Part 1 (2/2)

When one of these tumuli still intact is opened, one always sees a skeleton, often several, either sitting or reclining; these monuments, therefore, were used as tombs. Arms, vases, and ornaments are placed at the side of the dead. In the oldest of these tombs the weapons are axes of polished stone; the ornaments are sh.e.l.ls, pearls, necklaces of bone or ivory; the vases are very simple, without handle or neck, decorated only with lines or with points. Calcined bones of animals lie about on the ground, the relics of a funeral repast laid in the tomb by the friends of the dead. Amidst these bones we no longer find those of the reindeer, a fact which proves that these monuments were constructed after the disappearance of this animal from western Europe, and therefore at a time subsequent to that of the lake villages.

THE AGE OF BRONZE

=Bronze Age.=--As soon as men learned to smelt metals, they preferred these to stone in the manufacture of weapons. The metal first to be used was copper, easier to extract because found free, and easier to manipulate since it is malleable without the application of heat. Pure copper, however, was not employed, as weapons made of it were too fragile; but a little tin was mixed with it to give it more resistance. It is this alloy of copper and tin that we call bronze.

=Bronze Utensils.=--Bronze was used in the manufacture of ordinary tools--knives, hammers, saws, needles, fish-hooks; in the fabrication of ornaments--bracelets, brooches, ear-rings; and especially in the making of arms--daggers, lance-points, axes, and swords. These objects are found by thousands throughout Europe in the mounds, under the more recent dolmens, in the turf-pits of Denmark, and in rock-tombs. Near these objects of bronze, ornaments of gold are often seen and, now and then, the remains of a woollen garment. It cannot be due to chance that all implements of bronze are similar and all are made according to the same alloy. Doubtless they revert to the same period of time and are anterior to the coming of the Romans into Gaul, for they are never discovered in the midst of debris of the Roman period. But what men used them? What people invented bronze? n.o.body knows.

THE IRON AGE

=Iron.=--As iron was harder to smelt and work than bronze, it was later that men learned how to use it. As soon as it was appreciated that iron was harder and cut better than bronze, men preferred it in the manufacture of arms. In Homer's time iron is still a precious metal reserved for swords, bronze being retained for other purposes.

It is for this reason that many tombs contain confused remains of utensils of bronze and weapons of iron.

=Iron Weapons.=--These arms are axes, swords, daggers, and bucklers.

They are ordinarily found by the side of a skeleton in a coffin of stone or wood, for warriors had their arms buried with them. But they are found also scattered on ancient battle-fields or lost at the bottom of a marsh which later became a turf-pit. There were found in a turf-pit in Schleswig in one day 100 swords, 500 lances, 30 axes, 460 daggers, 80 knives, 40 stilettos--and all of iron. Not far from there in the bed of an ancient lake was discovered a great boat 66 feet long, fully equipped with axes, swords, lances, and knives.

It is impossible to enumerate the iron implements thus found. They have not been so well preserved as the bronze, as iron is rapidly eaten away by rust. At the first glance, therefore, they appear the older, but in reality are more recent.

=Epoch of the Iron Age.=--The inhabitants of northern Europe knew iron before the coming of the Romans, the first century before Christ. In an old cemetery near the salt mines of Hallstadt in Austria they have opened 980 tombs filled with instruments of iron and bronze without finding a single piece of Roman money. But the Iron Age continued under the Romans. Almost always iron objects are found accompanied by ornaments of gold and silver, by Roman pottery, funeral urns, inscriptions, and Roman coins bearing the effigy of the emperor. The warriors whom we find lying near their sword and their buckler lived for the most part in a period quite close to ours, many under the Merovingians, some even at the time of Charlemagne. The Iron Age is no longer a prehistoric age.

CONCLUSIONS

=How the Four Ages are to be Conceived.=--The inhabitants of one and the same country have successively made use of rough stone, polished stone, bronze, and iron. But all countries have not lived in the same age at the same time. Iron was employed by the Egyptians while yet the Greeks were in their bronze age and the barbarians of Denmark were using stone. The conclusion of the polished stone age in America came only with the arrival of Europeans. In our own time the savages of Australia are still in the rough stone age. In their settlements may be found only implements of bone and stone similar to those used by the cave-men. The four ages, therefore, do not mark periods in the life of humanity, but only epochs in the civilization of each country.

=Uncertainties.=--Prehistoric archaeology is yet a very young science.

We have learned something of primitive men through certain remains preserved and discovered by chance. A recent accident, a trench, a landslip, a drought may effect a new discovery any day. Who knows what is still under ground? The finds are already innumerable. But these rarely tell us what we wish to know. How long was each of the four ages? When did each begin and end in the various parts of the world?

Who planned the caverns, the lake villages, the mounds, the dolmens?

When a country pa.s.ses from polished stone to bronze, is it the same people changing implements, or is it a new people come on the scene?

When one thinks one has found the solution, a new discovery often confounds the archaeologists. It was thought that the Celts originated the dolmens, but these have been found in sections which could never have been traversed by Celts.

=What has been determined.=--Three conclusions, however, seem certain:

1.--Man has lived long on the earth, familiar as he was with the mammoth and the cave-bear; he lived at least as early as the geological period known as the Quaternary.

2.--Man has emerged from the savage state to civilized life; he has gradually perfected his tools and his ornaments from the awkward axe of flint and the necklace of bears' teeth to iron swords and jewels of gold. The roughest instruments are the oldest.

3.--Man has made more and more rapid progress. Each age has been shorter than its predecessor.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It originated especially with French, Swiss, and scholars.

[2] According to Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, N.Y., 1890, p. 212) the reindeer was not known to the Second Stone Age.--ED.

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