Varied Utility Of Copper

THAT the march of civilization has synchronized with progress in the art of utilizing minerals is a proposition that needs no proof. It is a truism. Historians conveniently divide the time that the earth has been inhabited into the Stone Age, the Bronze (more accurately the Copper) Age, and the Iron Age. As archeologists are not entirely in accord as to dates, and as a few centuries make no difference whatever to this particular story, it may be approximated that the Age of Copper began about 8000 years B.C. and that it gave place to the Age of Iron about 1000 years B.C. The logic of this succession-stone, copper, iron-lies in the fact that copper first displaced stone, then iron displaced copper as the standard material out of which the utensils, implements, and weapons, the utilitarian articles of antiquity, were made. After the advent of iron, the mining and smelting of copper continued. Copper and bronze found use particularly in objects of artistic and ornamental nature; but the superior qualities of iron for many purposes were recognized. Useful manufactures of those days consisted principally of knives, hammers, chisels, spear-heads, arrow-heads, and battle-axes. First these were made of stone, then of copper and bronze, then of iron-particularly as there was plenty of iron ore, and the metallurgy was comparatively easy of accomplishment. Of course, the periods of transition dragged slowly. Definite as were the three Ages dominated by the mineral substance from which they get their names, ten or fifteen centuries probably elapsed from the time the first iron was smelted in a small charcoal furnace until it became the accepted material from which to shape a battle-axe. Contrast this with the pace of modern progress. In a brief span, half a dozen more or less deserving candidates for the distinction of having their name