CHAPTER XIV 
THE AGE OF BRONZE 
We divide the story of man’s progress into successive 
“ages” for convenience only. In reality no sharp breaks 
separated one period from another. What actually hap- 
pened was that somewhere, among some particular group 
of people, a new discovery, a new invention, would occur 
and then slowly spread until it became a permanent fea- 
ture of man’s heritage. Thus, during the New Stone Age, 
men began to notice and work with such metals as they 
found occurring naturally—nuggets of gold and lumps of 
copper. 
Gold proved too soft and too scarce to serve as a suitable 
material for implements of everyday use. From the be- 
ginning man held it too precious ever to use for anything 
but ornaments, and, later on, as a medium of exchange. 
But copper, though not so widely distributed as gold, 
occurs in far larger deposits and is harder, two reasons 
which better adapt it for shaping into tools and weapons. 
Copper occurs “native,” that is, in the metallic form, in 
different places both in the Eastern and the Western 
Hemispheres; for example, in the Lake Superior region of 
North America. We find accordingly that various tribes 
of Indians already made copper objects, including orna- 
ments, axes, and spearheads, hammered out cold, before 
the white man came. Some areas, like Mexico, Central 
America, and Peru, had made still further progress, and 
there we find the ancient peoples practicing a true, albeit 
simple, metallurgy, including melting and casting. 
In the Old World, a similar process seems to have begun 
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