The author maintains that the division of history and prehistory into such divisions as the stone, bronze, and iron ages, with subdivisions, is at best an over-simplification, and at worst is quite erroneous. For different materials were in use in different places at the same time; and even at the same place different materials were in contemporaneous use for different purposes. Also, the facts that iron rusts away, while bronze and stone do not, and that the ancients, not being as wasteful as we, did not leave so much scrap about, mean that archaeological samples may give a distorted picture of the kinds of metal and other materials in use. The re-interpretation of history, proposed here, fits very well into the Scriptural chronology. In the course of the investigation, many curious facts are discovered about the ancient use of metals.