The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

In Central France, and to a less extent elsewhere, the Alpine type had penetrated, though it is doubtful whether it had, as yet, reached the British Isles. And we must realise that it is just possible that some Mongoloid peoples, from the Baltic and ultimately from Siberia, may have made a few settlements in this country, though their numbers are not likely to have been great.[77]

Such then, as far as our evidence extends at present, seems to have been the population of Celtic lands in the true neolithic age, when people lived in small, self-contained communities, and outside commodities were rarely met with, and then only bartered from tribe to tribe. As we shall see, the next thousand years or so were to introduce fresh elements.

CHAPTER III
EARLY TRADE WITH CELTIC LANDS

During the neolithic age this simple principle of exchange continued, though it was probably more frequent, since communities had a narrower range, and some must have been living in regions where suitable raw material was scarce or non-existent. Some well favoured regions also had begun to develop regular commerce. The inhabitants of the island of Santorin, the ancient Melos, had before metal was known organised an export trade in obsidian goods, for they held a monopoly of that excellent volcanic glass in the Ægean region[78]. It seems likely, too, that the people of the Lipari islands traded in the same material with south Italy, Sicily and Malta.[79] Some of the natives of the French department of Indre-et-Loire, finding themselves possessed of great quantities of beautiful honey-coloured flint in the neighbourhood of Le Grand-Pressigny, exported implements, both finished and in the rough, to many distant places in France,[80] and the same is probably true of the dwellers on Pen-maen-mawr, if we may judge from the extensive remains of their industry recently discovered at Graig Llwyd.[81] The industry of Le Grand-Pressigny seems, however, like the obsidian trade in the Mediterranean, to belong to the closing phases of the neolithic age, while the Graig Llwyd factory may well date from the bronze age.

So long as these products of local industry were distributed by land, as in the case of Le Grand-Pressigny and Graig Llwyd, the old method of barter from tribe to tribe was possible and doubtless still continued. But when an island, such as Santorin, was the scene of production, such methods were ineffectual, and a definite organisation for export became necessary. To carry goods from one island to a neighbouring isle or to the mainland requires a ship and a crew, besides some representatives of the makers to effect the sales. When the ship has been equipped it is economical to provide a full cargo, and this would be more than one small community would need or could afford to purchase. This leads to trading voyages of some days’ or weeks’ duration, when the ship can call at a number of ports to meet the needs of many communities. The inland inhabitants have also to be catered for, and the most serviceable ports became in their turn fresh centres of distribution, and need a depôt under the supervision of a representative of the makers.

Thus, even before the close of the stone age, we see developing, especially in the Mediterranean region, the beginnings of an organised commerce, involving visits paid by ships and their crews to distant ports and foreign communities, and sometimes leading to the establishment of small foreign trading settlements. With the introduction of metal these features increased rapidly, and, as we shall see, before the bronze age had been in existence for many centuries, an extensive trade had grown up, mainly by sea, but sometimes by land as well, so that bronze became known and used over most parts of Europe which were not too remote from the sea to be affected by sea-borne commerce. Thus a considerable mingling of peoples and cultures took place, not by the sudden arrival of large numbers of invading hordes, but by the constant infiltration of small bodies of merchants and seamen.

The origin of the discovery of metal is still unknown, though many ingenious suggestions have been made. All investigators are agreed that gold, being the most strikingly conspicuous metal, was the first to be noticed and used, though there are those who believe that copper was almost if not quite as early a discovery. Professor Elliot Smith has made interesting suggestions in both cases. He believes that somewhere on the African shore of the Red Sea a cult arose which involved the use of the cowry shell as an amulet for fertility; such cults are well-known and widely spread.[82] For some reason the shells did not ultimately satisfy the people, or the supply diminished, and they made models in gold, deposits of which were found in that locality. Thus the virtue of the amulet, residing originally in its form, became transferred to the material, and gold became and has since remained a lucky and fortunate possession.[83]

Copper, on the other hand, he believes to have been discovered in Egypt. The inhabitants of this country had, in neolithic days, been in the habit of mining malachite in the Sinaitic peninsula, and grinding this mineral on slate palates into a powder, which they applied to their eyes. Green powder thus applied is said to save the wearer from the ill-effects of glaring sunlight, and perhaps served also to keep away the flies, which are a constant source of ophthalmia. Professor Elliot Smith suggests that an Egyptian grinding his lump of malachite on his decorated slate palate, one day met with an unusually hard lump, which he could not grind satisfactorily. In a fit of temper he threw the offending morsel into the fire, doubtless with words of objurgation; later on in the ashes he found a small red bead of copper. A repetition of this action, no doubt with the same formula, produced an identical result, and so the discovery of the reduction of copper from its ore was made.[84] I must admit that at one time I doubted the possibility of this explanation, as I questioned whether the heat of a fire of dung, now and probably then also, the only available fuel, would be sufficient to reduce the ore. To satisfy me on this point, Mr. R. H. Rastall of Cambridge kindly made a laboratory experiment upon a piece of malachite, and as a result assured me that the heat of a dung fire would be ample for the purpose.

While admitting that Professor Elliot Smith’s theories are both possible and suggestive, I feel inclined to offer another, albeit more prosaic solution to these problems. Primitive men, whether in prehistoric times or among backward peoples to-day, and, dare I say it, this is perhaps more true of primitive women, have a habit, not, I believe, quite extinct even in more advanced circles, of collecting small objects with natural perforations, or through which holes could readily be drilled, and stringing them upon a thread or wire to make necklaces or bracelets for the adornment of their persons. Such customs carry us back a long way. The old Grimaldi woman from the Grotte des enfants wore two bracelets composed of perforated shells, while her son, if indeed he were her son, had worn on his head a chaplet of the same materials.[85] The Alpine inhabitants of the North Italian lake-dwellings used the vertebræ of pike for the same purpose.[86] Whether the use of strings of beads originated in some religious practice I know not, for it may be that such religious associations, though found to-day among Buddhists, Moslems and Christians, may be relatively modern. That in later days it proved a safe and convenient way of storing accumulated wealth seems more certain, and for this purpose the custom is still practised. Perhaps after all the Preacher was right and this, like everything else, was vanity.

