xi SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 211 



Such is the general character of contemporary barbarism 

 so far as it is not influenced by contact with a higher cul- 

 ture, and such appears to have been the condition of 

 the more advanced peoples in the period between the close 

 of the Ice Age and the beginnings of recorded history 

 peoples who constructed the lake dwellings and who, when 

 they could control masses of labour, erected the megalithic 

 tombs and temples that remain among the wonders of the 

 world. The third stage is marked by the introduction of 

 writing and by the use of metal, and the two improvements 

 together, taking place in the fertile river valleys, or intro- 

 duced there by immigrants, aid in the formation of settled 

 states of some extent and population. Writing is still 

 ideographic in the earliest Egyptian dynasties, now referred 

 to the middle of the fourth millennium B.C., but in the 

 Babylonian region the Sumerian script had lost its pictorial 

 form before B.C. 3400. Though iron is found in Egyptian 

 tombs of the first dynasty, it did not come into general use 

 for thousands of years. Both the Sumerians and Egyptians 

 are at first copper-using people. Bronze comes later it is 

 rare before the twelfth dynasty and the Egyptians do not 

 appear to have used iron habitually till the seventh century. 

 Gold work, hammered wire and soldering are found in the 

 first dynasty tombs, and copper was cast as early as the 

 fourth dynasty. The introduction of metal into Crete is 

 referred to about B.C. 2800, and iron appears from B.C. 

 1 200. Glazed pottery beads are found in the prehistoric 

 Egyptian remains, but glassy matter by itself is not earlier 

 than the eighteenth dynasty. Conjoint irrigation works 

 began in Egypt with the earliest dynasty, and the Bahr 

 Yusuf was in working order for 300 miles in the fourth 

 dynasty. Elaborate systems of drainage have been found 

 in the 'Minoan* palaces of Crete, and on many early 

 Sumerian sites. These discoveries are the more remark- 

 able, as sanitation of the kind appears to have completely 

 died out, and it is said that the Minoan system was not 

 again equalled till the middle of the nineteenth century A.D. 

 Oxen were used for ploughing in Egypt from early times, 

 but the horse and chariot were introduced by the Hyksos, 

 and men are not depicted riding until the New Kingdom. 



