

THE BRONZE AXE. 005 



But the indirect effects of the introduction of metal 

 working were far more interesting and important in their 

 way than the direct effects. With bronze began the 

 great age of agriculture, of commerce, and of navigation. 



Of agriculture first, because the bronze hatchet enabled 

 men to make such openings in the forest as neolithic man 

 had never ever dreamed of. For the first time in the 

 history of our race, whole tracts of country at once began 

 to be cleared and cultivated. Stone Age tillage was the 

 tillage of tiny plots in the forest's depths ; Bronze Age 

 tillage was the tillage of fields and wide open spaces in 

 the champaign country. The Stone Age knew no 

 specials implements of agriculture as such ; its tomahawk 

 was indiscriminately applied to all purposes alike of war 

 or gardening. You scalped your enemy with it, or you 

 cut up your dinner, or you dug your field, or you planted 

 your seed-corn, according as taste or circumstances 

 directed. But while the Bronze Age men had axes to 

 hew down the wood, they had also sickles and reaping- 

 hooks to cut their crops, and a sort of hoe or scraper to 

 till the soil with. Specialisation reached a very high 

 pitch. All the remains of the Bronze Age show us an 

 agricultural people by no means idyllic in their habits to 

 be sure, and not all disposed to join the Peace Preserva- 

 tion Society, but cultivating large stretches of wheat or 

 barley, grinding their meal in regular mills, and possessed 

 of implements of considerable diversity, some of which I 

 shall proceed to notice later. 



The evidences of commerce and of navigation are equally 

 obvious. Bronze itself consists of tin and copper : and 

 there are only two parts of the world from which tin in 



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