uainted are profoundly interesting, as casting a flood
of light upon the general process of human evolution all the world
over. Every new human invention is always at first directly modelled
upon the other similar products which have preceded it. There is no
really new thing under the sun. For example, the earliest English
railway carriages were built on the model of the old stage-coach, only
that three stage-coaches, as it were, were telescoped together, side by
side--the very first bore the significant motto, _Tria juncta in
uno_--and it was this preconception of the English coachbuilder that
has hampered us ever since with our hateful 'compartments,' instead of
the commodious and comfortable open American saloon carriages. So, too,
the earliest firearms were modelled on the stock of the old cross-bow,
and the earliest earthenware pots and pans were shaped like the still
more primitive gourds and calabashes. It need not surprise us,
therefore, to find that the earliest metal axes of which we have any
knowledge were directly moulded on the original shape of the stone
tomahawk.

Such a copper hatchet, cast in a mould formed by a polished neolithic
stone celt, was found in an early Etruscan tomb, and is still preserved
in the Museum at Berlin. See how natural this process would be. For, in
the first place, the primitive workman, knowing already only one form
of axe, the stone tomahawk, would naturally reproduce it in the new
material, without thinking what improvements in shape and design the
malleability and fusibility of the metal would render possible or easy.
But, more than that, the idea of coating the polished stone axe with
plastic clay, and thereby making a mould for the molten metal, would be
so very simple that even the neolithic savage, already accustomed to
the manufacture of coarse pottery upon natural shapes, could hardly
fail to think of it. As a matter of fact, he did think of it: for celts
of bronze or copper, cast in moulds made from stone hatchets, have been
found in Cyprus by General di Cesnola, on the site of Troy by Dr.
Schliemann, and in many other assorted localities by less distinguished
but equally trustworthy archaeologists.

To the neolithic hunter, herdsman, and villager this progress from the
stone to the metal axe probably seemed at first a mere substitution of
an easier for a more difficult material. He little knew whither his
discovery tended. It was pure human laziness that urged the ch