90 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



to them were practiced in iron- working at a period when they were 

 still using only bronze. The metallurgy of the hard metals as a whole 

 was thus originally not wrought out by the civilized peoples of whom 

 we know the most, but by tribes who do not play so great a part in 

 history ; by peoples who have not been perpetuated in fame by having 

 founded great states, or by imperishable monuments or written records, 

 but whose contribution to the world's advancement consists in the fact 

 that, living in lands rich in metals, they discovered and developed the 

 processes for working them. 



I have sketched the metal-culture of the East as it represented 

 itself to us at a time w^hen the prehistoric stone age and a deep bar- 

 barism still almost exclusively prevailed in Europe. We now turn to 

 the Indo-Germauic peoples, among whom we shall consider the Greeks 

 in particular, and the other nations collectively. These peoples make 

 their appearance late on the scene of history, and their myths play 

 about a time when the Semito-Hamitic states had already left behind 

 them the traces of a long civilization. We may, however, safely as- 

 sume that many of the tribes had practiced metallurgy for three or 

 four thousand years. We come to this conclusion from the fact that 

 several of the peoples had the same names for the metals. They must 

 therefore have been acquainted with metals and used them in their 

 ancient common Asiatic home. This is confirmed by the Greek myths, 

 which mention the Phrygians, who were settled in Asia Minor and on 

 the adjoining islands, as the oldest metal-workers and the instructors 

 of the Hellenes. They worked not only in bronze, but also in iron. The 

 Indians also seem, at least just after the Buddhist reformation, to have 

 been good iron-workers. Analogous conditions appear to have existed 

 in Europe, where single peoples, at a relatively early period, even be- 

 fore the immigration, possessed metals, and when the remarkable fact 

 meets us frequently that particular tribes (in contrariety to the mass 

 of the ancient civilized peoples) obtained and worked iron. 



We next consider the case of the Greeks, who are highly interest- 

 ing to the historian of civilization not only by their great individuality 

 but also by their multifarious relations with Eastern civilization. The 

 original inhabitants of the country in which this important people set- 

 tled appear to have been the Pelasgians, who may also be regarded as 

 earlier immigrants of the Indo-European race. The Greeks probably 

 learned the so-called Cyclopean architecture from them, but nothing 

 supports the belief that they were influenced in metal-working by 

 them. The Greeks obtained their start in those arts from the island- 

 ers and the Semites of the Asiatic coast through trade and coloniza- 

 tion. 



The most ancient settler in Greece is said to have been Cecrops, who 

 came from Egypt in the second millennium before Christ. He founded 

 Athens and gave laws to the people. From the same country came 

 Danaus, who founded Argos. Pel ops came from metal-rich Phrygia. 



