EARLY MAN 463 



different metals may be contemporaneous, provided that they 

 can be obtained in a native state. At the time of the dis- 

 covery of America the Esquimaux were using native iron, 

 which, though rare in most parts of the world, is not uncom- 

 mon in some rocks of Greenland. The people of the region 

 of the great lakes, and of the valleys of the Mississippi and 

 Ohio, were using native copper from Lake Superior for similar 

 purposes. Gold was apparently the only metal among the 

 natives of Central America. The people of Peru had invented 

 bronze, or had brought the knowledge of it with them from 

 beyond the sea. Thus the Peruvians were in the bronze age, 

 the Mexicans and Mound builders in the copper age, and the 

 Esquimaux in the iron age, while at the same time the 

 greater part of the aboriginal tribes were at one and the same 

 time in the ages of chipped and polished stone and in these 

 ages what have been called palaeolithic and neolothic weapons 

 were contemporaneous, the former being most usually unfinished 

 examples of the latter, or extemporized tools roughly made in 

 emergencies. 1 How long this had lasted, or how long it would 

 have continued, had not Europeans introduced from abroad an 

 iron age, we do not know. It was probably the same in other 

 parts of the world, in pre-historic times. In any case, the dis- 

 covery of native metals must have occurred very early. Men 

 searching in the beds of streams for suitable pebbles to form 

 hammers and other implements, would find nuggets of gold 

 and copper, and the properties of these, so different from those 

 of other pebbles, would at once attract attention, and lead to 

 useful applications. Native iron is of rarer occurrence, but in 

 certain localities would also be found. 2 It must have been 



1 " Fossil Men," by the Author. W. H. Holmes, " American Anthro- 

 pologist," 1890. 



2 The rarity of native iron, whether meteoric or telluric, and its rapid 

 decay by rusting, sufficiently account for its absence in deposits where im- 

 plements of stone and bone have been preserved. 



