The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

by Harold Peake

As it seems unlikely that gold would be carried between such distant points as the valleys of the Danube and the Nile by the old method of bartering from tribe to tribe, especially since there are so many physical obstacles on the route, including the Taurus range, it seems more likely that we should see here evidence for an organised sea commerce. Not that I would imply a direct sea traffic from the Danube to the Nile, but that some intermediate people, probably some islanders in the Ægean, the people perhaps of Melos or Crete, traded on the one hand with settlements near the mouth of the Danube and with those in the Delta as well. The obsidian trade of Melos may well be as early as this, in fact it seems to have been on the decline by 3000 B.C., and we find Cretan trade flourishing only a few centuries later. Either or both of these islands might well have been responsible for this traffic.

Oversea trade, then, was in existence, if not very highly developed, during the early days of metal, the centuries preceding 3000 B.C. The knowledge of copper, and the possibility of making copper nails and wire, must have given a great impetus to ship building, which must at this stage have passed from the use of rafts and dug-outs to that of boats built as we know them now. But a new discovery, greater even in some respects than those which I have been describing, was still further to encourage oversea traffic.

The manufacture of implements of flint and obsidian had reached a high pitch of perfection during the early days of metal, and although the new materials were valuable for ornaments, copper knives were, in many respects, less serviceable than stone ones, as the metal is soft and its edge easily turned. It is true that many men, particularly those who wished to display their wealth, preferred copper daggers to those made of flint, for they were more ornate, more novel and had a scarcity value. Those, however, who were poor, or untouched by the fashionable snobbery, preferred the well-tried flint article, which was probably more effective for its purpose.

But with the discovery that the addition of about ten per cent. of tin to the copper produced an alloy of considerable hardness and no little toughness as well, from which could be made implements which seldom chipped or turned, and which could have their edges quickly renewed by hammering or grinding did such an accident happen, the days of copper came quickly to an end, and the traffic in flint implements, even in obsidian, fell upon evil days. It was this discovery, which made metal not merely a luxury, but a really serviceable article to man, which brought the stone age to an end and ushered in the true metal age.

How, when and where this discovery was made is still a mystery. At one time I was disposed to think that it was perhaps in Spain, where both these metals are found, that the discovery was accidentally made, but evidence which has come to hand quite recently has disposed of this idea. Professor Sayce has recently published an extract from a tablet found in the royal library of Assur.[99] It is from a document drawn up in the reign of Sargon of Akkad, whose date has now been finally fixed at 2800 B.C. It is a geographical description of that monarch’s empire, giving a list of the provinces, at the close of which it is said that his conquests had extended “from the lands of the setting sun to the lands of the rising sun, namely to the tinland (Ku-Ki) and Kaptara (Crete) countries beyond the Upper Sea (the Mediterranean).” At first there was a tendency to interpret this passage as though Ku-Ki was beyond the Mediterranean, and must refer either to Spain or Brittany; but this is to misunderstand the passage. As Professor Sayce says: “the western extension of the empire ended with the Syrian coast; beyond that were Kaptara or Krete and the Tinland.” Ku-Ki may well have been Cyprus, or some other island in the Mediterranean, or some region easily accessible from it.

Now the importance of this passage is that it shows us that as early as 2800 B.C. the Babylonians were cognisant of the existence of tin, and doubtless aware of its value as an ingredient of bronze; this can only mean that they were using it to harden the copper, which they had worked so well centuries earlier. The passage implies that Sargon’s rule extended to Ku-Ki, which may perhaps mean no more than that some of his subjects had a trading post there. What seems important is that the discovery of the value of tin and bronze had been made before 2800 B.C., somewhere in western Asia, though at what sites is at present uncertain. Copper mines, which are known to have been worked at an early date, exist south of Trebizonde, near Erzeroum, in Armenia and at Diarbekir in the upper valley of the Tigris; ancient tin workings have been found further east in Khorazan.[100] But the local supply of tin was apparently insufficient, and merchants from the Persian Gulf were carrying on a trade in this commodity with a place in the Mediterranean region, even if they had not already, as seems probable, established a definite trading post in Ku-Ki.

Thus we see that a definite organised trade, both by sea and by land, had been established in the eastern Mediterranean region before 2800 B.C., and that this included a new and important feature, the search for and importation of raw materials as well as the export of manufactured articles.

Now, as I have shown elsewhere,[101] at a date which cannot be very much later, during a period which closed about 2200 B.C., the eastern Mediterranean was in close trade relations with Spain, and was exploiting the mineral resources of that peninsula. At present it is uncertain who these traders were, but they seem to have been in touch with Crete, the Cyclades and the second city of Hissarlik, and perhaps too with Cyprus. Though we have no evidence that these traders were from the Persian Gulf, they were trading between Spain and the area in which Ku-Ki probably lay, and if they were not subjects of the Babylonian Empire, they were at least carrying on the metal trade first organised by the people from the Persian Gulf.

Quite recently it has been stated that there is no clear evidence that the Spanish copper mines had been worked at so early a time,[102] but the data cited by Siret[103] seem to me to prove conclusively that the early settlements of El Argar had direct or indirect trade relations with Hissarlik II., and the discovery throughout the Spanish peninsula of clay balls of a certain type,[104] which exactly resemble some found by Schliemann in the burnt city,[105] seems to me to place this early connection beyond all reasonable doubt.