520 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



Blanckenhorn maintained (Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1907, p. 368) that 

 iron was generally known in India at least as early as 1500 B. C, 

 but he was unable to produce proofs for this assertion, and as little 

 was G. Oppert able conclusively to prove that it was known as early 

 as 1000 B. C. 1 It was merely a conviction of Oppert which he could 

 argue with probable reasons, but not support with positive proofs. 

 Hence I would emphasize the statement that iron finds made in 

 strata of old East India ruins of the tenth to fifteenth pre-Christian 

 centuries do not justify the conclusion that there existed a native 

 iron industry among the Hindus. Such objects only prove that the 

 ancient Hindus were acquainted with iron utensils, but not that they 

 actually made them. We have few accounts of the use of iron by 

 the Hindus, and these scarcely favor the assumption of a native iron 

 industry, but rather suggest that the Hindu iron utensils of the tenth 

 to fifteenth centuries B. C. were foreign importations, and the 

 Phenicians will probably have to be considered as the importers of 

 such iron manufactures. For in my opinion it has been proven above 

 that the Phenicians at least as early as 3000 B. C. had regular com- 

 mercial relations with India which they carried on from Eloth-Aelana 

 on the Red Sea. If, then, at the period 1300 B. C, iron and steel 

 utensils were practically unknown to the Hindus, as may well be 

 assumed, while among the Phenicians they were objects of common 

 barter, it seems natural that the latter carried such articles to India 

 to use for barter. It is therefore not only not impossible but very 

 probable that in excavations in India, especially on the sites of har- 

 bors, such solated imported Phenician iron and steel articles will be 

 found. 



As regards an iron industry among the Chinese, I have thus far 

 not come across any views of sinologues on our problem. This indif- 

 ference of the students of Chinese history is regrettable for the prog- 

 ress of this investigation, the more so since China is probably to be 

 looked upon as a second independent source of a native iron industry 

 and so also of independent inventors of iron implements. 



Such contributions as anthropologists, ethnologists, historians, and 

 naturalists could make to the elucidation of our problem have to a 

 great extent been presented, but as to the cooperation of philologians, 

 there is much left to be desired from them. A great desideratum is 

 an examination of the cuneiform texts for the first mention of iron, 

 and of possibly still greater importance is a study of the Egyptian 

 inscribed monuments for the same purpose. On the other hand, 

 comparative philology could in many cases indicate the way in which 

 different peoples became acquainted with the metal and at the same 

 time received and adopted its name. It is probable that the name 



» Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1908, p. 60. 



