THE AGE OF BRONZE 
a development which belongs mainly to the opening cen- 
turies of the Iron Age. 
Effective history begins with writing, to the discovery, 
or perhaps better development of which we have now 
come. To understand how fundamental was this achieve- 
ment we have only to imagine the situation today if read- 
ing and writing had never been invented. 
For one thing, we should be utterly unable to set down 
and work out any mathematical problems, but would have 
to do them all “in our heads,” no matter how long or how 
complicated they might be. The record of all discoveries in 
physics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, or any of the 
other sciences, would have to be intrusted to our uncertain 
memories. If you were ill, the doctor would have to tell 
you by word of mouth what sort of prescription to get 
filled. Then you would have to tell the druggist what the 
doctor had told you, and the druggist would have to mix 
his medicines according to what he remembered of what 
you had told him. 
Again, suppose we had to depend entirely for our 
knowledge of the past upon what our fathers told us they 
had heard from their fathers and grandfathers. It 1s 
easy to see how the memory of even the most important 
events would become distorted, run together, and con- 
fused. Instead of being able to say that George Wash- 
ington, for example, lived in the eighteenth century and 
played a leading part in the founding of the United States, 
people, after a few thousands or even hundreds of years, 
would be wondering whether he lived in the eighteenth 
century or in the eighth. Was he a contemporary of 
Napoleon or of Charlemagne? And what was it that he 
did anyway? In time he would become a mythical figure, 
perhaps of supernatural power. Old bards and reciters of 
hero tales might even say that he caused the waters of the 
Delaware to divide and led his Continental troops across 
dry-shod. Finally he would be forgotten altogether. 
All this may sound extravagant. But it is exactly the 
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