THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

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IRON. 595
never lead to any but erroneous results, for it imputes to
primitive man who had up to that moment no implements
except those of stone, wood, horn and bone, the mental
attitude of the modern metallurgist, and presupposes that
he went deliberately to work to find some metal which
would provide him with implements and weapons
of a kind
superior to any that he possessed. It seems much more likely
that man obtained his first
knowledge of metal by some
accident which placed in his hands not a rude ore, but one
already smelted for him by Nature. The question therefore
is not one of the relative difficulty of reducing iron and
copper ores, but rather the occurrence of these two metals
in a native state. In this case the advantage lies altogether
on the side of copper, for it is very commonly found native
and can thus be readily wrought by people in a rude state of
'
culture, who could by merely hammering
it fashion axes and
other implements similar to those of stone, which they already
possessed. Thus in North America the ' Mound-builders had
learned to employ the copper which they found ready to their
hand in all the region round Lake Superior, and the Indians of
the North Pacific coast had discovered and learned to use the
deposits of native copper in the Chilcat country north of Sitka,
and the copper shields made by these people passed right
down the coast to Queen Charlotte's Island'. In the old world
copper is found native in Italy, Hungary,
CV)rn\vall and various
other places. Thus it lay read}- to the hand of man. Again,
it is
(juite probable that the idea of making (o])pcr more
fusibh; and inipi'oving its tern pel' by alloying
it with tin was
not the outcome of an\' d