Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/522

506 During this period, there is evidence that men existed in all those regions of Europe which have yet been properly examined; and such of their bony remains as have been discovered exhibit no less diversity of stature and cranial conformation than at present. There are tall and short men; long-skulled and broad-skulled men; and it is probably safe to conclude that the present Contrast of blonds and brunets existed among them when they were in the flesh. Moreover, it has become clear that, everywhere, the oldest of these people were in the so-called neolithic stage of civilization. That is to say, they not merely used stone implements which were chipped into shape, but they also employed tools and weapons brought to an edge by grinding. At first they know little or nothing of the use of metals; they possess domestic animals and cultivated plants, and live in houses of simple construction.

In some parts of Europe little advance seems to have been made, even down to historical times. But in Britain, France, Scandinavia, Germany, western Russia, Switzerland, Austria, the plain of the Po, very probably also in the Balkan Peninsula, culture gradually advanced until a relatively high degree of civilization was attained. The initial impulse in this course of progress appears to have been given by the discovery that metal is a better material for tools and weapons than stone. In the early days of prehistoric archaeology, Mlsson showed that, in the interments of the middle age, bronze largely took the place of stone, and that only in the latest was iron substituted for bronze. Thus arose the generalization of the occurrence of a regular succession of stages of culture, which were somewhat unfortunately denominated the "ages" of stone, bronze, and iron. For a long time after this order of succession in the same locality (which, it was sometimes forgotten, has nothing to do with chronological contemporaneity in different localities) was made out, the change from stone to bronze was ascribed to foreign, and, of course, Eastern, influences. There were the ubiquitous Phœnician traders and the immigrant Aryans from the Hindoo Koosh, ready to hand. But further investigation has proved for various parts of Europe and made it probable for others, that though the old order of succession is correct it is incomplete, and that a copper stage must be interpolated between the neolithic and the bronze stages. Bronze is an artificial product, the formation of which implies a knowledge of copper; and it is certain that copper was, at a very early period, smelted out of the native ores, by the people of central Europe who used it. When they learned that the hardness and toughness of their metal were immensely improved by alloying it with a small quantity of