Salt Lake Tribune | 1914-08-23 | Page 34 | How Man Got his Metals

How Man "Got His Metals THE puzzle of how man got hl3 metals how he learned to extract gold silver iron and copper from the ores of the earth has been solved at last by Professor A W Buckland of the Anthropologi cal Institute of Great Britain and Ireland He claims that gold was undoubt edly the first metal knovn and its se may date back to the Stone Age for as it is found in a pure state in many countries t vould probably be seized upon for ornamental pur poses by savages who would soon learn that it m ght be beaten Into shape with a stone hammer Son e early traces of metallurgical knowledge appears in the Bronze Age showing that man 1 ad already gone so far as to n ake an alloy of copper and tin but this was com paratively late for It meant that man had mastered the art of navl gatlon for the early workers in bronze coming from the East or from the shores of the Medlterran ean sought their tin in Brita n and carried the art of smelting and welding metals over all the then civilized world But before the age of bronze pure copper was used beaten out and not smelted or m xed with alloy Some of the earliest metal imple nents are of pure copper strength having been secured by beating to gether several thin Ia)ers of metal and lapping over the edges Th s is found In the Lake D v elllng3 of Switzerland and in the caves of Spa n as well as among the pre-h pre-h storlc remains in Egypt Many old geographers claim that the art of smelting metals was dis covered through a Iolent conflagra tlon which melted the ores and caused them to flow down pure and there Is a curious legend In the Mahabbarata (2100 B C ) connect Ing serpentB with smelted metals "The good genii wishing to ob tain the amnta or vater of life went before Brahma and Vishnu and requested their help to remove the mountain Mandar with which to churn the ocean Then he with the lotos eye directed the king of ser pents to appear Anata the king of serpents arose and the mountain placed on the back of a tortoise was whirled by Indra like a machine This churn is Identified by Tylor with the early Implement for fire making The fire la at length quench ed by a shower of do id borne water poured down by the 1m mortal Indra and now a stream of the concocted juices of varl ous trees and plants ran down In a briny flood It was from this milk like stream of Juices and a mix ture of melted gold that the Soors obtained their immortality This is very plainly a poetic ac count of the discovery of pure gold as It flowed down in a Bnakellke stream from some great volcanic eruption and Is at the same time a very probable account of tho discov ery of this the first metal worked by man It is generally believed that & first metal workers belonged to jn ancient pre Aryan race denominsw Turanian perhaps more correcuj Mongoloid for it is among ; Mos gel an races that reverence fortw serpent or dragon is and www has been carried to excess U and Japan may be cited as etafflPB" of this to day but ancient legends teu the same tale of India, as has eera shown, at that remote PO"" the Ar ans crossed the Hlmalg and swarmed ipto those grear W" inhabited by tribes who were certainly cer-tainly not savages but ful metal workers especially gThere is further confirmation ij this theory in tl e ondrous , aonu nance of the ancient Hittites toM identified as Mongols on wwSs the pigtails PPetaS W monuments and it is &ls0 m from these same the) were great serpent worsWPP and 1 highl) skilled In the worKn, metals