Leaving the cause unsolved, we may be content to note that the practice dates from the first arrival of modern man in Europe, and may be much older. But shells and the vertebræ of fish are easily damaged, and store would have been set by perforated stones, which would have been much more durable. Pebbles of clear quartz, with natural perforations, were worn sometimes by our Saxon forefathers,[87] but such stones are scarce and would have been prized accordingly.

I picture to myself the first discoverer of gold as a young man wishing to obtain the favour of a maid, or perhaps to purchase her from her father. I imagine such a youth going in search of some object, rare and durable and capable of being strung on a necklace. Walking down to a clear stream, perhaps to wash, though more probably to drink or to fish, he noticed in its bed a brilliant yellow stone of quite exceptional beauty. Picking it up and examining it he found he could bend it where it was thin, so that with the aid of a stone he was able to fashion it into the much sought-for bead. Here he had something which was perforated, strong, rare and also beautiful. We can imagine that his success would have been assured. Then would have followed the first gold rush.

Now copper, too, is found in a native state, and is also malleable and easily modelled with a stone hammer; it, too, is capable of exhibiting a bright metallic lustre when clean. Though it could not compare with gold for beauty, or in the permanence of its natural lustre, it could well take second place, and being less rare it soon came to be used freely for decorative purposes. At first it was obtained only in a native state, and was hammered, not melted, as was the case until recent times around Lake Superior.[88] Later some copper ornaments probably fell into the fire, and it was thus discovered that it could be melted. Later still experiments were made with other metallic-looking ores, such as chalcopyrite, and the metal age had come.

Where these discoveries were made is still a matter of uncertainty. Copper objects have been found not uncommonly in tombs of the second predynastic period in Egypt, and sometimes in those of the first.[89] So rare, however, are they in the latter, that, since the two cultures must to some extent have overlapped, it seems possible that the knowledge of this metal was introduced into Egypt by the second pre-dynastic people. It has been suggested recently that these people, with a copper culture, bringing the knowledge of wheat and the cult of Osiris, came from North Syria, from somewhere between Damascus and Beyrut,[90] and if Breasted’s views upon the Egyptian calender are sound, we may expect that they entered the Delta 4241 B.C. or thereabouts.[91]

In Mesopotamia we are not very sure of our dates at so early a period, nor have we got any clear evidence of the earliest copper civilisation of that region, but the beautiful copper lions brought back from Tell-el-’Obeid, near Ur, by Dr. H. R. Hall[92], show that at the time when they were made the art of working copper must long have been known, and Dr. Hall tells me that their date may be placed with fair certainty between 3500 and 3000 B.C. Small foundation figures, cast solid in copper, have been found which date from the time of Ur-Ninâ, about 3000 B.C.[93], while Mr. Raphael Pumpelly, describing his excavations at Anau in Turkestan, states that he found copper implements in a deposit, which on other grounds he dates between 8000 and 7000 B.C.[94] While there is no doubt that copper was found in the lowest layer of the Anau village site, there are few people who agree with the early date claimed for it by Mr. Pumpelly. Taking all the available evidence into consideration, it seems likely that copper was known and used in western Asia as early as 4500 B.C. and might conceivably have been known as early as 5000 B.C.; that it was known before that seems unlikely as far as we can judge from the evidence available at present.

Gold, as we have seen, seems to have been the first metal to be discovered, though we have no sufficient reason for believing that its discovery preceded that of copper by any considerable period. Objects of gold have been found in graves of the second pre-dynastic period in Egypt, as well as some of silver and of lead,[95] so that before 3500 B.C. the metal age had passed its infancy.

It will be seen from what has gone before, that the discovery of metal must have taken place somewhere in western Asia; in Asia Minor, Armenia or Persia. The knowledge spread first of all from tribe to tribe and from city to city, and the objects were traded like the stone axes of Le Grand-Pressigny and Graig Llwyd; but about 4241 B.C. this knowledge was carried into Egypt with an invading people. So far, then, there is no evidence of organised trade, for the gold, silver and lead, which have been found in the pre-dynastic tombs, may have arrived in the same way. Gold, it is true, was found in quartz veins in the granite mountains by the shores of the Red Sea, and in the Wadi Foakhir,[96] but it is not clear that these sources were tapped before the fourth or fifth dynasties; in later days the principal source of supply was Nubia which had, however, been inaccessible to traders until Mernere had made the first cataract passable for navigation about 2570 B.C.[97] Silver was always imported from abroad, probably from Cilicia.[98]

There are reasons for believing that some, at any rate, of the gold used during the period of the Old Kingdom was of foreign origin. Professor Flinders Petrie tells me that Dr. Gladstone made for him an analysis of the gold object found in the tomb of King Khasakhemui, of the second dynasty, who reigned, according to the chronology we are using, about 3200 B.C. He found on this gold object a red crust, which he stated was antimoniate of gold. Now it appears that antimony will only combine with gold in the presence of tellurium, and Professor Petrie tells me that he has been advised that there is no known source of this ore, telluride of gold and antimony, except in Transylvania. I have been informed that all the gold found within the Carpathian ring is of this nature, but as the richest sources lie in Transylvania, where gold was worked by the Romans, the conclusion is the same, that before 3200 B.C. the Egyptians were obtaining gold from Central Europe.

