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

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IRON. 627
628 IRON.
infers that these peoples had long been acquainted with it.
But there is
very distinct evidence that down to the time
of Alexander the coast tribes of Beluchistan not only were
ignorant of it, but even of bronze. For in his account of the
voyage of Nearchus Arrian tells us that, when the Greeks
attempted to land at the mouth of the river Tomerus (the
modern Muklow or Hingul) in the land of the Oreitae, the
natives " carried stout lances about six cubits long, not pointed
with iron, but with sharpened ends hardened in the fire. These
men had hairy bodies and long nails like beasts, which they
used instead of iron to split their fish and the softer kinds of
wood. Everything else they cut with sharp stones, for they
had no iron. For clothing they wore skins'."
Such a case is sufficient to make us hesitate to accept
Schrader's view that because " the Semitic languages possess a
common expressi(jn
for iron, they had a primeval ac(|uaintance
with this
metal'^"
But, as the Hebrew barzel, Syriac parzela, Assyrian parzillu,
and Arabic firzil ('iron point') show not the ordinary
Semitic triliteral, but a ([uadriliteral root, the original seems to
have been borrowed from a non-Setnitic people, pei'ha})s at no
very remote period-'.
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ovK rjv.
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Iiulirii, '2i: TO. oe aXXa rolai XiOoicn rolaiv o^eoLv '^kotttov criSripoi yap avTolcnv
Op. rit., \).
202. I li.'ive sliinvii ('Iscwhcre (Mctallir Currcm-i/, ]). (iO) in
trcatini,' of