Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/48

 24 Otctlmes of European History discovered this fact later (p. 236). This convenient Egyptian calendar was devised in 4241 B.C., and its introduction is the earliest-dated event in history. Furthermore, it is the very calen- dar which has descended to us, after more than six thousand years — unfortunately with awkward alterations in the lengths of the months ; but for these alterations the Egyptians were not responsible (see p. 268). Discovery of It was probably in the Peninsula of Sinai (see map, p. 56) 400? BxV^^' that some Egyptian wandering thither, once banked his camp fire with pieces of copper ore lying on the ground about the camp. The charcoal of his wood fire riiingled with the hot fragments of ore piled around to shield the fire, and thus the ore was " reduced " as the miner says ; that is, the copper in me- tallic form was released from the dark recesses of the lumps of ore. Next morning as the Egyptian stirs the embers, he discovers a few glittering globules, now hardened into beads of metal. He draws them forth and turns them admiringly as they glitter in the morning sunshine. Before long, as the experience is repeated, he discovers whence these strange shining beads have come. He produces more of them, at first only to be worn as ornaments by his women, then to be cast into a blade and to replace the flint knife which he carries in his girdle. The dawning Without knowing it this man stands at the dawning of a new Metal era, the Age of Metal ; and the little disk of shining copper which he draws from the ashes, if this Egyptian wanderer could but see it, might reflect to him a vision of steel buildings, Brook- lyn bridges, huge factories roaring with the noise of thousands of machines of metal, and vast stretches of steel roads along which thunder hosts of rushing locomotives. For these things of our modern world, and all they signify, would never have come to pass but for the little bead of metal which the Egyptian held in his hand for the first time on that eventful day so long ago. Since the discovery of fire over fifty thousand years earlier (p. 3) man had made no conquest of the things of the earth which could compare with this in importance.