Lucretius uses this as a proof of the existence of atoms.
11 Facts About Lucretius
2.
Lucretius probably was a member of the aristocratic gens Lucretia, and his work shows an intimate knowledge of the luxurious lifestyle in Rome.
3.
Lucretius was the first writer known to introduce Roman readers to Epicurean philosophy.
4.
Lucretius specifies the earliest weapons as hands, nails, and teeth.
5.
Lucretius had earlier envisaged a pre-technological, pre-literary kind of human whose life was lived "in the fashion of wild beasts roaming at large".
6.
Lucretius believed that smelting of metal, and perhaps too, the firing of pottery, was discovered by accident: for example, the result of a forest fire.
7.
Lucretius does specify that the use of copper followed the use of stones and branches and preceded the use of iron.
8.
Lucretius seems to equate copper with bronze, an alloy of copper and tin that has much greater resilience than copper; both copper and bronze were superseded by iron during his millennium.
9.
Lucretius is believed to be the first to put forward a theory of the successive uses of first wood and stone, then copper and bronze, and finally iron.
10.
An early thinker in what grew to become the study of evolution, Lucretius believed nature experiments endlessly across the aeons, and the organisms that adapt best to their environment have the best chance of surviving.
11.
Lucretius challenged the assumption that humans are necessarily superior to animals, noting that mammalian mothers in the wild recognize and nurture their offspring as do human mothers.