Lucretius (99 or 98-55 B.C.), the poet, teacher, and reformer, boldly declared that there was no Golden Age from which man has degenerated, but that his progress has continually been slowly upward from a condition of pure savagery:— Arms of old were hands nails and teeth and stones and boughs broken off from the forests, and flame and fire, as soon as they had become known. Afterwards the force of iron and copper was discovered; and the use of copper was known before that of iron, as its nature is easier to work and it is found in greater quantity. With copper they would labour the soil of the earth, with copper stir up the billows of war.... Then by slow steps the sword of iron gained ground and the make of the copper sickle became a byword; and with iron they began to plough through the earth’s soil, and the struggles of wavering war were rendered equal.[81] Footnote 81: Lucretius, _On the Nature of Things_. Translated by H. A. J. Munro. Bohn’s edition, 1908, p. 214. It is evident from his poems that Lucretius was a keen observer and a philosopher, who summed up existing Epicurean knowledge; and we are justified in believing that these particular generalisations were based upon tales told by travellers in distant lands, and upon traditional lore, which, with the exception of the recently acquired archæological evidence, is practically all upon which we have to rely. The philosophic poet apprehended the significance of various facts, and welded them into a consistent theory of the development of culture, and thereby earned the honour of being the first evolutionary anthropologist. [Sidenote: =Strabo.=] Nor should we overlook the versatile Strabo (_circa_ 63 B.C.-21 A.D.), who was interested in many things, from climate to botany, and from sport to Druidism and Brahmanism. Alexander von Humboldt considered that he surpassed all other geographical labourers of antiquity by the diversity of the subject and the grandeur of the composition. His _Geography_ contains much information on the early history and traditions of numerous peoples, their character, dress, dwellings, and mode of life.