Mr. Worsaae remarks, after pointing out the correspondence, in many respects, between the bronze relics of Denmark and those of other countries of Europe, these "prove nothing more than that certain implements and weapons had the same form among different nations."[279] And again, "from these evidences it follows that the antiquities belonging to the Bronze Period, which are found in the different countries of Europe, can neither be attributed exclusively to the Celts, nor to the Greeks, Romans, Phœnicians, Sclavonians, nor to the Teutonic tribes. They do not belong to any one people, but have been used by the most different nations at the same stage of civilisation; and there is no historical evidence strong enough to prove that the Teutonic people were in that respect an exception. The forms and patterns of the various weapons, implements, and ornaments, are so much alike, because such forms and patterns are the most natural and the most simple. As we saw in the Stone Period how people at the lowest stage of civilisation, by a sort of instinct, made their stone implements in the same shape, so we see now, in the first traces of a higher civilisation, that they exhibit in the mode of working objects of bronze a similar general resemblance."[280] But are the forms and patterns thus natural and simple? This argument, which abundantly satisfies us as to the universal correspondence of the majority of tools and weapons of the Stone Period, entirely fails when thus applied to the works of the Bronze Period. The former are in most cases of the simplest and most rudimentary character: the perforated oblong stone for a hammer, the pointed flint for an arrow-head, and the longer edged and pointed flint for a knife or spear. Human intelligence, in its most barbarous state, suggests such simple devices with a universality akin to the narrower instincts of the lower animals. They are, in truth, mathematically demonstrable as the simplest shapes. But the beauty and variety of form and decoration in the productions of the Bronze Period bring them under a totally different classification. They are works of art, and though undoubtedly exhibiting an indefiniteness peculiarly characteristic of its partial development, are scarcely less marked by novel and totally distinct forms than the products of the many different classic, medieval, or modern schools of design. The form of the leaf-shaped sword, indeed, is unsurpassed in beauty by any later offensive weapon. We are justified, therefore, in assuming that the general correspondence traceable throughout the productions of the European Bronze Period, affords evidence of considerable international intercourse having prevailed; while the peculiarities discoverable on comparing the relics found in different countries of Europe compel us to conclude that they are the products of native art, and not manufactures diffused from some common source. We have already traced them as pertaining to the infantile era of Greece, and may yet hope to find them among the indications of primitive Asiatic population, thereby supplying a new line of evidence in illustration of the north-western migration of the human race, and probably also a means of approximation towards the date of the successive steps by which the later nomades advanced towards the coasts of the German Ocean.
In the former section numerous instances have been referred to of the discovery of canoes belonging, by indisputable evidence, to the Primeval Period. One example, at least, has been recorded of a ship apparently belonging to the succeeding era of bronze, and which, both in size and mode of construction, amply accords with the assumed characteristics of the more advanced period, and with the idea of direct intercourse with the continent of Europe. "In this town," (Stranraer,)says the old historian of Galloway, writing in 1683, "the last year, while they were digging a water-gate for a mill, they lighted upon a ship a considerable distance from the shore, unto which the sea at the highest spring tides never comes. It was transversely under a little bourn, and wholly covered with earth a considerable depth; for there was a good yard, with kail growing in it, upon the one end of it. By that part of it which was gotten out, my informers, who saw it, conjecture that the vessel had been pretty large; they also tell me that the boards were not joined together after the usual fashion of our present ships or barks, as also that it had nailes of copper."[281] Here we find remarkable evidence of progress. The rude arts of the aboriginal seaman, by which he laboriously hollowed the oaken trunk and adapted it for navigating his native seas, have been superseded by a systematic process of ship-building, in which the metallic tools sufficed to hew and shape the planks as well as to furnish the copper fastenings by which they were secured. Vessels thus constructed were doubtless designed for wider excursions than the navigation of native estuaries and inland seas; nor must we assume, because the records of ancient history have heretofore concentrated our interest on the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, that therefore the German Ocean and the British seas were a waste of unpeopled waters, save, perhaps, when some rude canoe, borne beyond its wonted shelter on the coasts, timorously struggled to regain the shore. Enough has already been advanced to disabuse us of the fallacy, that where no annals of a people have been preserved nothing worth chronicling can have existed.
