Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/105

 Primitive Nomadic Peoples 85 He was used to the sight of strange faces. He had to scheme and treat for pasture with competing tribes. He knew more of minerals than the folk upon the plough lands because he went over mountain passes and into rocky places. He may have been a better metallurgist. Pos- sibly bronze and much more probably iron smelt- ing, were nomadic dis- coveries. Some of the earliest implements of iron reduced from its ores have been found in Central Europe far away from the early civilizations. On the other hand the settled folk had their tex- tiles and their pottery and made many desirable things. It was inevitable that as* the two sorts of life, the agricultural and the nomadic differentiated, a certain amount of looting and trading should develop between the two. In Sumeria particularly which had deserts and seasonal country on either hand it must have been usual to have the nomads camping close to the cultivated fields, trading and stealing and per- FLINT KNIVES OF 4500 B.C. Excavafed 1922 by the British School of Archaeoloey in Egypt from First Dynasty Tombs NOMADS IN EGYPT Egyptian wall painting in a tomb near ancient Beni Hassan, middle Egypt. It depicts the arrival of a tribe of Semitic Nomads in Egypt about the year 1895 B.C. {Bv permission o/ Williaiii Heinsmann)