The Semitic family were then in advance of the Aryan, and in the lead of the human race. They gave the phonetic alphabet to mankind and it seems not unlikely the knowledge of iron as well.
At the epoch of the Homeric poems, the Grecian tribes had made immense material progress. All the common metals were known, including the process of smelting ores, and possibly of changing iron into steel; the principal cereals had been discovered, together with the art of cultivation, and the use of the plow in field agriculture; the dog, the horse, the ass, the cow, the sow, the sheep and the goat had been domesticated and reared in flocks and herds, as has been shown. Architecture had produced a house constructed of durable materials, containing separate apartments,[40] and consisting of more than a single story;[41] ship building, weapons, textile fabrics, the manufacture of wine from the grape, the cultivation of the apple, the pear, the olive and the fig,[42] together with comfortable apparel, and useful implements and utensils, had been produced and brought into human use.[43] But the early history of mankind was lost in the oblivion of the ages that had passed away. Tradition ascended to an anterior barbarism through which it was unable to penetrate. Language had attained such development that poetry of the highest structural form was about to embody the inspirations of genius. The closing period of barbarism brought this portion of the human family to the threshold of civilization, animated by the great attainments of the past, grown hardy and intelligent in the school of experience, and with the undisciplined imagination in the full splendor of its creative powers. Barbarism ends with the production of grand barbarians. Whilst the condition of society in this period was understood by the later Greek and Roman writers, the anterior state, with its distinctive culture and experience, was as deeply concealed from their apprehension as from our own; except as occupying a nearer stand-point in time, they saw more distinctly the relations of the present with the past. It was evident to them that a certain sequence existed in the series of inventions and discoveries, as well as a certain order of development of institutions, through which mankind had advanced themselves from the status of savagery to that of the Homeric age; but the immense interval of time between the two conditions does not appear to have been made a subject even of speculative consideration.