464 EARLY MAN 



experiments on these ores, which resemble the native metals in 

 colour, lustre and weight, that led to the first attempts at smelt- 

 ing metals, and these must have occurred at a very early 

 period. Yet for ages the metals must have been extremely 

 scarce, and we know that in comparatively modern times civil- 

 ized nations like the Egyptians were using flint flakes after they 

 had domesticated many animals, had become skilful agricultu- 

 rists and artisans, and had executed great architectural works. 



Probably all these ends had been to some extent, and in 

 some localities, attained in the earliest human period, when 

 man was contemporary with many large animals now extinct. 

 But a serious change was to occur in human prospects. 

 There is the best geological evidence that in the northern 

 hemisphere the mild climate of the earlier Post-glacial period 

 relapsed into comparative coldness, though not so extreme as 

 that of the preceding Glacial age. Hill tops, long denuded of 

 the snow and ice of the Glacial period, were again covered, and 

 cold winters sealed up the lakes and rivers, and covered the 

 ground with wintry snows of long continuance, and with this 

 came a change in animal life and in human habits. The old 

 southern elephant {E. antiquus), the southern rhinocei'os {E. 

 leptorhinus), and the river hippopotamus {II. major)^ which 

 had been contemporaries, in Europe at least, of primitive man, 

 retired from the advancing cold, and ultimately perished, 

 while their places were taken by the hairy mammoth {E. 

 primigenius), the woolly rhinoceros {R. tichorhinus\ the rein- 

 deer, and even the musk ox. Now began a fierce struggle for 

 existence in the more northern districts inhabited by man — a 

 struggle in which only the hardier and ruder races could sur- 

 vive, except, perhaps, in some of the more genial portions of 

 the warm temperate zone. Men had to become almost wholly 

 carnivorous, and had to contend with powerful and fierce 

 animals. Tribe contended with tribe for the possession of the 

 most productive and sheltered habitats. Thus the struggle 