As it seems unlikely that gold would be carried between such distant points as the valleys of the Danube and the Nile by the old method of bartering from tribe to tribe, especially since there are so many physical obstacles on the route, including the Taurus range, it seems more likely that we should see here evidence for an organised sea commerce. Not that I would imply a direct sea traffic from the Danube to the Nile, but that some intermediate people, probably some islanders in the Ægean, the people perhaps of Melos or Crete, traded on the one hand with settlements near the mouth of the Danube and with those in the Delta as well. The obsidian trade of Melos may well be as early as this, in fact it seems to have been on the decline by 3000 B.C., and we find Cretan trade flourishing only a few centuries later. Either or both of these islands might well have been responsible for this traffic.

Oversea trade, then, was in existence, if not very highly developed, during the early days of metal, the centuries preceding 3000 B.C. The knowledge of copper, and the possibility of making copper nails and wire, must have given a great impetus to ship building, which must at this stage have passed from the use of rafts and dug-outs to that of boats built as we know them now. But a new discovery, greater even in some respects than those which I have been describing, was still further to encourage oversea traffic.

The manufacture of implements of flint and obsidian had reached a high pitch of perfection during the early days of metal, and although the new materials were valuable for ornaments, copper knives were, in many respects, less serviceable than stone ones, as the metal is soft and its edge easily turned. It is true that many men, particularly those who wished to display their wealth, preferred copper daggers to those made of flint, for they were more ornate, more novel and had a scarcity value. Those, however, who were poor, or untouched by the fashionable snobbery, preferred the well-tried flint article, which was probably more effective for its purpose.

But with the discovery that the addition of about ten per cent. of tin to the copper produced an alloy of considerable hardness and no little toughness as well, from which could be made implements which seldom chipped or turned, and which could have their edges quickly renewed by hammering or grinding did such an accident happen, the days of copper came quickly to an end, and the traffic in flint implements, even in obsidian, fell upon evil days. It was this discovery, which made metal not merely a luxury, but a really serviceable article to man, which brought the stone age to an end and ushered in the true metal age.

How, when and where this discovery was made is still a mystery. At one time I was disposed to think that it was perhaps in Spain, where both these metals are found, that the discovery was accidentally made, but evidence which has come to hand quite recently has disposed of this idea. Professor Sayce has recently published an extract from a tablet found in the royal library of Assur.[99] It is from a document drawn up in the reign of Sargon of Akkad, whose date has now been finally fixed at 2800 B.C. It is a geographical description of that monarch’s empire, giving a list of the provinces, at the close of which it is said that his conquests had extended “from the lands of the setting sun to the lands of the rising sun, namely to the tinland (Ku-Ki) and Kaptara (Crete) countries beyond the Upper Sea (the Mediterranean).” At first there was a tendency to interpret this passage as though Ku-Ki was beyond the Mediterranean, and must refer either to Spain or Brittany; but this is to misunderstand the passage. As Professor Sayce says: “the western extension of the empire ended with the Syrian coast; beyond that were Kaptara or Krete and the Tinland.” Ku-Ki may well have been Cyprus, or some other island in the Mediterranean, or some region easily accessible from it.

Now the importance of this passage is that it shows us that as early as 2800 B.C. the Babylonians were cognisant of the existence of tin, and doubtless aware of its value as an ingredient of bronze; this can only mean that they were using it to harden the copper, which they had worked so well centuries earlier. The passage implies that Sargon’s rule extended to Ku-Ki, which may perhaps mean no more than that some of his subjects had a trading post there. What seems important is that the discovery of the value of tin and bronze had been made before 2800 B.C., somewhere in western Asia, though at what sites is at present uncertain. Copper mines, which are known to have been worked at an early date, exist south of Trebizonde, near Erzeroum, in Armenia and at Diarbekir in the upper valley of the Tigris; ancient tin workings have been found further east in Khorazan.[100] But the local supply of tin was apparently insufficient, and merchants from the Persian Gulf were carrying on a trade in this commodity with a place in the Mediterranean region, even if they had not already, as seems probable, established a definite trading post in Ku-Ki.

Thus we see that a definite organised trade, both by sea and by land, had been established in the eastern Mediterranean region before 2800 B.C., and that this included a new and important feature, the search for and importation of raw materials as well as the export of manufactured articles.

Now, as I have shown elsewhere,[101] at a date which cannot be very much later, during a period which closed about 2200 B.C., the eastern Mediterranean was in close trade relations with Spain, and was exploiting the mineral resources of that peninsula. At present it is uncertain who these traders were, but they seem to have been in touch with Crete, the Cyclades and the second city of Hissarlik, and perhaps too with Cyprus. Though we have no evidence that these traders were from the Persian Gulf, they were trading between Spain and the area in which Ku-Ki probably lay, and if they were not subjects of the Babylonian Empire, they were at least carrying on the metal trade first organised by the people from the Persian Gulf.

Quite recently it has been stated that there is no clear evidence that the Spanish copper mines had been worked at so early a time,[102] but the data cited by Siret[103] seem to me to prove conclusively that the early settlements of El Argar had direct or indirect trade relations with Hissarlik II., and the discovery throughout the Spanish peninsula of clay balls of a certain type,[104] which exactly resemble some found by Schliemann in the burnt city,[105] seems to me to place this early connection beyond all reasonable doubt.

