Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/354

Rh 334 AKCH^OLOGY minuter details of the historian. Nearly the same was the case with all historic antiquity, with the single exception of the wonderful monuments of Egypt, which preserve to us the records of a civilisation in which we can recognise the origin of arts, letters, and all else to which the culture of the oldest historical nations may be traced. Nevertheless, the evidences of the primitive arts, and the traces of a native civilisation originating among the prehistoric races of Europe, had been long familiar to the antiquary, though he failed to form any intelligent concep tion of their significance as historical records. Their inter pretation on an intelligent and systematic principle is mainly due to the archaeologists and ethnologists of Den mark and Sweden, who from their very geographical position were happily freed from the confusing element of classical prejudices, and were compelled to seek in other than Roman sources an origin for the abundant traces of metallurgic art. Zealous British coadjutors speedily caught the hint, and freed themselves from the trammels which had so long narrowed their aim; the remains of primitive art were referred to true sources, or at least arranged under an intelligent system of chronological sequence ; and thus the desultory and often misdirected labours of the anti quary have given place to researches characterised by scientific accuracy. The system of primitive archaeology thus introduced has since been modified and carried out into ampler details, as the fruit of more extended discoveries, chiefly effected in France and England; but the three primary divisions, the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron Periods, are still retained. The arrangement is warranted alike by evidence and by its practical convenience, though later research has given to the stone period a comprehensiveness undreamt of before, and so led to its subdivision into two ages of prolonged duration, with distinctive characteristics of primi tive art. (1.) The Stone Period, as the name implies, is that in which the rude aboriginal arts, which the com monest necessities of man call into operation, are assumed to have been employed entirely on such available materials as stone, horn, bone, &c. (2.) The Bronze Period may in like manner admit of subdivision, though the term is con veniently employed, in its most comprehensive sense, for that era of progress in which the metallurgic arts appear to have been introduced and slowly developed first, by the simple use of native copper, followed by the application of fire, the construction of moulds, and the discovery of such chemical processes as the alloying of copper and tin, and the consequent production of the beautiful and useful alloy which gives name to this the earlier metallurgic era. (3.) The Iron Period marks the era of matured metallurgic arts, and the accompanying progress consequent on the degree of civilisation which is the inevitable con comitant of such a state of things. &quot;While, however, those divisions hold good in their general application, they must not in every case be applied too rigidly. The archaeologist is constantly recalled to the&quot; distinction between the re searches of the palaeontologist, as dealing with the traces of organic life, and his own study of the works of a rational being marked by all the diversities traceable to the reason ing and volition of the individual workman. Local facili ties have also modified the arts of primitive man in various ways. In some localities, as in North America, pure native copper abounds ; while on the other hand, in certain districts of Africa iron occurs in such a condition that it appears to have been wrought by the primitive metallurgist from very remote times. All those periods embrace eras concerning which no con temporary written records exist; and in relation to most of them nearly as little is known directly as of the older periods with which the geologist exclusively deals. It need not therefore excite surprise that the process of in duction established on this basis has been challenged by historical writers of high standing, but whose exclusive labours on the records of periods admitting of documentary evidence and charter proof render them little disposed to sympathise with a course of reasoning relative to the history of man, such as has, in the hands of the geologist, revealed so much in relation to more ancient life. The further, however, that research is pursued, alike into the habits of living races of savages, and into the characteristics of the oldest traces of primitive art, the more clearly does such a process of development, from the first rude working in stone to the highest arts of the skilled metallurgist, become manifest. The Australians, the Maories of New Zealand, and the whole widely-scattered races of the Polynesian Islands, the Caribs and other natives of the American archipelago, with all the nomade tribes of the New World, from Patagonia to the Arctic circle, were, when first discovered, without any knowledge of the metals as such, and supplied their wants by means of implements and weapons of stone, shell, bone, or wood. The civilised Mexicans and Peruvians, on the contrary, when first visited by the Spaniards in the 16th century, were familiar with the working of copper as well as gold, though totally ignorant of iron, and also retaining for common purposes many of the primitive stone weapons and implements, only substituting the abundant obsidian of their volcanic region for flint. Greece passed from its bronze to its iron age within the period embraced in its literary history ; and the mastery of the art of working the intractable iron ore is traceable with tolerable clearness in the early history of Rome, not very long before it came in contact with the trans- Alpine barbarians. Among most of the Germanic and Celtic tribes iron appears to have been already known when they first came in contact with the aggressive civilisation of the south; and from one of them, the Norici (in whose country, in the Austrian valleys of the Danube, this metal is still wrought with the highest skill), there is reason to believe that the Romans acquired the art of making steel. If history is only to begin, as that of Britain has been made to do, with the date of the first collision with invading Rome, then, no doubt, stone and bronze periods are as meaningless as are eocene and miocene periods to the geologist who assigns the Mosaic deluge as the source of the earliest phenomena of his science. To those, however, who are willing to follow inductive reason ing to its legitimate conclusions it must be apparent that it is no visionary theory, but a system founded in well- established truth, which arranges the archaeological records of primitive history and the remains of human art into stone, bronze, and iron periods. Even here, however, an important distinction in the employment of such materials as a basis of inductive reasoning indicates the greatness of the revolution involved in the introduction among the living creatures inhabiting this earth of a being endowed with intelligence, and supplementing the natural resources of animal life by arts even of the most primitive kind. It must indeed be borne in remembrance that geological and historical chronology are very different things, and that the idea implied in the contemporaneousness of strata bears a very slight approximation to the coincidence of contemporaneous events and productions of an historical era. The doctrine of geological continuity is indeed challenged in certain respects ; but on the whole, the geological formations, with their included organic remains, may be assumed to obey a natural and unvarying order ; and so, within the compass of geological periods, to be of contemporaneous origin. But, notwithstanding certain extreme assumptions, based on the theory of evolution, and