The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

38 THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
youth going in search of some object, rare and durable and capable of being strung
on a necklace. Walking down to a clear stream, perhaps to wash, though more
probably to drink or to fish, he noticed in its bed a brilliant yellow stone of quite
exceptional beauty. Picking it up and examining it he found he could bend it where
it was thin, so that with the aid of a stone he was able to fashion it into the much
sought-for bead. Here he had something which was perforated, strong, rare and also
beautiful. We can imagine that his success would have been assured. Then would
have followed the first gold rush.
Now copper, too, is found in a native state, and is also malleable and easily
modelled with a stone hammer ; it, too, is capable of exhibiting a bright metaUic lustre
when clean. Though it could not compare with gold for beauty, or in the permanence
of its natural lustre, it could well take second place, and being less rare it soon came to
be used freely for decorative purposes. At first it was obtained only in a native state,
and was hammered, not melted, as was the case until recent times around Lake
Superior." Later some copper ornaments probably fell into the fire, and it was thus
discovered that it could be melted. Later still experiments were made with other
metallic-looking ores, such as chalcopyrite, and the metal age had come.
Where these discoveries were made is still a matter of uncertainty. Copper
objects have been found not uncommonly in tombs of the second predynastic period
in Egypt, and sometimes in those of the first." So rare, however, are they in the latter,
that, since the two cultures must to some extent have overlapped, it seems possible
that the knowledge of this metal was introduced into Egypt by the second pre-d5mastic
people. It has been suggested recently that these people, with a copper culture,
bringing the knowledge of wheat and the cult of Osiris, came from North Syria,
from somewhere between Damascus and Beyrut,'^ and if Breasted's views upon the
Egyptian calender are sound, we may expect that they entered the Delta 4241 B.C. or
thereabouts.'*
In Mesopotamia we are not very sure of our dates at so early a period, nor have
we got any clear evidence of the earliest copper civiHsation of that region, but the
" Lubbock (1865) 201, 202. 13 Newberry (1920).
" Breasted (1912) 28. i4 Breasted (1912) 597.