How early this Spanish trade began we cannot yet say with certainty, beyond the fact that it must have been in existence for some time before the destruction of Hissarlik II. in 2225 B.C.[106] How long it continued in the same hands is also uncertain. But, as I have shown elsewhere,[107] there is evidence that while it lasted, and certainly before 2000 B.C., the eastern traders not only passed through the Pillars of Hercules and discovered the tin fields in the north-west of the peninsula, but learned also that both tin and gold were to be found in the rivers of the south of Brittany. Before the close of the third millennium, probably several centuries before its close, this Levantine trade had reached the Morbihan, where stone axes have been found which repeat the shapes of copper axes from Cyprus.[108]

Now, if we compare the copper and bronze axes found throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to Spain, and those found along the west of Europe from Spain to Brittany, we find a gradual change in form from the triangular axes of Cyprus to the western type, with semi-circular butt and widely splayed edge. The earliest types are found only in the east, the more developed only in the west, for in the east they followed a different line of development. It is true, however, in a general way that the type develops as we pass westward and northward, two or more varieties overlapping at many points en route. This can better be understood by reference to the series of axes shown in Plate I., which could probably be made more perfect, were it possible to get drawings of all the specimens in local museums and private collections.

If again we take the copper daggers, with broad butts and slightly ogival blades, several of which have been found in Crete, and compare them again with those found at Scurgola in South Italy and Monteracello in Sicily,[109] and with other types from Malta,[110] Spain, Brittany and the west, we shall find the type gradually narrowing at the butt and lengthening in the blade, till we come in later centuries to the type commonly known as the rapier, but which I think might more correctly be termed a dirk (see Plate II.).

The gradual evolution of the axe and the dagger as they pass westwards and northwards seems to indicate a line of trade, spreading further and further to the north-west as the centuries pass. At present we must be content with an outline of the movement, but if illustrations of all the specimens found in these regions were available, I doubt not but that the evidence would be more convincing and the details and the dates more minute and exact.

Thus we find these early traders seeking for copper, tin and gold, or any other precious commodities, on the north-west of Europe before 2000 B.C., and it has been shown by various authorities that among the gold-fields explored at that time none was richer than the Irish gold-fields in the Wicklow Hills.[111] It is needless here to recapitulate all the evidence which has been adduced to establish the early working of these deposits. The wealth of gold ornaments of this period found in the island, most of which have passed into the melting pot, but hundreds of which are still in the National Museum at Dublin,[112] would alone be sufficient evidence; but we know also that certain ornaments, known as lunulæ or crescents, were exported and reached Brittany, Denmark and Germany.[113] It is likely, too, that gold objects of Irish origin reached to more distant places.[114] This shows us that Ireland was in touch with the trade routes we have been discussing, and this in turn accounts for the vast numbers of bronze implements of early types which are to be found in all museums and private collections, not only in Ireland itself, but throughout Great Britain.

It would seem probable that the early traders from the Mediterranean also reached the Baltic at about the same date, for we find there, too, an early bronze industry, which, while bearing a close resemblance to Central European models, exhibits also western and Mediterranean types.[115] The search for amber probably induced our traders to go to this distant region, for amber, like the precious metals, was much in request in Mediterranean lands, for again it was a substance from which beads could readily be made. It was probably these traders who carried with them the news of the Irish gold-fields, and in due course other traders, starting out from the Baltic, joined the gold rush. We have already seen that a gold crescent of Irish work has been found in Denmark, we can find, too, other evidence of this trade.

Now if we plot out on a map of the British Isles the sites at which have been found the bronze implements of this period, and such a map of flat celts was published some years ago by Mr. O. G. S. Crawford,[116] we shall notice certain striking features. Where the chalk lands or limestone hills exist these finds are fairly numerous and generally distributed, for, as Crawford showed, these areas were open grass lands. But throughout the rest of the country these sites string out into long lines, and these lines, if produced, would intersect near Dublin; these lines seem to indicate trade routes, passing through thickly wooded and probably uninhabited country on their way to the Irish gold-fields.

One such route starts from Southampton and passing Winchester, crosses the Kennet at Newbury, where it was met perhaps by a route from Chichester. Thence it passed by the head waters of the Thames to a point on the Cotswolds not far from Cirencester, where it may have been joined by other routes from the south-west. It descended the scarp slope of the Cotswold at or near Broadway, crossed the Avon near Evesham, and the Severn at Bevere Island above Worcester. Thence it passed up the west side of the valley, crossing the river again below Shrewsbury. Its course across north Shropshire seems to have lain on the watershed between the Tern and the Perry, if we may judge from evidence of a later date,[117] thence passing from Ebnal towards Llanarmon-dyffryn-Ceiriog, it crossed over to the Dee Valley, where we can pick up fresh evidence near Corwen. From the head of Bala lake it seems to have turned slightly north of west, instead of passing down the Mawddach Valley, and it reached the coast somewhere to the north of Harlech, perhaps by the so-called Roman steps at Cwm Bychan. This is the best attested route so far traced out, but further work is required to establish its course with precision all the way.

Another route from the Yorkshire coast through York to the Aire gap has been described by Colonel E. Kitson Clark,[118] while some years ago I traced several from the borders of the Fens into Leicestershire, where they met at Bardon Hill; thence the route passed through Ashby-de-la-Zouch as far as Burton-on-Trent, where it seemed to be pointing to the Peak district.[119] There appears to be a route running thence by Macclesfield and Knutsford towards Warrington, while there are signs that the route through the Aire gap also turned south towards the same spot. Near Warrington a number of flat axes have been found,[120] some on the north and some to the south. The northern settlement was in the parish of Winwick, and among the things found there and dating from this time is a battle-axe of the so-called boat-axe or batyx type.[121] This type and the flint of which it is made both indicate Denmark as the place of origin. The fact that both these trade routes run to Warrington, which seems then to have been an island in the middle of the Mersey, shows, I think, that here we have a port, from which in the early bronze age Baltic traders set sail for Dublin Bay.[122] Warrington, therefore, rather than Chester, was the first predecessor of Liverpool, and the Mersey holds its own as the earliest estuary used for the western trade. Crawford’s map also shows that a similar trade route must have crossed Scotland from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde and the Mull of Galloway, but no details of such route have been worked out.

