Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s31.2

c4.s31.2

²⁷ This conception may be compared with those of the Greeks preserved by HESIOD. He had envisaged five stages: (1) The Age of Gold and Immortals; (2) The Age of Silver, when man was less noble by far; (3) The Age of Bronze, when not only everything was of bronze, but when man was delighted in war; (4) The Age of Epic Heroes and (5) The Age of Iron and Dread Sorrow. Later the Roman author Lucretius had also put forward a semi-philosophical, semi-materialistic scheme, according to which man first used his nails, teeth, bones, wood and fire, then copper and still later iron. DANIEL, A Hundred Years of Archaeology, pp. 16-7.