' Hesiod. — Scandinavian Museum. 137 



tlie most ancient tribes, and which were also found among the 

 savage people inhabiting Australia, who were discovered in the 

 middle of the last century. 



A well-known passage in Hesiod affirms, that, in remote ages, 

 " The earth was worked with brass, because iron had not been 

 discovered ;" and Lucretius bears testimony to the same pur- 

 port, in books. 1. 1286: 



" Et prior aeris erat, quam ferri, cognitus usus.'* 



This is confirmed by the implements of copper found in the 

 ancient mines, which will be hereafter noticed, in Siberia and 

 Nubia ; whose working must have ceased some thousand years 

 ago. 



When Brazil was first discovered by the Portuguese, the 

 rude inhabitants used fish-hooks of gold, but had not iron, 

 though their soil abounded in that metal. The people in His- 

 paniola and Mexico were, in like manner, unacquainted with 

 iron when first visited by the Spaniards ; though they had both 

 ornaments and implements of gold, and weapons of copper, 

 which latter, as we learn from the analysis of Humboldt, they 

 had acquired the art of hardening by an alloy of tin. 



This subject has been illustrated in Denmark, by opening 

 many Scandinavian tumuli of very remote ages, from which 

 have been collected specimens of knives, daggers, swords, and 

 implements of industry, which are preserved and arranged in 

 the Museum of Copenhagen. There are tools of various kinds 

 formed of flint or other hard stone, in shapes resembling our 

 wedges, axes, chisels, hammers, and knives, which are pre- 

 sumed to be those first invented. There are swords, daggers, 

 and knives, the blades of which are of gold, whilst an edge of 

 iron is formed for the purpose of cutting. Some of the tools 

 and weapons are formed principally of copper, with edges of 

 iron ; and in many of the implements, the profuse application of 

 copper and gold, when contrasted with the parsimony evident 

 in the expenditure of iron, seems to prove, that, at the unknown 

 period, and among the unknown people who raised the tumuli, 

 which antiquarian research has lately explored, gold, as well as 

 copper, were much more abundant products than iron. 



Copper, in the more remote ages, was not only commonly. 



