Page 220 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PREHISTORIC TIMES 7
the same results as the hireoglyphics in the hands of the Egypto-
logist. These early implements of stone and metals were not
previously unknown, but they bad not attracted the notice of
scientific experts till recently and the peasants in Asia and Europe,
when they found them in their fields, could hardly make any better
use of them than that of worshipping the implements so found as
thunderbolts or fairy arrows shot down from the sky. But now
after a careful study of these remains, archreologists have come to
the conclusion that these implements, whose human origin is now
undoubtedly established can be classified into those of Stone
( including horn, wood or bone ), those of Bronze and those of
Iron, representing three different stages of civilization in the progress
of man in prehistoric times. Thus the implements of stone, wood
or bone, such as chisels, scrapers, arrow-heads, hatches, daggers,
etc. were used when the use of metal was yet unknown and they
were gradually supplanted first by the implements of bronze and
then of iron, when the ancient man discovered the use of these
metals. It is not to be supposed, however, that these three different
periods of early human civilisation were divided by any hard and
fast line of division. They represent only a rough classification,
the passage from one period into another being slow and gradual.
Thus the implements of stone must have continued to be used for
a long time after the use of bronze became known to the ancient
man, and the same thing must have occurred as he passed from
the Bronze to the Iron age. The age of bronze, which is a compound
of copper and tin in a definite proportion, requires an antecedent
age of copper; but sufficient evidence is not yet found to prove the
separate existence of copper and tin ages, and hence it is considered
probable that the art of making bronze was not invented in Europe
but was introduced there from other countries either by commerce
or by the Indo-European race going there from outside.* Another
fact which requires to be noted in connection with these ages is
that the Stone or the Bronze age in one country was not necessarily
synchronous with the same age in another country. Thus we
find a high state of civilization in Egypt at about 6000 B. C. when
the inhabitants of Europe were in the early stages of the Stone age.
Similarly Greece had advanced to the Iron age, while Italy was still
in the Bronze period and the West of Europe in the age of Stone.

"Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, 18go Ed., pp. 4 and 64.