![]() ![]() Thus at the beginning of the Christian Era we find that both the Romans and the Britons had long understood the working of iron. Julius Caesar mentions, that when he invaded Britain, 55 B.C., The currency of the people consisted partly of iron rings adjusted to a certain weight. Actual specimens of the very earliest anvils are so rare that their size and shape is more or less a matter of conjecture. ![]() The use of iron and the anvil being synonymous is the only reason fro the writer having gone so far into the early history of iron and having said so little of the early history of anvils. It is clamed that the chain is welded and beautifully made. There is a still preserved the iron chain and its hook that were used to raise water from a well. At the Saalburg near Homburg, Germany, which was build and inhabited as a Roman fortress between 11 B.C. ![]() Quoting Pliney the elder, in recounting the treaty which Porsena granted to the Roman people on the expulsion of the kings, 509 B.C., there as a specific provision that iron was not to be sued except in the pursuits of agriculture, and the most ancient authorities have preserved the fact that it was at that time that writing with at bone style came into practice.īesides the literary evidence of iron having been used at an early date by the Romans, we are not without actual samples. The fact of iron having been applied to such ordinary tools as hammer head, for which bronze might have been a fairly good substitute, would clearly indicate that by that time, for tools at least, iron had superseded bronze.Ī few centuries later, Thucydides describes a chain of iron made use of by the Plateans, during the siege of their city by the Thebeans, 429 B.C., which was used to suspend beams which were dropped so as to break off the heads of battering rams brought up against their city/ Amongst these, worthy of particular attention may be mention tools for the most ordinary purposes - as picks, hammers, knives, and saws, which could be of a date not possibly later than 880 B.C. Percy, in referring to the finds from the mound of Nimrud, says the Assyrians were well acquainted with iron, as is clearly established by the explorations of Lyrad, who has enriched the collection of the British Museum with many objects of iron of the highest interest from Nineveh. At that time it must have been considered of less value than bronze, from the fact that objects dug up from the mounds of Nineveh, of about the time of Homer many were composed of cores of iron around which bronze had been cast.ĭr. It would seem however, that for a period of about 3000 years its existence remained more or less in obscurity, as it was not until the time of Homer, 880 B.C., that noticeable attention was given to iron. Not definite date can be assigned to the first knowledge of iron, but the earliest hieroglyphics to which and accurate date can be fixed, the pyramid texts of the fourth millennium B.C., prove beyond question that iron was well known in Egypt and was forged into instruments, weapons, and tools. Research has failed to bring to light any anvils of copper or bronze, but there seems to be little doubt about their having been used. It is therefore safe to assume that the first metal anvils were of copper or bronze, probably alloyed with other metals and hardened. Having ample proof that the ancients were familiar not only with the art of casting copper and bronze but of forging them into tools and weapons, which they hardened. To follow the history of the anvil it is necessary to go back to the time when copper and bronze were the metals in common use. The anvil, a large irregular block of o yellow flint, one side of which had been chipped and worn to a comparatively level surface, was found amidst a heap of flint chips, arrow and spearheads, some of which were neatly chipped and finished, while others seemed to be only blocked out. The writer had the pleasure of seeing one of these prehistoric anvils which was discovered many years ago in the north of Scotland while some excavations were being made. That it was used at a very early date is manifest, for even before the discovery of iron, pre-historic man used an anvil of stone upon which he chipped and shaped his spear and arrow heads of flint. The history of the anvil takes us back to antiquity, where is origin is lost. While everyone is familiar with the anvil of today in its high state of development and graceful lines, it is doubtful i very many, even blacksmiths of the present age, would recognize the rough crude uncouth lumps of metal of primeval and medieval times as the common ancestor of our present-day anvil. Essential Craftsman.Ī reprint from “The American Blacksmith” September 1914 ![]()
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