MAN AND NATURE 



common consent that time is spoken of as the Rough 

 Stone Age. 



We are told that then in the course of immeasurable 

 centuries man learned to polish his stone implements, 

 doubtless by rubbing them against another stone, or 

 perhaps with the aid of sand, thus producing a new type 

 of implement which has given its name to the Age of 

 Smooth or Polished Stone. 



Then after other long centuries came a time when 

 man had learned to smelt the softer metals, and the new 

 civilization which now supplanted the old, and, thanks 

 to the new implements, advanced upon it immeasurably, 

 is called the Age of Bronze. 



At last man learned to accomplish the wonderful 

 feat of smelting the intractable metal, iron, and in so 

 doing produced implements harder, sharper, and 

 cheaper than his implements of bronze; and when 

 this crowning feat had been accomplished, the Age 

 of Iron was ushered in. 



By common consent, students of the history of the 

 evolution of society accept these successive ages, each 

 designated by the type of implements with which the 

 world's work was accomplished, as representing real 

 and definite stages of human progress, and as needing 

 no better definition than that supplied by the different 

 types of implements. 



Could the archaeologist trace the stream of human 

 progress still farther back toward its source, he would 

 find doubtless that there were several great epochal 

 inventions preceding the time of the Rough Stone 

 Age, each of which was in its way as definitive and as 



[9] 



