ANTHROPOLOGY: W. HOUGH 
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perimental knowledge and mechanical equipment acquired in the bronze 
age. The bellows which classical writers attribute to Daedalus and 
Anacharsis may have made possible the reduction of copper ores in the 
later bronze age and may have unlocked at another period the coming 
metal iron. 
The Iron Age, which began before the dawn of history, ushered in the 
fifth metal whose effect on the material world was destined to be incal- 
culable. Man had seen metalHc iron derived from meteorites and there 
exist implements made from this material, but its occurrence was spo- 
radic and limited, so that it had no effect on his arts. Heavy and 
lustrous hematite ores were also widely used for implements and orna- 
ments. When and in what locality iron began to be smelted is un- 
known, but as has been stated, it is the logical successor to the advanced 
technique of the metallurgy of bronze. Primitive iron working may 
still be observed in Africa and has been described in India. African ore 
is an oxide comparatively very easy of reduction and ore beds are of 
general occurrence. The smelter consists of a basin-shape depression in 
the ground beaten down hard and leading to the center is a clay tuyere 
with which the rude bellows are connected. The ore is heaped with 
charcoal in this depression and in the midst lighted coals are placed and 
covered over. The bellows are started and after a time the ore is re- 
duced to a fluxed mass in which small pellets of iron are found. The 
mass is pounded up and the iron sorted out to be hammered into larger 
pieces by a second process. This was essentially the method pursued in 
India. Only Hmited amounts of metal were secured. Casting of iron 
was unknown in Africa. The knowledge of smelting is quite diffused 
in Africa so that there are no chief centers of manufacture and dis- 
tribution, although some tribes are famed as blacksmiths and a few tribes 
depend on alien artificers for their iron utensils. The smelting of iron 
ore is impossible without forced draught. The bellows therefore is a 
device of great interest and importance. The history of draught-pro- 
ducing devices embraces the hand fan, the tube for blowing, the air 
bag in which the air is captured and forced out by pressure through a 
tube, the double air bag to promote a steady stream of air, the double 
air bag worked by rods, in which a valve appears, the double plunger 
bellows, the piston bellows, the folding bellows with organ valve used 
by blacksmiths before the invention of the fan blower, and the fan blower 
which brings back the primitive hand fan much improved. 
The most marked types, the complete knowledge of which would cast 
much light on the history of Western and Eastern foci of metallurgy, 
are the air bags and piston blower the former belonging to the Europe- 
Africa provmce and the latter to Malaysia. 
