Industrial Biography | Page 8

of the
latter from under the very streets of modern Glasgow.* [footnote...
"Mr.John Buchanan, a zealous antiquary, writing in 1855, informs us
that in the course of the eight years preceding that date, no less than
seventeen canoes had been dug out of this estuarine silt [of the valley of
the Clyde], and that he had personally inspected a large number of them
before they were exhumed. Five of them lay buried in silt under the
streets of Glasgow, one in a vertical position with the prow uppermost,
as if it had sunk in a storm.... Almost every one of these ancient boats
was formed out of a single oak-stem, hollowed out by blunt tools,
probably stone axes, aided by the action of fire; a few were cut
beautifully smooth, evidently with metallic tools. Hence a gradation
could be traced from a pattern of extreme rudeness to one showing
great mechanical ingenuity.... In one of the canoes a beautifully
polished celt or axe of greenstone was found; in the bottom of another a
plug of cork, which, as Mr. Geikie remarks, 'could only have come
from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or Italy.'"-- Sir C. LYELL,
Antiquity of Man, 48-9. ...] Their smaller boats, or coracles, were made
of osiers interwoven, covered with hides, and rigged with leathern sails
and thong tackle.
It will readily be imagined that anything like civilization, as at present
understood, must have been next to impossible under such
circumstances. "Miserable indeed," says Carlyle, "was the condition of
the aboriginal savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair,
which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round them
like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell.
He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild fruits; or, as
the ancient Caledonians, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his
bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball
of heavy flint, to which, that his sole possession and defence might not
be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby
recovering as well as hurling it with deadly, unerring skill."
The injunction given to man to "replenish the earth and subdue it"
could not possibly be fulfilled with implements of stone. To fell a tree

with a flint hatchet would occupy the labour of a month, and to clear a
small patch of ground for purposes of culture would require the
combined efforts of a tribe. For the same reason, dwellings could not be
erected; and without dwellings domestic tranquillity, security, culture,
and refinement, especially in a rude climate, were all but impossible.
Mr. Emerson well observes, that "the effect of a house is immense on
human tranquillity, power, and refinement. A man in a cave or a
camp--a nomad--dies with no more estate than the wolf or the horse
leaves. But so simple a labour as a house being achieved, his chief
enemies are kept at bay. He is safe from the teeth of wild animals, from
frost, sunstroke, and weather; and fine faculties begin to yield their fine
harvest. Inventions and arts are born, manners, and social beauty and
delight." But to build a house which should serve for shelter, for safety,
and for comfort--in a word, as a home for the family, which is the
nucleus of society--better tools than those of stone were absolutely
indispensable.
Hence most of the early European tribes were nomadic: first hunters,
wandering about from place to place like the American Indians, after
the game; then shepherds, following the herds of animals which they
had learnt to tame, from one grazing-ground to another, living upon
their milk and flesh, and clothing themselves in their skins held
together by leathern thongs. It was only when implements of metal had
been invented that it was possible to practise the art of agriculture with
any considerable success. Then tribes would cease from their
wanderings, and begin to form settlements, homesteads, villages, and
towns. An old Scandinavian legend thus curiously illustrates this last
period: -- There was a giantess whose daughter one day saw a
husbandman ploughing in the field. She ran and picked him up with her
finger and thumb, put him and his plough and oxen into her apron, and
carried them to her mother, saying, "Mother, what sort of beetle is this
that I have found wriggling in the sand? " But the mother said, "Put it
away, my child; we must begone out of this land, for these people will
dwell in it."
M. Worsaae of Copenhagen, who has been followed by other
antiquaries, has even gone so far as to divide the natural history of
civilization into three epochs, according to the character of the tools
used in each.