Elton quotes Posidonius on the trade in tin. The merchants, he says, buy the tin from the natives, and carry it over to Gaul.
Here, then, we have proof of an ancient and extensive trade in tin, and of a certain stage in civilisation.
There is, however, more.
In the second century B.C. the people had towns, which were stockaded forts, and villages. They lived in beehive huts, built with wood and wattle, having roofs of fern and thatch. They were skilled in some of the arts. They could make cloth and linen for summer and for winter use; they could dye these materials various colours. They could work in gold, and wore collars, bracelets, and rings of gold. They dyed their hair red. They wore a cuirass of plaited leather or chain mail; for arms they carried sword, pike, bow and arrow, and the sling. They also had scythed war-chariots. Their weapons were of steel, they could therefore work in iron; they used a wheeled plough.
Fifty years before the Roman invasion the King of Soissons, Divitiacus, had made a partial conquest of South Britain, but for generations before this there had been immigration into the island from Belgium and settlements had been made along the coast and the rivers.
The internal and external trade of the country is proved by the evidence of coins.
AN ARCHER
Strutt’sSports and Pastimes.
Where there is a coinage there is trade. That is to say, trade may be carried on without a coinage, but the existence of a coinage is a proof that the art of trading is understood, and has long been carried on. Now the people of this island had their own coinage before Julius Cæsar landed. How long before is quite uncertain. Some of their ancient coins are believed to be of the second century B.C. These are supposed to have been modelled on the coins of the Greeks of the age of Philip of Macedon, but taken from Gaulish patterns. At the same time, some of the coins have the appearance of being “centuries older than Cæsar’s first expedition” (Monumenta Historica Britannica, Introd. 151). In either case they are a proof of long-standing trade, and may have been of very remote antiquity. That the trade was internal is proved by the fact that ancient British coins belonging to the south of the country have been found in the north.
We may, therefore, safely conclude that all these facts point to the existence of a large trade between the island and the Continent. It was not out of charity that the tin mines were worked, and the tin sent to Thanet for exportation.