It may be premised that no stone or wooden weapon can rightly rank as a sword, for such can at best be but a flattened club, and not until the advent of metal could such a weapon as the sword be made. Moreover, in early days metal was too scarce and the workers were insufficiently skilled to make so large a casting. It has been assumed that because arms took a higher rank than tools or domestic implements, therefore the first use to which metal was put was the manufacture of arms, but such a deduction is erroneous, at least as far as Great Britain is concerned.