II.] THE METAL AGES. 17 



pings, already beginning in late Neolithic times, were everywhere 

 so frequent that in many localities it is quite impossible to draw 

 any well-marked dividing lines between the successive metal 

 periods. 



That iron came last, a fact already known by vague tradition 

 to the ancients 1 , is beyond doubt, and it is no less certain that 

 bronze of various types intervened between copper and iron. 

 But much obscurity still surrounds the question of copper, which 

 occurs in so many graves of Neolithic and Bronze times, that this 

 metal has even been denied an independent position in the 

 sequence. 



But we shall not be surprised that confusion should prevail on 

 this point, if we reflect that the metals, unlike stone, came to 

 remain. Once introduced they were soon found to be indis- 

 pensable to civilised man, so that in a sense the " Metal Ages " 

 still survive, and must last to the end of time. Hence it was 

 natural that copper should be found in prehistoric graves asso- 

 ciated, first with polished stone implements 2 , and then with bronze 

 and iron, just as, since the arrival of the English in Australia, 

 spoons, clay pipes, penknives, pannikins, and the like, are now 

 found mingled with stone objects in the graves of the aborigines. 



But that there was a true Copper Age prior to that of Bronze, 

 though possibly of not very long duration, except 

 of course in the New World 3 , has been placed A J e h 

 beyond reasonable doubt by recent investigations. 

 Much attention has lately been paid to the subject by Dr 



1 Thus Lucretius : 



" Posterius ferri vis est aerisque reperta, 

 Sed prior aeris erat quam ferri cognitus usus." 



2 To indicate this association of stone and copper in pre- Aryan times and 

 before the close of the New Stone Age, Italian archaeologists have introduced 

 the compound term " eneolitico " ((zneus = copper, adj., and Xt'#os, stone), of 

 \\hich Prof. G. Sergi writes: " Questa civilta denominata neolitica o eneo- 

 litica dalF uso del ranie, era caratterizzata dalP uso della pietra finamente 

 lavorata e del rame, dal rito funerario dell' inumazione con sepolture in grotte 

 artificial!, in tumuli, in dolmen, e quindi in forme e modi molto piu avanzati 

 dell' uso degli Arii, quando giunsero in Europa, i quali avevano sepolture 

 misere e vasi rozzissimi per cinerari" (Arii e Italici, Turin, 1898, pp. 199, 200). 



3 Eth., p. 335. 



K. 2 



