As illustrations of the modern metal-work of the natives of Nootka Sound and its neighbourhood, several examples are given in Plate XIX, figs. 7 to 11. Figures 7 and 8 represent two sides of an iron dagger in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution. The ornamentation on the handle is that of the natives of the country, but the workmanship of the blade, which is ribbed on one side, appears to indicate foreign manufacture. Figures 9 and 10 are two sides of a copper dagger of the same form; this specimen is now in the Belfast Museum, in which it was deposited in the year 1843 by Mr. A. Thompson, who brought it from the north-west coast of America, and described it as having been fabricated by the Flathead Indians; it is undoubtedly of native workmanship; in both these weapons one side of the blade and handle is concave, the other convex, a form which appears to denote that it was originally taken from some similar weapon of bone or cane. The nearest approach to the form of this weapon in bone, that I am aware of, is that of the Indian ‘kandjar’, a figure of which was given in my first lecture on Primitive Warfare, Plate X, fig. 63. This weapon has also one concave and one convex side, derived from the natural curvature of the bone out of which it is made.
But putting aside American civilization, which, it must be admitted, does in the existing state of our knowledge present great difficulties in the way of those who advocate the theory of a common origin for bronze, and turning our attention to the eastern hemisphere, we find the evidence on this point more satisfactory. We may observe, in the first place, that the area over which bronze has been used for implements appears, in so far as we have at present been able to trace it, to be continuous, extending over the greater part of Europe, Egypt, Assyria, and some parts of Siberia, India, and China, from which latter country some few bronze weapons have lately been added to the British Museum. Mr. Theobald, of the Geological Survey of India, also mentions in a paper read to the Bengal Asiatic Society,[207] that bronze axes are found in the valley of the Irrawaddy, where they are held in such veneration as rarely to be procurable; and Sir Walter Elliot has shown me some bronze implements which he found deep beneath the soil in cutting a canal in the valley of the Ganges. Bronze is wanting in Africa; in America, with the exception of Peru and Mexico; in the north of Sweden and Norway, and, I believe, in the greater part of the northern districts of Russia and Siberia, though with regard to Russian and Siberian bronzes, our information is still very deficient. And here I may observe that I speak only of bronze as applied to tools and weapons; its use for other purposes may have been introduced at any subsequent period of the world’s history; but the presence of a bronze weapon implies either total ignorance, or at least an imperfect knowledge of the means of hardening the more useful metal for this purpose, iron.
Those who wish for more detailed information as to the evidence upon which the succession of the stone, bronze, and iron ages has been determined, would do well to refer to Sir John Lubbock’s remarks upon this subject in Prehistoric Times. It may, however, be useful to enumerate briefly some of the chief points which have been adduced in support of the opinion that the employment of these materials corresponds to successive stages in the development of civilization in Europe. (1) Not only do the Roman writers mention iron as being the metal used by them in their time, but they also speak of its employment by the barbarian nations of the north, with whom they came in contact, and the word ‘ferrum’, iron, was with the Romans synonymous with sword. (2) Although numerous finds of iron implements of the Roman period have been discovered in various parts of the world, there has been no authentic and undoubted instance of a weapon of bronze having been found associated with them, or with Roman pottery or coins. (3) Bronze implements are most abundant in Denmark and Ireland, countries which were never invaded by Roman armies, whilst they are exceedingly rare in Italy. (4) The ornamentation of the bronze implements is not Roman, but pre-Roman in character. (5) On the other hand, the numerous finds of bronze weapons which have been discovered have never been associated with iron, except in cases where the nature of the iron implements shows them to have belonged to a period of transition. (6) The pottery associated with bronze-finds is superior to that found with stone implements, but inferior to that of the iron age, and the potter’s wheel was unknown during the stone and bronze ages. (7) Silver is found associated with iron, but rarely if ever with stone or bronze. (8) No coins or inscriptions of any kind have been found with bronze implements. (9) In the Swiss lakes, settlements associated with stone and bronze have been found near each other, as for instance Moosseedorf and Nidau, 15 miles apart; in the former, bronze is entirely absent; in the latter, it was used not only for articles of luxury, such as might denote a more wealthy class, but also for implements of common use, such as fish-hooks, pins, &c.; it is improbable that so marked a contrast in the civilization of two settlements so close to each other should have existed during the same period. (10) The implements and ornaments of the bronze-finds are more varied in form, showing an advance in art upon those appertaining to the stone age. (11) The bronze-finds are marked by an increase in the number of domesticated animals, and an entire absence of some of the wild animals of the earlier period, and they are also more clearly associated with traces of agriculture. (12) In the Danish peat bogs, successive strata are found overlying each other, denoting changes in the vegetation of the country; in the lowest and earliest are found the remains of pine trees, which now are foreign to the soil; above which are strata in which oak was the prevailing tree, and at the present time the oaks have been superseded by beeches. These successive strata correspond in a general way to successive stages in the civilization of the inhabitants; in the pine-bearing strata, implements of stone are found; with the oak trees, implements of bronze, and higher up, implements of iron. It has also been attempted to trace a somewhat similar succession of periods in the gravels and alluvium of the torrent of Tinière, in Switzerland; but the evidence in this case is not considered so satisfactory as in that of the Danish peat bogs.
