222 THE nnONZE AXE. 



years — some bold chronologists would even suggest by 

 hundreds of thousands. Improvement there was, to be 

 sure, during all that long epoch of slow development ; 

 but it was improvement at a snail's pace. The very rude 

 chipped axes of the naked drift age give way after 

 thousands and thousands of years to the shapelier chipped 

 lances, javelins, and arrowheads of the skin-clad cavemen. 

 M. Gabriel de Mortillet, indeed, most indefatigable of 

 theorists, has even pointed out four stages of culture, 

 marked by four different types of weapons, into which he 

 subdivides the Older Stone Age. Yet vast epochs elapsed 

 before some prehistoric Stephenson or dusky Morse first, 

 half by accident, smote out the idea of grinding his 

 tomahawk smooth to a sharp cutting edge, instead of 

 merely chipping it sharp, and so initiated the Neolithic 

 Period. This Neolithic Period itself, again, was 

 immensely long as compared with the Bronze Age which 

 followed, though short by comparison with the Palaeolithic 

 epoch which preceded it. Then the Bronze Age saw 

 enormous changes come faster and faster, till the use of 

 iron still further accelerated the rate of progress. For 

 each new improvement becomes, in turn, the parent of 

 yet newer triumphs, so that at last, as in the present 

 day, a single century sees vaster changes in the world 

 of man than whole ages before it have done in far longer 

 intervab. 



But the invention of bronze, or, in other words, the 

 introduction of hard metal, was really perhaps the very 

 greatest epoch of all, the most distinct turning-point 

 in the whole history of humanity. True, some beginnings 

 of civilisation were already found in the Newer Stone Age. 



