Further evidence in support of our contention that iron was in use much earlier than is generally admitted, comes from an unexpected quarter. J. N. Svoronos, in a recent book on ancient Greek coinage, entitled L’Hellénism primitif de la Macédoine, prouvé par la numismatique, p. 171, remarks: “In the first place, indeed, it is forgotten that some of this information, that which is derived from people of ‘mythical’ times, can be referred not only to the invention of the first money struck in precious metal (gold, electrum, or silver), but even to obelisks of iron, or to cast plinths in the form of copper axes, which, of a determined weight, and legally guaranteed by the state, constituted, already before the XVth century, as we positively know at the present time, the first legal money.”
130 : 2. Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom, chap. XIII; Steenstrup, Normannerne.
130 : 4. “Furor Normanorum.” On account of the suffering inflicted by the Vikings and other northern raiders in Europe, a special prayer, A furore Normanorum libera nos was inserted in some of the litanies of the West.
130 : 5. Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410 A. D., and during the forty years following the German tribes seized the greater part of the Roman provinces and established in them what are known as the Barbarian Kingdoms. Consult Villari, The Barbarian Invasions of Italy.
130 : 8 seq. See chap. XIII, pp. 242 seq., of this book.
130 : 13 seq. Ripley, pp. 125–126. The discovery of the Alpine type was the work of Von Baer.
130 : 24. The Iron Age in western Europe. Deniker, 2, p. 315, says: “So also, according to Montelius, the introduction of iron dates only from the fifth or third century B. C. in Sweden, while Italy was acquainted with this metal as far back as the twelfth century B. C. The civilization of the ‘iron age,’ distributed over two periods, according to the excavations made in the stations of Hallstatt (Austria) and La Tène (Switzerland), must have been imported from central Europe into Greece through Illyria. The importation corresponds perhaps with the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus.... The Hallstattian civilization flourished chiefly in Carinthia, southern Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia, Silesia, Bosnia, the southeast of France and southern Italy (the pre-Etruscan age of Montelius). The period which followed, called the second, or iron age or the La Tène period, was prolonged until the first century B. C. in France, Bohemia and England. In Scandinavian countries the first iron age lasted until the sixth century, and the second iron age until the tenth century A. D.” Referring to the La Tène period in a footnote, Deniker says: “This term, first used in Germany, is accepted by almost all men of science. The La Tène period corresponds pretty nearly with the ‘Âge Marmien’ of French archæologists and the ‘Late Celtic’ of English archæologists. Cf. M. Hoernes, Urgeschichte d. Mensch., chapters VIII and IX.”
Rice Holmes, 1, p. 231, remarks: “Iron in Britain is hardly older than 500 B. C. (i. e. the earliest products of the British iron age were traded in. See p. 229). In Gaul the Hallstatt period is believed to have lasted from about 800 to about 400 B. C.” On p. 126: “It is certain that in the southeastern districts iron tools began to be used not later than the fourth century B. C.”
See also Sir John Evans, Ancient Bronze Implements, pp. 470–472. Consult especially Déchellette, Manuel d’archéologie, t. II, pp. 152 seq., on iron in western Gaul during the La Tène period.
130 : 28. La Tène Period. M. Wavre and P. Vouga, Extrait du Musée neuchatelois, p. 7; V. Gross, La Tène, un oppidum helvète; E. Vouga, Les Helvètes à La Tène; and F. Keller, The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland.