Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/359

A E C H M L G Y races, derived from human remains recovered in cave-drifts, ancient mining shafts, bogs, and marl-pits, or found in the most ancient sepulchres, accompanied by rudest evidences of art; and the researches of Nillson, Eschricht, Gosse, Rathke, Broca, and other Continental ethnologists, along with those which have been carried on with minute care in the British Islands, disclose characteristic cranial types indicating a succession of prehistoric races different from the predominant types belonging to the historical period of Europe; and some of them probably contemporaneous with the changes indicated in the periods of archaeological time. The very latest stage of archaeological antiquity, when it seems to come in contact with the dawn of historic time, was unquestionably one of complete barbarism, as is suffi ciently apparent from its correspondence to that which the intercourse with European voyagers is bringing to a close among the islands of the Pacific. The ancient Scottish subterranean dwellings termed weems (Gaelic itamkah, a cave), or " Picts houses," have been frequently found, apparently in the state in which they must have been abandoned by their original occupants ; and from those we learn that their principal aliment must have been shell fish and Crustacea, derived from the neighbouring sea-beach, along with the chance products of the chase. The large accumulations of the common shell-fish of our coasts found in some of those subterranean dwellings is remarkable ; though along with such remains the stone quern or hand- mill, as well as the ruder corn-crusher or pestle and mortar, repeatedly occur; supplying the important evidence that the primitive nomade had not been altogether ignorant of the value of the cereal grains. The source of change in Britain, and throughout Europe, from this rude state of barbarism, is clearly traceable to the introduction of metals and the discovery of the art of smelting ores. Gold was probably the earliest metal wrought, both from its attractive appearance, and from its superficial deposits, and the condition in which it is fre quently found, rendering its working an easy process. Tin also, in the south of Britain, was wrought at the very dawn of history : and, with the copper which abounds in the same district of country, supplied the elements of the new and important compound metal, bronze. 3. This accordingly indicates the transition from the later stone age to the third or Bronze Period, which, begin ning apparently with the recognition of the native copper as a malleable metal, and then as a material capable of being melted and moulded into form by the application of heat, was followed up by the art of smelting the crude ores so as to extract the metal, and that of mixing metals in diverse proportions so as to prepare an alloy of requisite ductility or hardness, according to the special aims of the artificer. Along with the full mastery of the working in copper and bronze the skill of the goldsmith was correspondingly developed ; and the ornaments of this period, including torques, armlets, beads, and other personal decorations and insignia of office, wrought in gold, are numeroiis, and often of great beauty. The pottery of the same period exhibits corresponding improvement in material, form, and ornamentation ; though, considering the mimetic and artistic skill shown in the drawings and carvings of the remotest periods, it is remarkable that the primitive pottery of Europe is limited, alike in shape and decoration, to purely arbitrary forms. This in its crudest conventional ism consists almost exclusively of varieties of zigzag pat terns scratched or indented on the soft clay. This primitive ornamentation seems so natural, as the first aesthetic promptings of the human mind, that it is diffi cult, if not in some cases impossible, to distinguish between the simple pottery of comparatively recent origin, recovered on the sites of old American Indian villages, and primi tive pottery obtained from British barrows pertaining to centuries long prior to the Christian era. But the fictile ware exhibits an improvement in some degree cor responding to that of the metallurgic art, which every where throughout Europe furnishes weapons, implements, and personal ornaments of the bronze period, characterised by much grace and delicacy in form, and by an ornamenta tion peculiar in style, but not unworthy of the novel forms and material. It was long assumed, alike by historians and antiquaries, that the beautiful bronze swords, spear-heads, shields, torques, arrnillse, &c., so frequently discovered, were mere relics of foreign conquest or barter, and they were variously assigned to Egyptian, Phoenician, Roman, or Danish origin. But this gratuitous assumption has been disproved by the repeated discovery of the moulds for making them, as well as of the refuse castings, and even of beds of charcoal, scoriaa, and other indications of metallurgy, on the sites where they have been found. It has not escaped notice, however, that the transition appears to be an abrupt one from stone to bronze, an alloy requiring skill and experience for its use; and that few examples are recorded of the dis covery of copper tools or weapons, though copper is a metal so easily wrought as to have been in use among the Red Indians of America. The inference from this fact is one Avhich all elements of probability tend to confirm, viz., that the metallurgic arts of the north of Europe are derived from a foreign source, whether by conquest or traffic; and that in the beautiful bronze relics so abundant, especially in the British Islands and in Denmark, we see the fruits of that experience which the more ancient civilisation of Egypt and Phoenicia had diffused. The direct intercourse between the countries on the Mediterranean and the Cassi- terides, or Tin Islands, as the only known parts of the British Islands are called in the earliest allusions which are made to them by Herodotus, Aristotle, and Polybius, abundantly accounts for the introduction of such knowledge to the native Britons at a veiy remote period. Phoenician and Carthaginian merchant ships traded to Cornwall cen turies before the white cliffs of Albion were first seen from the Roman Avar-galleys. Greece also, not improbably, proved a mediator in this all-important transfer. It is at least to be noted that the forms of weapons, and especially of the beautiful " leaf -shaped sword," as figured on the most ancient painted Greek vases, closely correspond to the most characteristic relics of the bronze period in the north of Europe and the British Isles. In reviewing the characteristics of this bronze period, the disclosures of native art on the American continent supply some singularly interesting and suggestive illustrations. There, throughout the whole northern regions of the North American continent and in the ruder areas of South America, as well as in the West Indian archipelago, a population was found consisting exclusively of rude nomad hunters, in a pure stone period of primitive savage art. Nor does it at all conflict with this that they were to a certain extent familiar with the resources of the rich copper regions of Lake Superior, where that metal is found in enormous masses in a malleable state. This they procured, and not only themselves employed it in the manufacture of weapons, implements, and personal ornaments, but dis tributed it by barter far down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and eastward to the great lakes, to the St Lawrence valley, and to the Hudson river. Silver and lead are also found in the same rich mineral region in metallic crystals, and were not unknown to the native tribes. But every where those metals were cold-wrought, as a mere malleable

stone capable of being hammered into any desired shapo,