110 Evolution 



Scandinavia. One branch settled in Switzerland, and 

 erected large villages on piles in the great lakes. In the 

 mud of some of these lakes that have been drained we 

 find a most remarkable collection of relics of this race. 

 Just as the later Romans took refuge on the islands of 

 Como from the northern barbarians, these Neolithic 

 men built over the water (as is done in New Guinea and 

 Malaysia to-day, or as the medieval Irishman fled to his 

 crannage from the rent collector). Floods and fires 

 destroyed them time after time, and we fish up to-day 

 the materials with which we reconstruct the life of 

 Neolithic man. 



As we draw near to historic times the use of metal 

 supersedes stone. Once more we have to turn south- 

 ward for the developing centre. The more we learn, the 

 more clear it is that the stretch of territory from 

 Morocco to Borneo has been remarkably fertile in 

 advances. Europe received from that line (or below it) 

 its first mammals, first apes and anthropoids, first men, 

 first Neolithic men, and first civilisation. It is in Egypt 

 that we find the earliest use of metal — bronze — about 

 4000 years B.C. Copper, which is so much softer and 

 is found in nature, was probably the first metal to be 

 used, and copper implements are found. But it seems 

 to have been quickly discovered that the softer metal 

 could be hardened with a mixture of tin, and bronze 

 spread through Europe. By about 1800 B.C. it super- 

 seded stone (generally) in Britain and Scandinavia. 

 Some writers are unwilling to grant Egypt the credit of 

 inventing it, but there at all events we find its earliest 

 development. Gold also, a conspicuous but rare metal, 

 may have been worked very early in the metal age; 

 and there is reason to think that in Egypt iron was 

 known almost as early as bronze, and it was much 



