129 : 2–8. The megaliths were not erected by Alpines, for there are practically none in central Europe, according to Keane, Ethnology, pp. 135–136, and Dr. Robert Munro, in a discussion published in the Jour. Roy. Anth. Inst., 1889–1890, p. 65. On the other hand, Peet, 1, pp. 39, 64, says they are being discovered in the interior—a few in Germany. He does not mention bronze among the finds in the megaliths of France, but there was a little gold. Bronze was, however, found in Spain. Consult Fleure and James, pp. 128 seq.; Rice Holmes, 2, pp. 8–9; and, for an exhaustive archæological study, Déchellette, Manuel d’archéologie, vol. I, chap. III, especially paragraph v, pp. 393 seq., for dolmens in Brittany. Concerning the contents of these we may quote the following:
“Polished hatchets, often enough of rare stone, beads from necklaces, and pendants of Callais or of divers materials, implements of flint, knives, arrow points which are wing-shaped, scrapers, nodules, grinding stones, pottery, vases, grains of baked earth, some rare jewels of gold, collars and bracelets, such is, in general, the composition of the contents of the neolithic dolmens of Brittany, contents different, as we shall see, from those of the sepulchres of the Bronze Age in the same region. These vast Armorican crypts belong certainly to the end of the Neolithic period, in spite of the absence of copper, the habitual forerunner of bronze objects. The smallness of the crypt, the size of the tumulus, the mixture of construction in huge blocks and in walls seem to indicate, as M. Cartailhac has observed, a more recent age than that of ordinary dolmens. In the pure Bronze Age the monolithic supports are replaced by the walls of unmortared stones.
“Moreover, we shall see that there have been found in certain covered alleys in Brittany, pottery of a very characteristic type called calciform vases, pottery belonging in the south of France and southern Europe with the first objects of copper and bronze. Jewels of gold confirm, on the other hand, these chronological determinations.” On p. 397: “The dolmen sepulchres of the Bronze Age in Brittany, and notably in Finisterre, are distinguished more often by the type of their construction from those of the Stone Age.”
“The dolmens of Normandy and Isle de France contain some stone objects, fragments of vases, and numerous debris of human skeletons.” The end of the pure Neolithic is the date of the megaliths in Armorica, as we read on p. 407. The first metals, imported from the south, penetrated into northern Gaul a little later than in the southern provinces. That is why certain typical objects of the end of the pure Neolithic in Armorica, such as Callais and the calciform vases, are associated with the first objects of copper or bronze in the funerary crypts of Provence and Portugal.
G. Elliot Smith and W. H. R. Rivers claim that there is a close connection throughout the eastern hemisphere between the distribution of megalithic monuments and either ocean or fresh-water pearls, but this appears to the author to be far-fetched. Two very recent articles dealing with megaliths are “Anthropology and Our Older Histories,” by Fleure and Winstanley, and “The Menhirs of Madagascar,” by A. L. Lewis.
129 : 8. Rice Holmes, Cæsar’s Conquest of Gaul, p. 9.
129 : 12. Earliest iron in the north. See the notes to pp. 131 : 1 and 131 : 9 on the La Tène period. Also Montelius, 2, and Sophus Müller, 2, pp. 145 and 165 seq.
129 : 13. Mound burials among the Vikings. Montelius, 2.
129 : 15. Iron in Egypt. Some authorities think that iron in Egypt came in about the same time as bronze, or even earlier. A piece of worked iron was found in the Great Pyramid, to which a date of about 3500 B. C. has been assigned. But, according to the archæological investigations of Professor Flinders Petrie, iron came into general use only about 800 B. C.
Myres, in The Dawn of History, is quoted from p. 60 for the following neat summary, although any of the authorities on Egypt, such as Petrie, Maspero, Hall, Breasted, Elliot Smith, Reisner, Meyer, etc., should be consulted as original investigators: “The presence of iron, rare though it is, as far back as the first dynasty, puts Egypt into a position which is unique among metal-using lands; for, apart from these rare, but quite indisputable finds, Egypt remains for thousands of years a bronze-using, and for long, a merely copper-using, country.... In Egypt iron was known as a rarity, worn as a charm and an ornament, and even used, when it could be gotten ready made, as an implement; and it does not seem to have been worked in the country, and probably its source was unknown to the Egyptians. In historic times they still called it the ‘metal of heaven’ as if they obtained it from meteorites; and it looks at present as though their earliest knowledge of it was from the south; for central Africa seems to have had no bronze age but direct and ancient transition from stone to iron weapons. Yet when they conquered Syria in the sixteenth century, they found it in regular use and received it in tribute. At home, however, they had no real introduction to an ‘Age of Iron’ until they met an Assyrian army in 668 B. C. and began to be exploited by Greeks from over sea.” In this connection see also Ridgeway, The Early Age of Greece, pp. 613–614. The same author, pp. 154 seq., discusses the value of iron in these early times.