History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c13.9

v1.c13.9

belongs. Sorensen (1986) has pointed out that even the acceptance of any innovation may be delayed due to the socio-cultural set-up of the society, and hence its commercial utilization may be delayed. Saunders (1977) and McDonell (1984) have discussed the life cycle of the discovery of any metal and its objects. This cyclic discovery and discarding of metallic objects is shown in Fig. 1 with the introduction of one more step viz. ‘Preservation’. Here it is assumed that at the time of discovery of the metals they must have been a very scarce and costly commodity and hence there is high probability that the earlier metallic tools, hunting implements and other objects must have been preserved for centuries before they were destroyed or lost, and they could not have been thrown away like Stone Age tools. Fig. 2 shows the ‘time-gap’ between the discovery and utilisation of a number of inventions in Europe as plotted by Saunders (1977).