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Gold is for the mistress – silver for the maid – Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade. ‘Good!’ said the Baron, sitting in his hall, ‘But Iron – Cold Iron – is master of them all.’ It is no exaggeration to say that of all the materials in common use none have had a greater influence on our technological development than metals. Their unique combination of ductility and high electrical and thermal conductivity, together with their ready alloying, qualifies them to play a role for which there is no stand-in. Although they were not the first substances to be pressed into service, their use does go back at least 8000 years. The order in which the various metallic elements were discovered was inversely related to the ease with which they form compounds with the non-metals, particularly oxygen. Thus, with the possible exception of meteoric iron, the first metals known to man were probably gold, silver and copper, these being the only three common examples that actually occur as the metallic element. Conversely, there are metals which so tenaciously hold on to oxygen that they were not extracted from their ores until quite recently. One can imagine early man being attracted by the glint of gold nuggets, and he must have been intrigued by their ease of deformation compared with the brittleness of flint and other stones. The major use of gold has been in ornamentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter one of the book "Industrial Biography: Industrial Workers and Tool Makers," is presented. It explores the uses of iron for tools and the Stone, Bronze and Iron ages. It offers information about the South Sea Islanders and the early history of iron in Great Britain. It also provides details about the scarcity of iron in Scotland.

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The fur trade of North America was part of a broader movement of European expansion into the northern forests of Asia and America. Its two branches started with similar timing near the beginning of the seventeenth century and continued until they changed form drastically in the early nineteenth. Both were driven by European economic demand for fur garments, and both were carried out within the institutional forms of a trading-post empire. This chapter will be concerned principally with the North Amerian fur trade, but with the Siberian fur trade in the background to help maintain the perspective of world history. The two branches of the movement were similar in many ways, but different in others. The North American setting: epidemiology and culture The most striking difference was epidemiological, arising from the long separation of the Americas from the disease environments of the Afro- Eurasian landmass. The Americas were originally populated from Asia, but regular contact was then broken for tens of thousands of years before it was reestablished by Columbus and his successors after 1492. In the interval, people in the Americas developed their own food crops, their own domestic animals, and their own patterns of culture. These American cultures lacked some of the technology that was crucial to Old World civilization. They lacked large animals capable of pulling carts; hence they had no need for applications of rotary motion like the wheel. More important, they lacked the patterns of disease that had become generalized through the Afro-Eurasian intercommunicating zone. A few diseases were peculiar to the Americas, but the serious problem was the lack of acquired immunities to the common diseases of Europe, Africa, and Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade and exchange across cultural lines have played a crucial role in human history, being perhaps the most important external stimuli to change, leaving aside the unmeasurable and less-benign influence of military conquest. External stimulation, in turn, has been the most important single source of change and development in art, science, and technology. Perhaps this goes without saying, since no human group could invent by itself more than a small part of its cultural and technical heritage. Take as simple an example as the manufacture of this book. The English language is derived from one of those that came into Western Europe with German immigrants, combined with elements of Latin, originally imposed by imperial conquerors from the south, plus other borrowings. The alphabet came from the Phoenicians. The page numbers are “Arabic,” which actually means that the Europeans learned about them from the Arabs, who had borrowed them in turn from the Indians, who invented positional notation in the first place. A few years ago, a book like this would have been printed with movable type, which would have given it a possible Chinese heritage as well. On the negative side, cross-cultural trade and communication pose special problems. People with a different way of life are strangers by definition; their ways seem unpredictable, and the unpredictable is probably dangerous as well. Communication itself is difficult. Even after an appropriate medium comes into existence, like a second language in common, understanding is hard to come by. Strangers may appear not to be hostile, but they are still not to be trusted in the same full sense that neighbors and kinfolk can be trusted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A glossary of scientific terms related to ancient Tibet, China including dating methods, stone age and king's dynasty is presented.

Chapter 19 of the book "The Antiquity of Man," by Charles Lyell is presented. It cites the local changes in vegetation and in the wild and domesticated animals and in physical geography contemporary with the bronze age and the later stone age. It discusses the slow rate of progress in barbarous ages.

Chapter 2 of the book "The Antiquity of Man," by Charles Lyell is presented. It cites the works of art in Danish Peat-Mosses and the remains of three periods of vegetation in the Peat. It highlights the embedded remains of Mammalia of recent species and the chronological computations of the date of the bronze and stone periods in Switzerland.

Focuses on the history of Somalia from ancient times to the nineteenth century. Remains of Stone Age in the country; Discovery of the Mogadishu by Persian and Muslim Arab leaders; Invasion of the country by Portuguese in the 1500s; Civil war between Somali leaders in the early nineteenth century.

Focuses on the occupations of the earliest inhabitants of Africa. Factor which led to the improvement of stone-making technology in the country about 250, 000 years ago; Emergence of distinct cultures and identities in the country in 20, 000 B.C.E; Factors which led to the adoption of pastoralism or agriculture by the early African people.

Information on the television sitcom "It's About Time" is presented. It was about a pair of astronauts depicted by Frank Aletter and Jack Mullaney, who accidentally zoom through a time barrier and crash- land in earth's Stone Age. During the show's mid-season, the astronauts repair their damaged space capsule and return to modern-day Los Angeles with the Stone Ayers in tow.