216. THE BRONZE AXE. 



no weapon or implement of any sort save the stone axe, 

 or tomahawk, and the flint-tipped arrow. Consider, that 

 the highest stage of human cultm^e he had then reached 

 was hardly higher than that of the scalp-hunting Eed 

 Indian or the seal-spearing Esquimaux. Consider, that 

 in his Stone Age agriculture and grains were almost 

 unknown — the forest uncleared, the soil untilled, and 

 hunting and fishing the sole or principal human activities. 

 It was the bronze axe that first enabled man to make 

 clearings in the woodland on the large scale, and to sow 

 on those clearings in good big fields the wheat and barley 

 which determined the first great upward step in the 

 drama of civilization. All these things depend in 

 ultimate analysis upon that pioneer of culture, the bronze 

 hatchet. 



And how did the first Watt or Edison of metallurgy 

 come to make that earliest bronze implement ? Well, it 

 seems probable that between the Stone Age and the 

 Bronze Age there intervened everywhere, or nearly 

 everywhere, a very short and transient age of copper. 

 And the reason for thus thinking is threefold. In the 

 first place, bronze is an alloy of tin and copper: 

 and it seems natural to suppose that men would use the 

 simple metals in isolation to begin with, before they dis- 

 covered that they could harden and temper them by 

 mixing the two together. In the second place, copper 

 occurs in the pure or native state (without the trouble of 

 smelting) in several countries, and was therefore a very 

 natural metal for early man to cast his inquiring glance 

 upon. And in the third place, weapons of unmixed 

 copper, apparently of very antique types, have been foun4 



