Much work yet remains to be done before the courses of these trade routes can be traced with precision and their dates fully established, but enough has been said, I trust, to show that in addition to direct sea routes from Brittany, the Irish gold fields tempted traders to cross both England and Scotland on their way from France and the Baltic.[123] These traders would have needed provisions for the journey, and for these would have bartered bronze axes to the people settled on the chalk downs and limestone hills. The journey across the Midland plain was through a densely wooded and probably uninhabited area, and in passing through Wales they kept mostly to the valleys, while the bulk of the population grazed its sheep on the high moorlands.[124] The few axes found must have been such as were lost by the way, and considering the number found this indicates an extensive traffic.
In Ireland the traders probably employed the natives to wash the alluvial gold; they had also to barter with them for their supplies. No wonder, then, that bronze implements of the earliest type have been found almost more abundantly in that island than in any other part of Europe, while the number of gold objects found there is unsurpassed elsewhere. Doubtless the natives worked the gold fields sometimes on their own account, and they seem also to have tried to supply themselves with home-made metal axes. There are veins of copper ore in various parts of the island, which they seem to have discovered, but tin is to all intents and purposes absent.[125] It is possible, too, that the traders refused to divulge the secret of the tin alloy. It would have been strange indeed had they not done so, and so the native Irish, for a time at least, made themselves axes of copper. This, at least, seems so be the most plausible explanation of the great number of copper axes found in that island.
The foregoing is, of necessity, but a brief account of the early metal trade and its relations with Celtic lands. To do the subject justice would require more space than is at my disposal; nor is the time yet ripe for more detailed treatment. This outline will serve to show that foreign elements reached Celtic lands some 4000 years ago, though in small numbers; who these people were must be considered in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV
THE PROSPECTORS
IN many parts of the world there are to be found monuments of rough, unhewn stones, sometimes rudely shaped by hammering, which from the size of the stones used have been termed megalithic monuments.[126] These consist of burial chambers, either a simple slab or capstone supported on four or more uprights, or a similar but more complex chamber, approached by a stone-lined passage. Other monuments consist of circles or alignments of standing stones, or single stones only set in an upright position. There are many types; some, like the dolmen or simplest burial chamber, or the simple standing stone, are widely distributed, while others have a restricted range. One type of elaborate temple is found only in Malta and in the adjacent island of Gozo.[127] Such monuments have these features in common: the stones are large, they have not been hewn with chisels or axes, and they are orthostatic or set on end.
Frequently associated with these megalithic monuments are other structures, which are believed to belong to the same culture, though the association is not so clearly established. Such are bee-hive huts, round towers, and dry walls with polygonal masonry. These are often found in close association with the erections of larger stones, but not infrequently where true megalithic structures are absent.[128]
An attempt has been made to show that the dolmen originated in Egypt, and is closely connected with the mastaba, the tomb used throughout the earliest dynasties.[129] Elsewhere I have endeavoured to show that there are reasons why we cannot attribute the origin of these structures to the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, and that the resemblances may better be explained by supposing that the idea of the former was introduced into Egypt, perhaps at the beginning of the second predynastic period, from some region, such as Syria, where dolmens were known, or else that both had been derived from a common ancestry.[130]
It has been suggested by some inquirers that the fashion of erecting such megalithic monuments of orthostatic blocks arose at one time and in one place, and was carried by degrees from centre to centre until it reached many widely scattered regions between Ireland and Polynesia.[131] It is not suggested that this culture, with which has been associated many others, such as terrace cultivation, irrigation, the use of conch shells and a number of others, was carried to all these places simultaneously or even within the same millennium, nor is it asserted that the people who introduced it to these widely scattered regions were of necessity the same. The idea may, I think, be better expressed by saying that a cult or religion became widely disseminated at an early date, that it developed many varieties in the regions in which it took root, and that these regions often became in time fresh centres for dissemination. Thus it might happen that a daughter cult might ultimately become spread through part of the region in which the parent cult had arisen. A parallel may be drawn from the spread of Christianity, especially in these islands. The new faith reached Britain during the period of the Roman occupation and thence spread to Ireland; later, when it had disappeared from the former, it passed from Ireland to Iona and thence back to England.