THE NEW STONE AGE 
portant public buildings, earthen ramparts, and mounds 
in the shape of various living or mythological creatures, 
like the famous serpent mound of Ohio—these last, of 
course, connected with religious ceremonials. Then they 
commenced to make use of stone also for architectural 
purposes, first probably in the form of sacred emblems and 
symbolic pillars often connected with the worship of an- 
cestors and’ with fertility cults; then for platforms, ter- 
races, and tombs; and finally for actual buildings, often 
elaborately carved and decorated. 
In the New Stone Age we must seek also for man’s first 
employment of metals, destined later to play such a tre- 
mendously important part in human development. At 
first, he merely picked up nuggets of “native” gold and 
perhaps copper, and hammered and worked them into 
shape cold, treating them exactly like lumps of some sort 
of tough, soft stone. True metal-working, with all that it 
implies, came much later. 
At the beginning of the New Stone Age man had ad- 
vanced but little beyond pure savagery—the life of the 
food gatherer, hunter, and fisherman. Before its close he 
had learned, in the more advanced regions, to grow large 
and regular crops; to rear herds of domestic animals; to 
employ human labor, both free and slave, on a large aad 
well-organized scale; to make excellent pottery; to weave 
fine fabrics; to. erect stone palaces and temples; and, 
finally, to make the first tentative attempts in the working 
of metals. After remaining almost wholly at the mercy 
of its environment for many hundreds of thousands of 
years, man’s genius was at last coming into its own. 
