74 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



East European used re-curved outlines, the European and 

 Egyptian used straight or simply curved outlines. In all these 

 respects we see a fundamental artistic difference between races. 



Another curious aspect of the subject is the worship or 

 reverence given to weapons. Spears were kept in the temples 

 of Italy as means of divination, and immense ceremonial 

 spear-heads are known from early Mesopotamia, Italy, Sweden, 

 Britain and China. The scimetar was adored in Scythia, and 

 the Quadi adored their swords as deities. The driving of a nail 

 into the temple of Jupiter in Rome was the means of averting 

 pestilence. The double axe was a usual tool, and also a sacred 

 form ; ceremonial copies, which could not be hafted (fig. 16) 

 were made in various northern centres, apparently as standard 

 weights. 



Several stages of inventive activity may be discovered, 

 when a great outburst of new types appears. The most prolific 

 period seems to have been in the later bronze ages, about 

 900 B.C. The most perfect forms of bronze chisels were then 

 devised (figs. 9 to 13), both tang and socket chisels, wide 

 chisels, deep mortise chisels, saws with a uniform rake to the 

 teeth to cut in one direction, great knives of a flamboyant form 

 (fig. 14) with double curves, — all due to north Italian genius. 

 About the same time, or a little later, the Chalybes on the 

 Assyrian side were developing iron and steel tools on modern 

 lines, socket and tang chisels, saws, rasps, and the early stages 

 of files and centre-bits. These were in use about 700 B.C. 

 It is also noticeable how a great wave of ethical ideas appears in 

 that age in Judaea, Greece and Egypt ; it seems to have been a 

 potent stage of thought in many branches. 



Some tools which have been, and still are, very usual in 

 other lands, are little known in the West. The adze had a 

 very long career, from the early prehistoric age of Egypt, and 

 is still the common tool of the East. It is often now confused 

 with the axe, under the general name of celt ; but it is essentially 

 different, being unsymmetrical in side view, and used across 

 the plane of motion. One common form of it, from about 

 1500 to 400 B.C., has scarcely been noticed hitherto ; it has two 

 projections on the side-edge to hold up the lashing which 

 attached it to the handle. It is strange to see how a tool which 

 was commonly used in many countries for a thousand years, 

 has now disappeared from life as totally as the mammoth. 



