Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 May 1880 — Metallic and Non-Metallic Ages. [ARTICLE]

Metallic and Non-Metallic Ages.

Some time ego Herr Ecker proposed to to divide the prehistoric time into a premetallic and a metallic time, instead of the three periods of stone, bronze, and iron. His reasons were that tbe earlier period was characterized rather by the nonaisc of metal than by the use of stone, and that the phrase “metal period” leaves undecided which of the metals first cay* into use. As to how man came to use metals, he has lately urged that it was accidentally through observations in working stone. Tbe savage, for example, found * stone; he hammered it in order to chip rtu* o »bape; no pieces, bowers, broke off, but the stone gradually took, under hammering, the desired form. This mal--1 sable stone was solid copper. Thus, in northern North America, copper seems to have been the metal which first into use. In another place the savages found that among the stones which they used for fireplace*, some got red and glowing with intense heat, and thon could Be hammered in this state. This was the iron bloom. It is probable that U Centred Africa iron was the metal which first came into use. The experience that stones could also be fused, or that two liquid kinds of stono (copper and tin) furnish a still more liquid third (bronze), belongs widentiy to a much later stage of developJim Pugsley ot Battle Creek isn’t dead a; neither is Mm. Pugley. The latter just sued H. H. Brown for $25,000 damage* arising by said Brown having,ss she avers, assaulted and battered about that amount ont of Pugsley. In the late walking match there were “footsteps that tome erring brother, seeing, may take Hart again.”