The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

From the pastoral life, the barbarian, hampered by his flocks and herds, and no longer obliged to wander in search of food, settles down to a more stationary life, and by degrees takes to agriculture. Then, for the first time, he digs into the soil, and becomes acquainted with its mineral treasures. It has been proved by the discovery of quantities of carbonized grains of wheat, lumped together, in the Swiss lake-habitations of the stone age, together with the materials for preparing it for food, that a knowledge of agriculture preceded the general employment of bronze in that region,[190] whilst in Britain, and in Denmark also, bronze is almost invariably associated with evidence of domestication and agriculture.

The metals first employed would be those that are most attractive. Copper, in Europe, from the bright colour of its ores, would be noticed more readily than iron, which is often scarcely distinguishable from the soil, and requires greater temperature and more skilled labour to render it available than could be expected of a people emerging out of the savage state. It is not, therefore, surprising that in Europe, copper first, and subsequently its alloy, bronze, should have been employed before iron as a material for weapons. But in those countries where iron is found upon the surface in an attractive form, and in a condition to be easily wrought, we must for the same reason suppose that it would be used instead of copper in the earliest ages of metallurgy.

Plate XVIII.

DEVELOPMENT OF FORM IN CELTS OF COPPER, BRONZE AND IRON.

It is natural to suppose that, in the ordinary course of development, an age of pure copper must have intervened between the ages of stone and bronze. But implements of pure copper are comparatively rare, bronze being the metal almost invariably found following immediately upon the age of stone.[191] Notwithstanding the comparative rarity of copper tools, however, there is reason to believe that this metal was used in a pure state before the discovery of the alloy. According to Professor Max Müller, copper was the metal spoken of by Hesiod and Homer as the material generally employed for weapons in their time.[192] Mr. Rawlinson, in his Five Ancient Monarchies, says that the metallurgy of the early Chaldeans was of a very rude character, indicating a nation but just emerging from an almost barbaric simplicity, and that copper often occurs pure.[193] Copper implements, of a very early form, beaten into shape, occur not unfrequently in Ireland, as may be seen by specimens represented in Class A, Plate XVIII. They have also been found in Mecklenburg and in Denmark, and Klemm[194] says that they occur in Greece, Italy, Spain, Egypt, and Hindustan. At Maurach, in Switzerland, a copper celt was found in a lake dwelling, which Dr. Keller, notwithstanding this circumstance, attributes to the stone age.[195] In the lake dwelling of Peschiera, on the lake of Garda, several copper implements were discovered,[196] and in certain localities in Hungary copper implements are said to be as plentiful as those of bronze.[197] An axe of pure copper was discovered in Ratho Bog, near Edinburgh, under 20 feet of stratified sand and clay, and Dr. Wilson mentions that others have been found in Scotland.[198] Copper implements occur in Peru, to prove that, in the central parts of America also, the manufacture of bronze was preceded by the use of copper in a pure state; and in the ancient mines of Lake Superior we have distinct evidence of a stage of early metallurgy in which copper was used simply as a malleable stone, and beaten out into the form of implements without the aid of any alloy or a knowledge of the process of casting.[199] (See Plate XIX, figures 3, 4, 5, and 6.) When it is considered that without the admixture of a small portion of alloy of zinc or tin, copper is very difficult to melt, and can only be used by a laborious process of beating into form, and also what a great superiority bronze has over copper as a cutting material, whilst at the same time the process of fabrication is actually in some degree facilitated by the addition of tin, it is not surprising that on the first discovery of the advantages of this mixture, all the old implements of copper, wherever procurable, should have been taken to the melting-pot for conversion into bronze, and we should thus be left with such scanty evidence of the existence of an age of copper.

Up to this point we meet with no difficulty in supposing that the use of metal may have been at first adopted by many nations independently, without intercourse one with another. But when we find in both hemispheres of the globe a very wide diffusion of weapons of bronze, consisting of a mixture of the same metals, which, though varying slightly in its proportions, as we shall afterwards see, is nevertheless, for the most part, constant in its adherence to a standard of about nine parts copper to one of tin in all parts of the world, the question arises whether the knowledge of this mixed metal could have been arrived at independently in different countries, or whether it must have been diffused all over the universe from a common source. It is true that copper and tin materials are sometimes found in the same locality, as, for instance, in Cornwall, the locality which, from the remotest time up to the present, has afforded the most plentiful supply of both metals perhaps in the world. We have evidence, also, that in ancient copper mines fire was employed by the miners for softening the metal and detaching it from the matrix,[200] and it is, therefore, highly probable that the admixture of the two metals occurring so close together, and a knowledge of the advantages accruing therefrom, may have been brought about accidentally in the process of mining.[201] But this connexion of the metals in a state of nature is not common, and in those countries, such as Denmark and Scandinavia, where bronze implements occur, and in which neither metal is found native, it is most improbable that the inhabitants should have discovered the merits of these particular ingredients, unless they had derived the knowledge of them from without.

Hence we find archaeologists as much divided in their opinions upon what I may call the monogenesis or polygenesis of bronze, as biologists and anatomists are upon the monogenesis or polygenesis of the human race. The same question repeats itself again and again in dealing with the vestiges of the early history of man, and we may therefore divide the consideration of this question of the origin of bronze under pretty nearly the same heads to which I have adverted when speaking of the distribution of races, and of the age of stone (pp. 147-54). The questions to be considered may be numbered as follows:—(1) that bronze was spread from a common centre by an intruding and conquering race, or by the migration of tribes; (2) that the inhabitants of each separate region in which bronze is known to have been used discovered the art independently, and made their implements of it; (3) that the art was discovered, and the implements fabricated, on one spot, and the implements disseminated from that place by means of commerce; (4) that the art of making bronze was diffused from a common centre, but that the implements were constructed in the countries in which they are found.

Amongst the advocates for the first hypothesis, viz. introduction by the intrusion of fresh races, are to be found chiefly the Scandinavian archaeologists, amongst whom may be especially mentioned Professors Worsaae, of Copenhagen[202], and Nilsson, of Stockholm. Both metals are foreign to the soil of Denmark, and must, therefore, have been imported. In the graves, bronze weapons are in Denmark invariably found with burials by cremation, while those of the stone age are by inhumation, the former being recognized, in an early stage of civilization, as a later process than burial by inhumation. Bronze is here markedly associated with traces of agriculture, the evidence of which is wanting in the stone age. The age of bronze, it is asserted by these antiquaries, was ushered in in Denmark by the employment of implements showing the highest perfection of art, and at a later period, when they are associated with weapons of iron, they are inferior in the quality of their workmanship. The weapons of bronze have remarkably small handles, denoting a smaller race, and hypothetically an eastern origin, small handles being to this day the characteristic of weapons from India. Some of the bronze spear-heads in Denmark have been found with nails driven into them, a practice which still exists in India, each nail denoting a victim; and in the Asiatic islands the custom of boring a hole in the weapon for each victim is found to the present time.[203] The peculiar ornamentation so often found on the bronze swords of Denmark, known as the spiral ornament, is said, though I think erroneously, to be of Phoenician origin. To these and other arguments for the introduction by intruding races, Professor Nilsson adds, that in the countries of the north, where bronze implements are found in greatest abundance, the graves in which they occur are usually situated in groups, proving that bronze was introduced, not by isolated individuals, merchants, or travellers, but by tribes or colonies more or less numerous, occupying especial tracts of country.