metalworking

80:7.2About 12,000 B.C. a bril­liant tribe of And­ites mi­grated to Crete. This was the only is­land set­tled so early by such a su­pe­rior group, and it was al­most two thou­sand years be­fore the de­scen­dants of these mariners spread to the neigh­bor­ing isles. This group were the nar­row-headed, smaller-statured And­ites who had in­ter­mar­ried with the Van­ite di­vi­sion of the north­ern Nod­ites. They were all un­der six feet in height and had been lit­er­ally driven off the main­land by their larger and in­fe­rior fel­lows. These em­i­grants to Crete were highly skilled in tex­tiles, met­als, pot­tery, plumb­ing, and the use of stone for build­ing ma­te­rial. They en­gaged in writ­ing and car­ried on as herders and agri­cul­tur­ists.

79:1.4When cli­matic con­di­tions made hunt­ing un­prof­itable for the mi­grat­ing And­ites, they did not fol­low the evo­lu­tion­ary course of the older races by be­com­ing herders. Com­merce and ur­ban life made their ap­pear­ance. From Egypt through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan to the rivers of China and In­dia, the more highly civ­i­lized tribes be­gan to as­sem­ble in cities de­voted to man­u­fac­ture and trade. Ado­nia be­came the cen­tral Asian com­mer­cial metropo­lis, be­ing lo­cated near the pres­ent city of Ashkhabad. Com­merce in stone, metal, wood, and pot­tery was ac­cel­er­ated on both land and wa­ter.

69:4.6Mod­ern writ­ing orig­i­nated in the early trade rec­ords; the first lit­er­a­ture of man was a trade-pro­mo­tion doc­u­ment, a salt ad­ver­tise­ment. Many of the ear­lier wars were fought over nat­u­ral de­posits, such as flint, salt, and met­als. The first for­mal tribal treaty con­cerned the in­ter­trib­al­iz­ing of a salt de­posit. These treaty spots af­forded op­por­tu­nity for friendly and peace­ful in­ter­change of ideas and the in­ter­min­gling of var­i­ous tribes.

80:6.3When the last ex­o­dus from the Eu­phrates val­ley oc­curred, Egypt was for­tu­nate in gain­ing so many of the most skill­ful artists and ar­ti­sans. These And­ite ar­ti­sans found them­selves quite at home in that they were thor­oughly fa­mil­iar with river life, its floods, ir­ri­ga­tions, and dry sea­sons. They en­joyed the shel­tered po­si­tion of the Nile val­ley; they were there much less sub­ject to hos­tile raids and at­tacks than along the Eu­phrates. And they added greatly to the met­al­work­ing skill of the Egyp­tians. Here they worked iron ores com­ing from Mount Sinai in­stead of from the Black Sea re­gions.

76:3.8The Adamites greatly ex­celled the sur­round­ing peo­ples in cul­tural achieve­ment and in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment. They pro­duced the third al­pha­bet and oth­er­wise laid the foun­da­tions for much that was the fore­run­ner of mod­ern art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Here in the lands be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates they main­tained the arts of writ­ing, met­al­work­ing, pot­tery mak­ing, and weav­ing and pro­duced a type of ar­chi­tec­ture that was not ex­celled in thou­sands of years.

79:7.5The Chi­nese peo­ple did not be­gin to build cities and en­gage in man­u­fac­ture un­til af­ter 10,000 B.C., sub­se­quent to the cli­matic changes in Tur­kes­tan and the ar­rival of the later And­ite im­mi­grants. The in­fu­sion of this new blood did not add so much to the civ­i­liza­tion of the yel­low man as it stim­u­lated the fur­ther and rapid de­vel­op­ment of the la­tent ten­den­cies of the su­pe­rior Chi­nese stocks. From Ho­nan to Shensi the po­ten­tials of an ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion were com­ing to fruit. Met­al­work­ing and all the arts of man­u­fac­ture date from these days.

81:3.4The wide­spread use of met­als was a fea­ture of this era of the early in­dus­trial and trad­ing cities. You have al­ready found a bronze cul­ture in Tur­kes­tan dat­ing be­fore 9000 B.C., and the And­ites early learned to work in iron, gold, and cop­per, as well. But con­di­tions were very dif­fer­ent away from the more ad­vanced cen­ters of civ­i­liza­tion. There were no dis­tinct pe­ri­ods, such as the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages; all three ex­isted at the same time in dif­fer­ent lo­cal­i­ties.

128:2.3Je­sus con­tin­ued this year at house fin­ish­ing and cab­i­net­work but spent most of his time at the car­a­van re­pair shop. James was be­gin­ning to al­ter­nate with him in at­ten­dance at the shop. The lat­ter part of this year, when car­pen­ter work was slack about Naz­a­reth, Je­sus left James in charge of the re­pair shop and Joseph at the home bench while he went over to Sep­pho­ris to work with a smith. He worked six months with met­als and ac­quired con­sid­er­able skill at the anvil.

66:5.25These prim­i­tive men would not con­sent to ex­per­i­ment with steam power, not­with­stand­ing the re­peated urg­ings of their teach­ers; never could they over­come their great fear of the ex­plo­sive power of con­fined steam. They were, how­ever, fi­nally per­suaded to work with met­als and fire, al­though a piece of red-hot metal was a ter­ror­iz­ing ob­ject to early man.

77:4.7And all this ex­plains how the Sume­ri­ans ap­peared so sud­denly and mys­te­ri­ously on the stage of ac­tion in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. In­ves­ti­ga­tors will never be able to trace out and fol­low these tribes back to the be­gin­ning of the Sume­ri­ans, who had their ori­gin two hun­dred thou­sand years ago af­ter the sub­mer­gence of Dala­ma­tia. With­out a trace of ori­gin else­where in the world, these an­cient tribes sud­denly loom upon the hori­zon of civ­i­liza­tion with a full-grown and su­pe­rior cul­ture, em­brac­ing tem­ples, met­al­work, agri­cul­ture, an­i­mals, pot­tery, weav­ing, com­mer­cial law, civil codes, re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial, and an old sys­tem of writ­ing. At the be­gin­ning of the his­tor­i­cal era they had long since lost the al­pha­bet of Dala­ma­tia, hav­ing adopted the pe­cu­liar writ­ing sys­tem orig­i­nat­ing in Dil­mun. The Sume­rian lan­guage, though vir­tu­ally lost to the world, was not Semitic; it had much in com­mon with the so-called Aryan tongues.

80:1.2In the east­ern trough of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean the Nod­ites had es­tab­lished one of their most ex­ten­sive cul­tures and from these cen­ters had pen­e­trated some­what into south­ern Eu­rope but more es­pe­cially into north­ern Africa. The broad-headed Nod­ite-An­don­ite Syr­i­ans very early in­tro­duced pot­tery and agri­cul­ture in con­nec­tion with their set­tle­ments on the slowly ris­ing Nile delta. They also im­ported sheep, goats, cat­tle, and other do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals and brought in greatly im­proved meth­ods of met­al­work­ing, Syria then be­ing the cen­ter of that in­dus­try.