The discovery of the properties of iron, and the making of iron tools, must have been among the earliest of important discoveries and inventions. We can scarcely conceive the possibility of making much of anything else, without the use of iron tools. Indeed, an iron hammer must have been very much needed to make the first iron hammer with. A stone probably served as a substitute. How could the “gopher wood” for the Ark have been gotten out without an axe? It seems to me an axe, or a miracle, was indispensable. Corresponding with the prime necessity for iron, we find at least one very early notice of it. Tubal-Cain was “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron” (Genesis iv: 22). Tubal-Cain was the seventh in descent from Adam; and his birth was about one thousand years before the flood. After the flood, frequent mention is made of iron, and instruments made of iron. Thus “instrument of iron” at Numbers xxxv: 16; “bedstead of iron” at Deuteronomy iii: 11; “the iron furnace” at Deuteronomy iv: 20, and “iron tool” at Deuteronomy xxvii: 5. At Deuteronomy xix: 5, very distinct mention of “the ax to cut down the tree” is made; and also at Deuteronomy viii: 9, the promised land is described as “a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.” From the somewhat frequent mention of brass in connection with iron, it is not improbable that brass – perhaps what we now call copper – was used by the ancients for some of the same purposes as iron.
Transportation– the removal of person and goods from place to place – would be an early object, if not a necessity, with man. By his natural powers of locomotion, and without much assistance from discovery and invention, he could move himself about with considerable facility; and even, could carry small burthens with him. But very soon he would wish to lessen the labor, while he might, at the same time, extend, and expedite the business. For this object, wheel-carriages, and water-crafts – wagons and boats – are the most important inventions. The use of the wheel and axle has been so long known, that it is difficult, without reflection, to estimate it at its true value. The oldest recorded allusion to the wheel and axle is the mention of a “chariot” (Genesis xli: 43). This was in Egypt, upon the occasion of Joseph being made governor by Pharaoh. It was about twenty-five hundred years after the creation of Adam. That the chariot then mentioned was a wheel-carriage drawn by animals is sufficiently evidenced by the mention of chariot wheels (Exodus xiv: 25), and the mention of chariots in connection with horses in the same chapter, verses 9 and 23. So much, at present, for land transportation.
Now, as to transportation by water, I have concluded, without sufficient authority perhaps, to use the term “boat” as a general name for all water-craft. The boat is indispensable to navigation. It is not probable that the philosophical principle upon which the use of the boat primarily depends – to-wit, the principle, that anything will float, which cannot sink without displacing more than its own weight of water – was known, or even thought of, before the first boats were made. The sight of a crow standing on a piece of driftwood floating down the swollen current of a creek or river, might well enough suggest the specific idea to a savage, that he could himself get upon a log, or on two logs tied together, and somehow work his way to the opposite shore of the same stream. Such a suggestion, so taken, would be the birth of navigation; and such, not improbably, it really was. The leading idea was thus caught; and whatever came afterwards, were but improvements upon, and auxiliaries to, it.