Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/390

368 instruments made of stone, arrow-heads would be among the last to drop out of use, being both well adapted for the purpose they served, and at the same time formed of a material so abundant, that with weapons so liable to be lost as arrows, it would be preferred to metal, at a time when this was scarce and costly. In this country, at all events, the extreme scarcity of bronze arrow-heads is remarkable, while we know from interments that flint arrow-heads were in common use by those who employed bronze for other weapons or implements. There appears to be some doubt as to whether the arrow-heads, or rather the flakes of black flint or obsidian which have been found in considerable numbers associated with bronze arrow-heads on the field of Marathon, were made in Greece, or whether they were not rather in use among some of the barbarian allies of the Persian King. M. Lenormant is clearly of the opinion that they are not of Greek origin, but this is contested by others, and probably with reason. Whatever their origin, there is a strong argument against stone arrow-heads having been in use among the Greeks at so late a period as the battle of Marathon, B.C. 490, in the fact that Herodotus, writing but shortly afterwards, records, as an exceptional case, that in the army of Xerxes, circa B.C. 480, the arrows of some of the Ethiopian contingent were tipped with stone, while those of some Indian nations were even pointed with iron. So early as the days of Homer the arrow-heads of the Greeks were of bronze, and had the three longitudinal ribs upon them, like those in that metal found at Marathon, for he speaks of the and applies to it the epithet

Even among such rude tribes as the Massagetæ and Scythians, the arrow-heads, in the days of Herodotus, were of bronze; as he records an ingenious method adopted by one Ariantas, a king of the Scythians, to take a census of his people by levying an arrow-head from each, all of which were afterwards cast into an enormous bronze vessel.

Besides the Æthiopians there was another nation which made use of stone-pointed arrows in Africa, as is proved by the arrows from Egyptian tombs, of which specimens are preserved in several of our museums. The head, which is of flint, differs however from