THE IRON AGE.
The most useful of metals, iron, was known to man long before he attained the art of manipulating it to his advantage. In the mounds of the Ohio Valley antiquaries have discovered thin sheets hammered out of meteoric iron and applied as a coating to ornaments (Putnam). Tnbal Cain, who in the book of Genesis is put as the seventh in descent from Adam, is mentioned as "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron;" and the book of Job, also one of the most ancient of Hebrew records, speaks of " iron taken out of the earth" as one of the metals then in familiar use.
In view of these quotations, we shall not be surprised to learn that the Chinese annals state that iron supplanted bronze for swords in the reign of Kung Kin, 1897 B. c., or that many years before that date the Assyr ians manufactured numerous tools of iron. Although the Egyptians knew the metal and sparingly employed it in their arts, they preferred bronze, and it was not till as late as about the seventh century B. c. that the latter can be said to have been supplanted. The Semitic peoples were quicker to see its vast utility, and all of them have a common term for iron, bar.s'e/—Arabic fir-zil—showing that they had known and named it before their primitive stock separated into the later branches. From the latter form of it, fir-zil, in the opinion of some etymologists, is derived the Latin word for iron, fermin, which would indicate that the primitive Italian tribes learned the use of the metal from the traders of the Plicenician or Carthaginian ports. In the days of Homer the use of iron was just commencing, most of the weapons the poet names being specified as of bronze; but in the age of Hesiod iron had become cheaper than bronze, and was employed much more widely (Gladstone). From an investigation of the older Greek writers it has been deduced that iron was known in that country ten or twelve centuries before our era, although it long continued a rare metal; by the fifth or sixth century n. C. it had practically superseded bronze both for tools and weapons (Evans).
The metal soon extended into Northern Europe. Linguistic evidence indeed shows that it is probable that the Letto-Slays and Celto-Ger mans of the North learned to forge iron before they became acquainted with bronze (Schrader). The German warriors who destroyed the legions of Augustus were armed with iron swords, and their lances were tipped with the same metal. The Cotti, on the right bank of the Rhine, had
the metal in abundance, and Julius Cesar describes the Gauls of the north of France and of Belgium working large iron-mines by tunnelling. He also mentions ingots and rings of iron as in use for money among the Britons of his clay. The Iron Age in Western Europe must have begun, therefore, two or three centuries before our era.
Although, as has been already mentioned, the American tribes were not entirely ignorant of iron, and even hammered it into thin sheets for decorative purposes, they never learned the arts of smelting and forging it, and therefore made no practical applications of it. Neither was it within the acquisitions of the Australians. But in Africa it has been everywhere employed from the earliest times of which we have any knowledge. The tribes of the Soudan, the Caffirs, even the Hottentots and Bushmen of the southern extremity of the continent, are now, and have been for time out of mind, perfectly acquainted with the exploita tion of ferruginous ores, with the forging of weapons and utensils with a cutting edge, and with the preparation of ornamental objects of the metal.
This fact illustrates the truth that the mere acquisition of some one art, even if it be so cardinal a one as the manufacture of iron, is utterly insuf ficient to lift a nation from barbarism, or even perceptibly to elevate it. Some of these African tribes, celebrated locally for their skill in metal work of iron and steel, are examples of tribes almost as low in the scale as the Australians, and very much inferior to the average American Indians. Hence is manifest the error of those who would take progress in the industrial arts alone as the test of the growth of civilization.
As iron and steel still continue to be the materials preferred for obtain ing a cutting edge, the "Age of Iron " is considered to include that in which we live, and to apply to the civilized nations of the present world. (See IRON AGE, Vol. II.) The second classification of the stages of progress to which we have referred has reference to the source of the food-supply. It is divided into the following heads : I. The Hunting and Fishing Stage ; 2. The Nomadic or Pastoral Stage ; 3. The Agricultural Stage ; 4. The Commercial Stage.