[476] W. C. Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland, ii, 516-7, 549, 563; Rev. de l’École d’anthr., xv, 1905, pp. 213-4. The rarity of long barrows may partly be explained by supposing that a certain proportion of the others belonged to the late Neolithic Age. That some did is certain. See Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxvi, 1902, pp. 159, 171, and pp. 408-9, infra.
[477] M. Salomon Reinach (L’Anthr., xvi, 1905, p. 659) characteristically remarks in regard to the discovery of metals that ‘On l’explique ordinairement par une succession de hasards heureux, en oubliant que l’humanité primitive, n’ayant aucune idée de l’utilisation industrielle des métaux, ne pouvait en arriver là du premier coup.... Aujourd’hui toute la métallurgie primitive me semble un chapitre de l’histoire des religions.... On a soumis ces métaux [gold and tin] à l’action du feu, au cours d’opérations magiques; ainsi naquit l’idée de traiter de même les minerais de cuivre ... et d’en dégager le métal brillant qui ressemble à l’or.... L’alchimie primitive, absolument étrangère à toute application industrielle, chercha à manier des substances divines par l’action du feu, à opérer ... des hiérogamies analogues à celle qui conduisit les agriculteurs à la découverte de la griffe. L’alliage du bronze fut un des résultats de leurs efforts.’
That smiths were sometimes regarded with superstitious awe by those who did not share their secrets (O. Schrader, Prehist. Ant. of the Aryan Peoples, pp. 165-8); that metallurgy was connected at various points with religion;—so much may be granted. But to say that ‘primitive alchemy’ (if it existed) had no industrial application is simply to make an unverifiable and improbable assertion. The discovery that ores could be smelted must have been accidental. Why should not the ‘alchemist’, however superstitious he may have been, have thereupon conceived the idea of turning gold to account for the manufacture of ornaments, or copper for that of axes?
[478] Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xvi, 1895-7, p. 333.
[479] See Man, ii, 1902, No. 19, p. 29.
[480] Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxi, 1901, pp. 278-9; Man, iv, 1904, No. 5, pp. 13-4.
[481] Rev. mens. de l’École d’anthr., iii, 1893, pp. 227-9; Report of ... the Brit. Association, 1896, p. 911.
[482] See L’Anthr., iv, 1893, p. 559; xvi, 1905, p. 198.
[483] Congrès internat. d’anthr. et d’archéol. préhist., 1900 (1902), p. 340; Vict. Hist. of ... Hertford, i, 232; C. H. Read, Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age (Brit. Museum), 1904, pp. 5-6, 27, 101, 111, 130. M. P. du Chatellier (Rev. de l’École d’anthr., xiii, 1903, pp. 169-72) thinks that there was a copper age in Brittany, but admits that he cannot settle the question. Professor O. Montelius affirms (Man, v, 1905, No. 7, p. 13) that ‘copper had been used there [in Britain] for a long time’ before bronze; but British archaeologists do not bow to his authority. Pitt-Rivers (Journ. Roy. United Service Inst., xiii, 1870, p. 520) remarked that ‘it is not surprising that on the first discovery of the advantages of [adding tin to copper] ... all the old implements of copper, wherever procurable, should have been taken to the melting-pot for conversion into bronze, and we should thus be left with such scanty evidence of the existence of an age of copper’. Still we have sufficient evidence for Ireland, and not for Britain. Professor Gowland (Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxvi, 1906, p. 23) attributes the scarcity of copper celts in England to ‘the occurrence of mixed copper and tin ores in Cornwall.’
[484] Man, iii, 1903, No. 8, pp. 147-9. Professor Montelius (ib., v, 1905, No. 7, pp. 13-4) denies that iron was used by the Egyptians before the fifteenth century B.C., and insists that the lump of iron oxide which was found at Abydos in association with copper implements of the Sixth Dynasty, or about 3200 B.C., ‘does not prove the use of iron, only the existence of that metal’. The professor doubtless wrote ‘existence’ by a slip for ‘knowledge’. But, as Mr. H. R. Hall points out (ib., No. 40, pp. 69-71), he ignores the discovery in the Great Pyramid of a piece of worked iron, which is now in the Third Egyptian Room of the British Museum (Case K 29, No. 2433), and to which a date about 300 years older ‘is assigned on good prima facie grounds’; and Mr. Hall reasonably asks whether the discovery of the lump of iron oxide does not corroborate the other. It is unlikely that an unworked lump of iron would have been deposited along with copper tools; and we may fairly suppose that the lump is the remains of an iron tool.