Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/98

90 to them were practiced in iron-working at a period when they were still using only bronze. The metallurgy of the hard metals as a whole was thus originally not wrought out by the civilized peoples of whom we know the most, but by tribes who do not play so great a part in history; by peoples who have not been perpetuated in fame by having founded great states, or by imperishable monuments or written records, but whose contribution to the world's advancement consists in the fact that, living in lands rich in metals, they discovered and developed the processes for working them.

I have sketched the metal-culture of the East as it represented itself to us at a time when the prehistoric stone age and a deep barbarism still almost exclusively prevailed in Europe. We now turn to the Indo-Germanic peoples, among whom we shall consider the Greeks in particular, and the other nations collectively. These peoples make their appearance late on the scene of history, and their myths play about a time when the Semito-Hamitic states had already left behind them the traces of a long civilization. We may, however, safely assume that many of the tribes had practiced metallurgy for three or four thousand years. We come to this conclusion from the fact that several of the peoples had the same names for the metals. They must therefore have been acquainted with metals and used them in their ancient common Asiatic home. This is confirmed by the Greek myths, which mention the Phrygians, who were settled in Asia Minor and on the adjoining islands, as the oldest metal-workers and the instructors of the Hellenes. They worked not only in bronze, but also in iron. The Indians also seem, at least just after the Buddhist reformation, to have been good iron-workers. Analogous conditions appear to have existed in Europe, where single peoples, at a relatively early period, even before the immigration, possessed metals, and when the remarkable fact meets us frequently that particular tribes (in contrariety to the mass of the ancient civilized peoples) obtained and worked iron.

We next consider the case of the Greeks, who are highly interesting to the historian of civilization not only by their great individuality but also by their multifarious relations with Eastern civilization. The original inhabitants of the country in which this important people settled appear to have been the Pelasgians, who may also be regarded as earlier immigrants of the Indo-European race. The Greeks probably learned the so-called Cyclopean architecture from them, but nothing supports the belief that they were influenced in metal-working by them. The Greeks obtained their start in those arts from the islanders and the Semites of the Asiatic coast through trade and colonization.

The most ancient settler in Greece is said to have been Cecrops, who came from Egypt in the second millennium before Christ. He founded Athens and gave laws to the people. From the same country came Danaus, who founded Argos. Pelops came from metal-rich Phrygia.