Much work yet remains to be done before the courses of these trade routes can be traced with precision and their dates fully established, but enough has been said, I trust, to show that in addition to direct sea routes from Brittany, the Irish gold fields tempted traders to cross both England and Scotland on their way from France and the Baltic.[123] These traders would have needed provisions for the journey, and for these would have bartered bronze axes to the people settled on the chalk downs and limestone hills. The journey across the Midland plain was through a densely wooded and probably uninhabited area, and in passing through Wales they kept mostly to the valleys, while the bulk of the population grazed its sheep on the high moorlands.[124] The few axes found must have been such as were lost by the way, and considering the number found this indicates an extensive traffic.

In Ireland the traders probably employed the natives to wash the alluvial gold; they had also to barter with them for their supplies. No wonder, then, that bronze implements of the earliest type have been found almost more abundantly in that island than in any other part of Europe, while the number of gold objects found there is unsurpassed elsewhere. Doubtless the natives worked the gold fields sometimes on their own account, and they seem also to have tried to supply themselves with home-made metal axes. There are veins of copper ore in various parts of the island, which they seem to have discovered, but tin is to all intents and purposes absent.[125] It is possible, too, that the traders refused to divulge the secret of the tin alloy. It would have been strange indeed had they not done so, and so the native Irish, for a time at least, made themselves axes of copper. This, at least, seems so be the most plausible explanation of the great number of copper axes found in that island.

The foregoing is, of necessity, but a brief account of the early metal trade and its relations with Celtic lands. To do the subject justice would require more space than is at my disposal; nor is the time yet ripe for more detailed treatment. This outline will serve to show that foreign elements reached Celtic lands some 4000 years ago, though in small numbers; who these people were must be considered in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV
THE PROSPECTORS

IN many parts of the world there are to be found monuments of rough, unhewn stones, sometimes rudely shaped by hammering, which from the size of the stones used have been termed megalithic monuments.[126] These consist of burial chambers, either a simple slab or capstone supported on four or more uprights, or a similar but more complex chamber, approached by a stone-lined passage. Other monuments consist of circles or alignments of standing stones, or single stones only set in an upright position. There are many types; some, like the dolmen or simplest burial chamber, or the simple standing stone, are widely distributed, while others have a restricted range. One type of elaborate temple is found only in Malta and in the adjacent island of Gozo.[127] Such monuments have these features in common: the stones are large, they have not been hewn with chisels or axes, and they are orthostatic or set on end.

Frequently associated with these megalithic monuments are other structures, which are believed to belong to the same culture, though the association is not so clearly established. Such are bee-hive huts, round towers, and dry walls with polygonal masonry. These are often found in close association with the erections of larger stones, but not infrequently where true megalithic structures are absent.[128]

An attempt has been made to show that the dolmen originated in Egypt, and is closely connected with the mastaba, the tomb used throughout the earliest dynasties.[129] Elsewhere I have endeavoured to show that there are reasons why we cannot attribute the origin of these structures to the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, and that the resemblances may better be explained by supposing that the idea of the former was introduced into Egypt, perhaps at the beginning of the second predynastic period, from some region, such as Syria, where dolmens were known, or else that both had been derived from a common ancestry.[130]

It has been suggested by some inquirers that the fashion of erecting such megalithic monuments of orthostatic blocks arose at one time and in one place, and was carried by degrees from centre to centre until it reached many widely scattered regions between Ireland and Polynesia.[131] It is not suggested that this culture, with which has been associated many others, such as terrace cultivation, irrigation, the use of conch shells and a number of others, was carried to all these places simultaneously or even within the same millennium, nor is it asserted that the people who introduced it to these widely scattered regions were of necessity the same. The idea may, I think, be better expressed by saying that a cult or religion became widely disseminated at an early date, that it developed many varieties in the regions in which it took root, and that these regions often became in time fresh centres for dissemination. Thus it might happen that a daughter cult might ultimately become spread through part of the region in which the parent cult had arisen. A parallel may be drawn from the spread of Christianity, especially in these islands. The new faith reached Britain during the period of the Roman occupation and thence spread to Ireland; later, when it had disappeared from the former, it passed from Ireland to Iona and thence back to England.

We need not discuss the whole of this hypothesis, which is concerned with a much wider area than the lands we are considering. One of the most essential features, however, of this interesting thesis is that the people, whoever they were, who spread the cult of megalithic monuments and allied practices, were travelling in search of gold, silver, copper, tin, amber and pearls; they were, in fact, merchants in search of precious and easily portable commodities.

Now Perry,[132] who has specially worked at this part of the hypothesis, maintains that megalithic monuments are invariably found in association with metalliferous deposits, amber coasts and pearl fisheries, and he has produced maps which appear at first sight very convincing. A careful examination of his megalith map shows that he has copied that of Fergusson, published in 1872,[133] and which represents far less accurately the distribution of these monuments than does that published by Colonel A. Lane-Fox in 1869.[134] Neither of these maps, however, gives us a really reliable summary of the facts. Much work has been done on this subject since these maps were produced, many fresh areas have been added, and two at least have been deducted; but no one has recently attempted to make a map of the European megaliths, or those of any country except Holland.[135] The French anthropologists have made a list of the dolmens in France, and published a summary giving the number noted in each department,[136] a catalogue of the British megaliths is in process of formation.

