Identifier: ridpathshistoryo01ridp (find matches)
Title: Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men ..
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history Ethnology
Publisher: New York, Merrill & Baker
Contributing Library: Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston University

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n with a bronze-bearing nation as tobe easily overrun, and with this conquestthe knowledge and practice of bronzemanufacture would immediately follow.However this may be, the age ofbronze has everywhere succeeded theneolithic age in the development ofcivilization. It is in this age that wegenerally catch the first authentic Copperspearhead. age of bronze, and it is safe to regardthis epoch in the evolution of man asthe substratum of authentic history. After a long period in bronze-makingand bronze-usinof, the pre- ° r The age of iron historic tribes, or perhaps succeeds the , . , A. epoch of bronze. we should now say nations, pass into the age of iron. Iron, except in the form of meteorites, does not exist 288 GREAT RACES OF MANKIND. in the native state. For this reason itsdiscovery as a metal happens late in thehistory of man. The extraction of ironfrom the ore is, moreover, exceedinglydifficult even with the powerful appli- ironsword t inl>,I Sweden EXAMPLES OF (RON WORKMANSHIP.
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ances of modern metallurgy. The manof antiquity was unable to produce therequisite heat, and even had he beenmaster of an adequate temperature hecould not have conjectured by a priori»ning that such a substance as metallic iron might be expected to issuefrom the rust-colored stone constitutingthe ore. Doubtless the discovery was accidental.Indeed, traditions exist to this effect. It has been handed down that a European x Evolution of discovery of ironwork in pri-1 ,. meval Europe. iron by smelt-ing: occurred in Bohemiawithin the historical period.However this may be, wehave unmistakable proofsthat somewhere in the earlydawn of the Graeco-Italicdevelopment in SouthernEurope the discovery ofthe process of extractingiron was made and the fab-rication of implementstherefrom begun. TheGreeks, at least of the post-Homeric epoch, had asoldiery bearing iron weap-ons, and it appears that theRomans from the first faintlimnings of tradition armedthemselves, for both offenseand defense, with the

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