In Chaldea, the transition from stone to bronze has been traced by the relics found in the soil; iron being then used only in small quantities, and chiefly for ornaments, as amongst the ancient Britons in the time of Caesar.[208] In Egypt, where both bronze and iron weapons have been found in the tombs, the transition from bronze to iron is marked by the colour of the weapons in the paintings, and dates, according to Sir Gardner Wilkinson, about B.C. 1400. Hesiod speaks of an age of copper, when the ‘black iron did not exist’. Homer also alludes frequently to copper or bronze implements, and when iron is mentioned always speaks of it as requiring much time and labour to fabricate it. Then we have the well-known passage from Lucretius, so often quoted in reference to this subject, in which the three ages of stone, bronze, and iron are mentioned;[209] and Strabo mentions the Lusitanians as being armed partly with copper or bronze weapons.[210]
Many other quotations might be given from ancient authors to prove that the existence of a bronze age preceding the use of iron was known to the ancients, but I will not occupy your time further with this part of the subject, seeing that others far more competent to deal with it than myself have failed to derive much information of value from this source. There is often considerable difficulty in determining the exact meaning of the writers, when speaking of the material of which weapons are composed, the same word being sometimes used to express copper, bronze, and iron. In fact it may, I think, safely be said that, notwithstanding the large amount of useful information that may be obtained from the study of the early writers, there is no more fruitful source of error than the attempt to apply ancient history and tradition to the elucidation of prehistoric events. Modern science, and our fuller appreciation of the value of evidence, have thrown far more light on prehistoric times than ever fell to the lot of the ancients; and it is for us, therefore, to correct their errors, and not to be misled by them.
Professor Max Müller, in the second series of his Science of Language, has, however, drawn some important conclusions on this subject, from the etymology of words representing metal, of which it may be useful here to give a brief abstract. Quoting Mr. E. B. Tylor’s work on the Anahuac (p. 140), he says: ‘The Mexicans called their own copper or bronze tepuztli, which is said to have meant originally hatchet; the same word is now used for iron, with which the Mexicans first became acquainted through their intercourse with the Spaniards. Tepuztli then became a general name for metal, and when copper had to be distinguished from iron, the former was called red tepuztli, and the latter black tepuztli. The conclusion,’ he says, ‘which we may draw from this, viz. that Mexican was spoken before the introduction of iron into Mexico, is one of no great value, because we know it from other sources’; but applying the same line of reasoning to Greek, he says, ‘here, too, chalkós, which at first meant copper, came afterwards to mean metal in general, and chalkeús, originally a copper-smith, occurs in the Odyssey (ix. 391) in the sense of a blacksmith, or worker of iron.’ What does this prove? It proves that Greek was spoken before the introduction of iron. The name for copper is shared in common by Latin and the Teutonic languages, æs, Latin; aiz, Gothic; êr, old high German; erz, modern German; âr, Anglo-Saxon; and the same word is represented in our English word ore. But the words specifically used for iron differ in each of the principal branches of the Aryan family. At the same time the words originally representing copper come to be used for metal in general, and in some cases for iron. In Sanskrit, ayas, which is the same word as æs, came to be used for iron, a distinction being made between dark ayas or iron, and bright ayas or copper. Æs in Latin, and aiz in Gothic, came to be used for metal in general, but was never used for iron. Aiz, however, according to Grimm, gave rise to the Gothic word eisarn, meaning iron. In old high German eisarn is changed into îsarn, later to îsan, and lastly to the