Wherever it has been possible to test it with sufficient accuracy, we find that Perry’s contention is substantially true, and that there is a definite relation between many areas rich in megalithic structures and deposits of metal which are known to have been worked in early days; the megalithic areas of the Baltic coincide fairly well with the coasts producing amber. Nevertheless there are many spots, rich in metals, and which are known or suspected to have been worked in early days, where megaliths, have not hitherto been noted, and on the other hand, dolmens and other such structures occur, sometimes with great frequency, in areas devoid of metals or other precious commodities. The problem is not quite so simple as it would appear from Perry’s account.

Still, looking at the matter broadly in the light of information available at present, it does seem that, in western Europe at any rate, the megalithic monuments cluster thickest in or around those regions which produced gold, copper, tin and amber, and which were readily accessible to maritime traffic, and that they coincide very closely with the lines of trade which I described in the last chapter. The exceptions, too, are not destructive to the hypothesis. In the British Isles we find that the megaliths in the main coincide with the metalliferous areas, though in some cases more closely with lead ores than with the metals previously mentioned. As lead does not seem to have been used in north-west Europe before 1000 B.C., these monuments must, if any connection be implied, date from a much later period than that which we are discussing. But a large number of megalithic structures are found in the region surrounding Salisbury Plain and in certain parts of the Cotswolds. These are some of those open chalk and limestone areas already mentioned, which were the early centres of population in this country. As we have seen, certain trade routes to Ireland seem to traverse these regions, and here the merchants would have obtained their supplies of food for the rest of their journey; it would not surprise us, therefore, if they introduced their cult here, and that these populous areas formed fresh centres of dispersion.

The long barrows of Wiltshire and the Cotswold areas, and the same is probably true of those in South Wales, have been thought by some Scandinavian archæologists to be closely related to the types peculiar to the Baltic region. Dr. Knut Sterjna[137] believed that the English chambered long barrows represented a stage in the evolution from the dolmens to the chambered barrows (sépultures à galerie) of Denmark and Sweden. The stone circles, which are conspicuous in the Salisbury plain area, are absent in France, and seem to have originated by the Baltic. It would seem, then, that some at any rate of our English megaliths were introduced, not so much by merchants coming from the south as by those adventurers who came later from the Baltic region, some of whom we have seen passed across this country to the port at Warrington.

In France, too, though megaliths are more numerous and finer in the Morbihan, where we have seen that tin and gold were found, than elsewhere in that country, yet they cluster thickly in Finistère, and in a curved line from that department to the Mediterranean coast near Narbonne.[138] The occurrence of so many megaliths in Finistère and the adjoining departments may be due to the need of the early traders to take refuge in the inlets of that region, while endeavouring to round the dangerous promontory. That they did so not infrequently is shown by the occurrence near these inlets of numerous hoards of bronze implements, most of which date from the time which we are discussing.[139]

The band across the country clusters most thickly just north-east of the line, running through the Carcassone gap, now followed by the canal du midi. This seems to indicate that a land route through the pass was in use at this time, as a safer alternative to rounding the Iberian peninsula by sea. From this line the cult seems to have spread north-eastwards, though these monuments grow scarcer the further we leave this line.

Lastly, there are certain islands in which these monuments are found, which do not seem to have produced any wealth of the type required, notably Sardinia and Malta. We have also an isolated group near Taranto. It seems probable that such islands, and points en route with good harbours like Taranto, would have been convenient points of call to these traders, as Tarentum was afterwards to the Phœnician and Greek merchants. Here, and perhaps too at Syracuse, they may well have had depôts, but from the wealth of its megalithic monuments we may well believe that Malta was the base of operations for the western and northern trade. Here we have a small island, very isolated and with excellent ports, with a population primitive and docile; such a spot would be a safe depôt in which to collect and store valuable merchandise, until it was convenient to ship it through the more traversed and perhaps pirate-infested seas of the east. Thus, though there are more exceptions to his rule than Perry would lead us to suspect, these exceptions do not seem to weaken his hypothesis, but rather help to prove the rule.

Now in Britain and the north generally these monuments, or at any rate some of them such as dolmens and long barrows, are believed to date from the neolithic age, albeit from its latest phases; nevertheless there are instances in Scandinavia and Brittany of the discovery of copper tools and gold beads in these tombs.[140] Further south the evidence of metal in association with them is clearer, but in Malta the only bronze implements discovered, the hoard found in 1915 in the temple of Hal Tarxien,[141] had been deposited above three feet of silt which had accumulated on the temple floor. This at first sight seems to militate against the theory that these structures were the tombs and temples of miners.

I do not think, however, that these facts are necessarily fatal to the hypothesis. In the first instance it is probable that gold and amber were the objects of search, and these were probably to a large extent exported. For a long time metal implements must have been rare in these regions, and the people might well have hesitated to bury them with their dead. The tools of metal were modern and new-fangled, while burial customs are singularly conservative, as we can see at any English funeral. For centuries and millennia it had been customary to bury with the corpse weapons of stone for use in the next world; what kind of a reception would the deceased have had on his arrival with a metal instrument? It would have been a great risk, which was seldom if ever taken. In matters of burial and religion, which are in fact one, the older course is safer, and so these people, even after metal was known, continued to bury stone implements with their dead, just as Joshua circumcised the Israelites with flint knives.[142] The temples of Malta, too, were erected without the use of metal tools, as was Solomon’s temple,[143] and it is probable that while this cult lasted no metal object might be taken within the shrine. It was only after Hal Tarxien had been deserted, and its floor covered with three feet or more of dust, that traders in bronze, or perhaps pirates, who knew not the ancient cult, ventured to bury their treasure in the desolated sanctuary.

