the Hebrew nation. The first is thought to have sprung from Armenia., regarding, the second, the Phoenician origin is still valid; the third is a mysterious gift of Arabia.