Much will be gained if faith can be established in the fact, that deeds worth recording were enacted in Britain in these old times when no other chronicler existed but the bard who committed to tradition his unwritten history, and the more faithful mourner who entrusted to the grave the records of his reverence or his love. Faith is required for the honest and zealous study of the subject; but with this we doubt not that many links will be supplied which are still wanting to complete the picture of the past. This much, however, seems already established, that at a period long prior to the first century of the Christian era the art of working in metals was introduced into Britain, and gradually superseded the rude primitive implements of stone. The intelligent British savage, supplied with this important element of civilisation, wrought and smelted the ores, melted and mixed the metals, formed moulds, and improved on early and imperfect models, until he carried the art to such perfection that even now we look upon his later bronze works with admiration, and are hard to be persuaded that they are not the creations of Phœnician or Roman, rather than of native British civilisation prior to the introduction of letters.
How remote the origin of this transition-period of civilisation dates we cannot as yet presume to say; but with our preconceived notions, derived chiefly from an exclusively classical education, we are more apt to err on the side of too modern than of too remote a date. Mr. Worsaae, after discussing and rejecting the idea of a Roman origin for the bronze relics of Denmark, adds,—"Nor in all probability have these bronzes reached us from Greece, although, both with regard to their form and ornaments, particularly the spiral ornaments, a greater similarity appears to exist between those which occur in the north and those found in the most ancient tombs of Greece. For independently of the fact, that the latter have hitherto occurred but seldom, so that our knowledge of them is extremely imperfect, they belong to so very remote a period—1000 or 1400 years before the birth of Christ—that we can by no means be justified in supposing that any active intercourse then existed between countries so remote from each other."[282] But why not? Active it might be, though indirect; or, what is equally likely, both might derive their models from a common source—perhaps Phœnician, the apparent source of Greek metallurgic art; perhaps from the older regions of central Asia, whence both were sprung. We see, at least, from evidence which appears to me incontrovertible, that at a much more remote period a human population occupied the British Isles; and we shall allow our judgments to be misled by very fallacious reasoning if we conclude that they could not have attained to any degree of civilisation at the period referred to, merely because no notice of them occurs in the pages of classic writers. The Greeks and Romans looked with contempt on all other nations. Partly from this national pride, but still more perhaps from a want of that philological talent peculiar to modern times, they gave little heed to the languages of their most civilized contemporaries, and looked on their barbarian arts and manners with contempt. Yet among the barbarians of the Greeks we must include the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, and the Hebrews; even as we ourselves rank among the barbarians of the modern Chinese, whose annals at most will tell of us as a roving race who first appeared in history towards the end of the seventeenth century!
The civilisation of the British Bronze Period does not appear to have been of so active a nature as to have produced any very rapid social changes. It did not break up the isolated tribes of Britain, and unite them into kingdoms or associated states. Its material element was never so abundant as to admit of any such great contemporaneous development. It was rather such a change as might slowly operate over many centuries; and that it did so is rendered most probable by the many relics of it which still remain. The Toltecans and Yucatecs of the New World achieved much in their Bronze Period unknown to medieval Europe; nor is it altogether impossible that even now, beyond the vast forests so recently explored by Mr. Stephens, a native race may be found practising arts akin to those of Montezuma's reign. Certain it is that the British Bronze Period was passing away in the transition-state of a later era when the Roman galleys first crossed the English Channel, and from the last century B.C. we must reckon backward up to that remote and altogether undetermined era, when the elder Stone Period passed by slow transition into that of Bronze.
FOOTNOTES:
[265] Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i. p. 224.
[266] Martin's Western Isles. Lond. 1703, p. 208. The Glenlyon brooch and the brooch of Lorn—worn according to the tradition of the Macdougals, by Robert the Bruce, and still preserved in that family—beautiful examples of this favourite Celtic ornament, are engraved on Plates II. and III. The Lorn brooch corresponds in some degree to the description in the text; and a common brass one, probably of the seventeenth century, in the Collection of C. K. Sharpe, Esq., figured on a later page, furnishes a good example of native Celtic art.
[267] Travels in the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790. London, 1793, p. 87.
[268] Ibid. p. 83.