ing and more barbarous nations of Western Europe. Even in the time of Pausanias[1] (after A.D. 174) the Sarmatians are mentioned as being unacquainted with the use of iron; and practically we have good corroborative archæological evidence of such a sequence in the extensive discoveries that have been made of antiquities belonging to the transitional period, when the use of iron or steel was gradually superseding that of bronze for tools or weapons, and when the forms given to the new metal were copied from those of the old. The most notable relics of this transitional period are those of the ancient cemetery at Hallstatt, in the Salzkammergut, Austria, where upwards of a thousand graves were opened by Ramsauer, of the contents of which a detailed account has been given by the Baron von Sacken.[2] The evidence afforded by the discoveries in the Swiss lakes is almost equally satisfactory; but I need not now enter further into the question of the existence and succession of the Bronze and Iron Ages, on which I have dwelt more fully in my book on Ancient Bronze Implements.[3]
I am at present concerned with the Stone Age, and if, as all agree, there was a time when the use of iron or of bronze, or of both together, first became known to the barbarous nations of the West of Europe, then it is evident that before that time they were unacquainted with the use of those metals, and were therefore in that stage of civilization which has been characterized as the Stone Age.
It is not, of course, to be expected that we should discover direct contemporary historical testimony amongst any people of their being in this condition, for in no case do we find a knowledge of writing developed in this stage of culture; and yet, apart from the material relics of this phase of progress which are found from time to time in the soil, there is to be obtained in most civilized countries indirect circumstantial evidence of the former use of stone implements, even where those of metal had been employed for centuries before authentic history commences. It is in religious customs and ceremonies—in rites which have been handed down from generation to generation, and in which the minute and careful repetition of ancient observances is indeed often the essential religious element—that such evidence is to be sought. As has already been observed by others, the transition from ancient to venerable, from venerable to holy, is as natural as it is universal;
