STONE AGE IN AFRICA. 137 



THE STONE AGE IN AFRICA. 



BY J. F. SNYDER, M. D. 



A time undoubtedly existed in the early history of many primitive peoples 

 when the appliances man brought to his aid, in the struggle for life, were such 

 only as he readily found at hand convenient in form to meet his necessities, as 

 sticks, shells and stones; and that in course of time experience suggested modifi- 

 cations of these natural objects, and he gradually learned to shape them, by 

 breaking and grinding, into serviceable weapons and tools. When stone consti- 

 tuted the chief and best material for such implements that his ingenuity could 

 discover, man is said to have Hved in the "Stone Age." From wrought stones he 

 learned the secret of reducing and combining in certain definite proportions the 

 ores of copper and tin, making a compound, termed bronze, in many respects 

 superior for his purposes to stone, and by its adoption attained the " Age of 

 Bronze; " and, finally, in the discovery of iron, he began the "Iron Age" and 

 his wonderful civilization. 



The different eras of man's advancement indicated by these "Ages;" or, 

 more properly, stages, of intellectual development, were not, as some are led to 

 suppose, sharply defined measures of time during which the entire population of 

 a continent or country simultaneously employed the use of scone, bronze or iron 

 exclusively; but in each " Age" all substances previously found serviceable were 

 of course retained in use ; and a people in one locality may have known the art 

 of utiHzing metals at the same time another people occupying contiguous territory 

 were ignorant of any better material than wood or stone. 



These so-called "Ages," marking at the time the highest limit of a people's 

 material culture, and not chronological periods, have come and passed in differ- 

 ent parts of the world at different times, and now, at the present day, when the 

 iron age is almost universal, tribes of degraded savages are known to be still des- 

 titute of all metals. 



In considering the growth of mechanical ideas — constituting the basis and 

 origin of civilization — this inquiry arises : have all primitive peoples, in emerging 

 from the lower status of human life, passed through these grades of advancement 

 in regular sequence, as pupils in our schools proceed from the elementary to the 

 higher branches ? Have wood and stone invariably constituted the alphabet and 

 grammar, so to speak, of human skill in mechanism, necessary to be mastered 

 before gaining knowledge of bronze and then of iron ? 



In reading reports of African explorations we are surprised to learn that 

 some degraded savage tribes of the interior, who apparently had never before 

 come in contact with civilization, were found to be supplied with not only beau- 

 tifully wrought implements of wood and ivory, but also of iron produced from 

 native ores and forged by native artisans. Their adroitness in smelting hematite 



