[46] The deposits at Susa show neolithic remains perhaps more than 20,000 years old. See Montelius Congrès Internat. d’Anthrop. Prehist., 1906, p. 32. Sir Arthur Evans says the neolithic age began in Crete more than 14,000 years ago.—G. Wh.
[47] See Peisker, Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I, for some interesting views upon domestication.—E. B.
[48] Native copper is still found to-day in Italy, Hungary, Cornwall, and many other places.
[49] This view of the origin of bronze is that of Dr. Gowland, The Metals Antiquity (Huxley Lecture, 1912). But Lord Avebury quotes the verbal opinion of the late Lord Swansea against this view, and sets it aside without further argument.
[50] Ridgeway (Early Age of Greece) says a lump of tin has been found in the Swiss pile-dwelling deposits.
[51] Tin was known as a foreign import in Egypt under the XVIIIth Dynasty; there is (rare) Mycenæan tin, and there are (probably later, but not clearly dated) tin objects in the Caucasus. But it is very difficult to distinguish tin from antimony. There is a good deal of Cyprus bronze which contains antimony; a good deal which seems to be tin is antimony—the ancients trying to get tin, but actually getting antimony and thinking it was tin.—J. L. M.
[52] In connection with iron, note the distinction of ornamental and useful iron. Ornamental iron, a rarity, perhaps meteoric, as jewellery or magical stuff, occurs in east Europe sporadically in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty. This must be distinguished from the copious useful iron which appears in Greece much later from the North.—J. L. M.
[53] People were probably healthier and longer lived in the Bronze than in the Neolithic age. The disparity of stature between male and female was much less.—G. Wh.
[54] Lord Avebury. For a good account of Avebury, Stonehenge, and the traces of a well-developed social system in England before the coming of the Keltic peoples, see Hippesley Cox, The Green Roads of England.
[55] Caesar de Bello Gallico says the Britons tabooed hare, fowl and goose.—G. Wh.