In a recent paper Mr. Thurlow Leeds has suggested that the dolmen originated in the Iberian peninsula, in the basin of the Tagus, and thence spread throughout west Europe.[144] The first type he believes to have been polygonal with a short gallery of approach, lined with large stones, and this gallery seems, from his plans, to have been somewhat in the nature of an antechamber. He further shows that such primitive dolmens are derived from cave tombs, found in the neighbouring region, and in these caves the antechamber seems more apparent. More recently[145] he has compared these early dolmens with certain rock-cut tombs at Castellucio near Syracuse, though, if I understand him aright, he would derive the Sicilian tombs from those in Portugal. Taking all the facts into consideration it seems more likely that the Iberian caves and dolmens are derived from the rock-cut tombs of south-east Sicily.

As to the date of this trade we can say little with certainty at present. We have seen that objects have been found in Spain which seem to point to a connection with Hissarlik II. In the temple of Hal Tarxien in Malta were found certain carved stones with a double spiral ornament[146], which exactly resemble some in the Syracuse museum, which had closed some of the rock-cut tombs near that city.[147] These tombs have been relegated by Signor Orsi to the period he calls Siculan I., and to this period belong the rock-cut tombs at Castellucio, in one of which was found several pieces of carved ivory, which closely resemble a piece found in Hissarlik II[148]. This city was founded about 2500 B.C., or perhaps some centuries earlier, and seems to have been sacked about 2225 B.C.[149] The trade then which we are discussing must have taken place during the latter half of the third millennium B.C., and in the light of the Babylonian tablet already quoted may well have begun some centuries earlier. How soon the trade and the megalith cult passed on from Spain to Brittany and thence to Ireland and the Baltic is uncertain, though it becomes difficult to fit in all the successive cultures unless we postulate that megalithic monuments were known in Denmark and the south of Sweden as early as 2400 or 2500 B.C.[150]; in Brittany a still earlier date seems to be needed. We may then suggest tentatively that the Atlantic trade began before the close of the first half of the third millennium.

All this seems to indicate that the rock-cut tomb with an antechamber, the fore-runner of the dolmen, came from Asia; the antechamber also occurs in the Egyptian mastaba. Professor Elliot Smith believes that this structure, and the use of the antechamber, developed in Egypt,[151] but of this I do not feel confident. It may well have been introduced into that land from the north-east by his Giza folk. If these may be identified, as I think they may, with Newberry’s people, who introduced wheat and the second pre-dynastic culture, we must postulate the use of rock-cut tombs with antechambers in Syria before 4000 B.C. Rock-cut tombs and dolmens, dating from before and just after the discovery of metal, are not uncommon in some parts of this region.[152]

Some years ago Professor Fleure was engaged in a detailed survey of the physical characters of the present inhabitants of Wales, and the results of this inquiry were published in 1916.[153] Among the many types noted was one which is of special interest in this connection. He describes it as: “powerfully built, often intensely dark, broad-headed, broad-faced, strong and square jawed men characteristic of the Ardudwy coast, the south Glamorgan coast, the Newquay district (Cardiganshire), Pencaer in north Pembrokeshire, and other places.”[154] He states in another place; “We found our dark, stalwart, broad-headed men on certain coastal patches, often curiously associated with megaliths in Wales.”[155] Later on he states that a similar type has been noted in Ireland, about Wicklow, in South Devon, and perhaps Cornwall, in the gulf of Saint Brieuc, around Narbonne, in the Asturias and around Oviedo, on the Andalusian coast from Motril to Moguer, in the gulf of Salerno and thence past the gulf of Taranto to Bari, on the Adriatic.[156]

It will thus be seen that this type appears to occur in just those regions in which megaliths and traces of early mining have been found. The inference Fleure has drawn is that in some way these people were connected with the ancient trade we have been discussing.[157] Though I cannot find that he has published the fact, Fleure has told me that he has noted the type in many of our commercial centres, especially in sea-port towns. It is not uncommon in Liverpool, especially in shipping circles.

Some years previous to the publication of Fleure’s paper I had noted in Athens, in the restaurant at which I usually lunched, a type which I was unable to place among those described by Ripley. I noted, too, that they looked prosperous and were evidently well-off. Early in 1914 I noted the same type in Alexandria, especially common among the successful Greek cotton merchants. Both these occurrences puzzled me until in 1916 Fleure’s paper seemed to offer an explanation. I then remembered having noted the same type in Venice and Florence, and among the portraits in both those cities of successful merchants of the renaissance; it also occurred to me that the type could often be seen in London, especially in the city.

When it became clear that here was a type, not recognised or described by any previous anthropologist, and one, moreover, with a rather unusual distribution, it was felt that it should receive a name, which should identify it neither with any people past or present, nor with any language, for such equations would inevitably lead to confusion, nor with any place or country, for its place of origin was uncertain. Since the distribution of the type seemed to be in maritime trading centres, or else in those areas which were connected with ancient mining or trade, it was felt that this type must have been associated with these enterprises. Taking therefore a name, commonly used in America and in our colonies for those who go out to search for gold or other precious metals, we decided to term them “Prospectors,” and by this name they will now be called.

Constant observations since made on people of this type have shown us that they are remarkably clever, especially at money making, and that they engage more in trade than in manufacture, and that their trade is commonly in oversea commodities, when it is not in money itself. The type seems intermediate between that of the Mediterranean and of the Alpine, and suggests a cross, but the great stature which is sometimes, though not invariably, found among them suggested that the cross was probably between the Mediterranean and the eastern Alpine or Anatolian type, rather than with the short and stumpy western Alpine. It was felt that they had reached the west and north from somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean region,[158] as had in all probability the cult of megalithic monuments, and certainly the knowledge of metals. Further than this it was not possible to trace them.

Now, as has already been noted, the Prospector type has been noticed not uncommonly in Florence, both among the present population and in the fifteenth century portraits. A glance at some of the pictures on the Etruscan tombs,[159] and the portrait statuettes on the alabaster sarcophagi, shows us a type corresponding very closely to Fleure’s description.