modern eisen, while the Anglo-Saxon îsern is converted into îren, and ultimately to iron. The learned Professor sums up his researches on this subject as follows:—‘We may conclude,’ he says, ‘that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and German were spoken before the discovery of iron, that each nation became acquainted with that most useful of all metals after the Aryan family was broken up, and that each of the Aryan languages coined its name for iron from its own resources, and marked it by its own national stamp, while it brought the names for gold, silver, and copper from the common treasury of their ancestral home’.[211]
These remarks point to a very remote period, and to an Aryan origin for the first knowledge of copper and bronze, but on the other hand much has been written in favour of a Semitic origin, especially by Professor Nilsson, who believes that he has discovered traces of that people even on the coast of Norway.[212]
The employment of war chariots, which are known to have been used by the Britons, and vestiges of which have been found in their graves, implies, it is said, Semitic influence. Much stress is also laid upon the resemblance of some of the ornaments found on the Danish and other bronzes to those in use by the Phoenicians; more especially the spiral ornaments, which Professor Nilsson traces to that source through the engravings on weapons in the bronze age tumuli. Against this, however, it may be urged that the spiral ornament has a very wide distribution, extending over modern Africa, ancient Egypt, Greece, China, New Guinea, Mexico, and South America, and even to New Zealand and the Asiatic Isles. In illustration of this I have arranged upon Plate XIX a series of illustrations of spiral ornament from various countries, showing how universally it is distributed over the globe. Fig. 12 is from a New Zealand canoe in my collection; Fig. 13, from a club brought from New Guinea by the commander of the ‘Rattlesnake’, in 1849, and now in my collection; Fig. 14, from China; Fig. 15, from ancient Egypt; Fig. 16, from Greece; Fig. 17, from a Danish bronze sword; Fig. 18, from an Irish bronze brooch in my collection; Fig. 19, from the Swiss lakes, figured in Dr. Keller’s work; Fig. 20, an iron ornament in my collection from Central Africa; Fig. 21, an iron ornament on a club, from the Bight of Benin, West Africa, in the Christy Collection; Fig. 22, an ornament on a wooden arrow-head, in the Christy Collection, probably from one of the Melanesian isles; Fig. 23, from Hallstatt; Fig. 24, a cane arrow-head from the Amazons, South America; Fig. 25, a spindle-whirl from Mexico; Fig. 26, on a bronze shield from the Caucasus; Fig. 27, an ornament on a bracelet from Hindustan, in the British Museum; Fig. 28, an ornament carved upon the stones of New Grange, in Ireland; Fig. 29, from a New Zealand canoe. Compare the two last figures with Fig. 30, a stone weight in my collection, lately fished up on the coast of Kent, whilst dredging for whelks; the ornamentation so closely resembles the New Zealand pattern, and at the same time that of the stone carvings of the European tumuli, that considering the circumstance of its discovery, it is purely a matter for conjecture whether it is to be referred to the antiquities of this country, or has been dropped overboard by some vessel returning from our South Pacific colonies. We see from these examples that the spiral ornament cannot be regarded as belonging exclusively to any one race; it is a contrivance derived simply from the coil of string, the source from which, and also from straw plaiting, nearly all barbaric ornamentation had its origin; it is a proof merely of barbaric origin, an evidence of continuity from the earliest periods of art.
Mr. Franks in his remarks at the Paris Meeting of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology, has summarily disposed of the question of Phoenician ornamentation, by observing that the Phoenicians were copyists, taking their style from Egypt, Greece, or Rome, according to the fashion of the period, and that in point of fact a Phoenician style of art has never existed (Compte Rendu, IIme Session, Paris, 1868, p. 251).