The Etruscans are a mysterious people, and various views which have been expressed as to their origin have led to no little confusion of thought. Leaving out of account such evidence as may have come down from the neolithic and early bronze ages, we find, according to tradition, that the Etruscans arrived from Asia Minor, probably in the eleventh century B.C., or perhaps a little later.[160] About 800 B.C. we have archæological evidence of the arrival of another people from the north, who settled near Bologna, where they developed a culture known as that of Villa-Nova. The Etruscans and the Villa-Nova people certainly exchanged products, and may have to some extent amalgamated. Later traditions suggest that the Etruscans extended their empire over the Villa-Nova area and to the south as well,[161] but this, while true in one sense, may give a very wrong impression.

I would suggest that the Etruscans proper, the Etruscus obesus of the Latin writers, were the people who so closely resemble our Prospectors, and the fact that they are said to have come from the east, agrees well with this view. The Prospectors, wherever we meet them, are merchants and business men, and not the kind of men to lead warlike expeditions, or to bring all Italy within their empire. On the other hand, as I hope to show in subsequent chapters, the men responsible for the Villa-Nova culture were a warlike, conquering type, given to imperial expansion, and it is far more likely that if one or other were the conqueror it would be the men of Villa-Nova.

That such was the case seems to be indicated by the frescoes in a tomb, a copy of which is on view in the garden of the Etruscan museum at Florence. In these we find depicted a country house, with domestic scenes, and a portrait of the owner, a fair man with a narrow face, blue eyes and brown beard, wearing a fox-skin head-dress. This man is totally unlike the Etruscus obesus of most of the other tomb paintings, and seems to be of that fair Nordic type, which, as I hope to show, formed the ruling caste, at any rate, of the Villa-Nova people. It seems probable, too, that the bodies buried in the Regulini-Galassi and other warrior tombs were also of this type.[162] All this seems to suggest that the Villa-Nova people at one time conquered Etruria, then extended their empire as far south as Naples and Pompeii. The Etruscan prospectors would not have been averse to this extension of the dominions of their war-lords, as their trade was doubtless increased thereby.

But it may be argued that megalithic monuments are not to be found in Tuscany, though it was once said that this was the case.[163] This, of course, is true, but the Etruscans are believed not to have entered Italy until after 1100 B.C., when such erections were in most places obsolete. Some of the earliest of the Etruscan tombs, however, look as though they had developed from the dolmen form,[164] though they are made of well-wrought stone, rock-cut tombs are of common occurrence, and dry polygonal walling, which, as we have seen, often occurs in megalithic areas, is not uncommon,[165] and there is a very fine example of this work at Fiesole.

Morris Jastrow junior,[166] in studying the religion of Babylonia, was struck with certain resemblances between the religious practices of that country and those in vogue in Etruria. Here I will only mention three points: the Sumerians, like the Etruscans, lived in city states; the Sumerians were governed by priestly magistrates known as Patesi, while the Etruscans had similar officials called Lucumons; lastly both peoples were addicted to the practice of hepatoscopy, or the art of divining by means of sheeps’ livers, and made models of the livers to aid their students. Such models have been found in Sumer and Etruria, and nowhere else except at Boghaz Keui, on the Halys, the ancient capital of the Hittites.

Relatively few sculptured figures of the Sumerians have come down to us, but those which have been found show us a sturdy people, not very tall, short in the neck and with broad heads,[167] and some of the Etruscan tomb paintings resemble fairly closely some of the Sumerian reliefs.[168] Besides this some of the small statuettes brought by M. de Morgan from Susa,[169] show us heads which bear a close resemblance to those found on the Etruscan alabaster sarcophagi. It is a far cry from Etruria to Sumer, but tradition brings the Etruscans from Asia Minor, and Boghaz Keui may have been an intermediate station, though probably not the only one. But we have seen that the Babylonians were engaged in trading for tin in the Mediterranean region in 2800 B.C., so that it is not altogether impossible that the Prospectors may have come in the first instance from the Persian gulf, where they had been known as Sumerians, though it is, of course, possible that the Prospector was not the only element of that population.

A very natural reply to such a suggestion is that megalithic monuments do not occur in Sumer, or, as I should prefer to state it, have not yet been observed near the Persian gulf. Such absence is not, however, fatal to our hypothesis. As we have seen it seems likely that the dolmen is derived from the rock-cut tomb, and such tombs, and dolmens too, occur in Syria. As yet we know little about the tombs of Mesopotamia before 3000 B.C., and still less of their contents; we may yet find in that region some sepulchre, perhaps built of sun-dried brick, perhaps of slabs of stone, which bears a closer resemblance to the dolmen than does the Egyptian mastaba.

The contention is that several lines of evidence point to the Sumerians, or certain groups of them, as being the traders who travelled the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast of Europe in search of precious metals, and who are somehow responsible for the spread of the megalithic culture. Now, as we have seen, the Prospector is normally a merchant, we do not find him as a rule among miners and sailors, yet sailors must have accompanied these expeditions, and perhaps skilled miners also in some cases. It may be that the cult of the dolmen, or the rock-cut tomb which preceded it, belonged to one or other of these humbler peoples, perhaps recruited from the coast of Syria. Or it may be, again, that the Prospector, being unable to bury his dead after the fashion customary by the Persian Gulf, devised another plan more convenient for use in strange lands. The latter is, I am inclined to think, the more likely solution, since dolmens and other megalithic structures are found all round Sumer, in Syria and Palestine to the west[170], in the Crimea and the Caucasus.[171] Stone circles are found to the east in Seistan[172], while both these and dolmens occur further east in India.