II.] THE METAL AGES. 21 



If M. de Morgan be right in assuming a direct transition from 

 stone to iron everywhere in Africa, then the Iron 



. . The Iron Age. 



Age must have been synchronous in that region 

 with those of the other metals in Europe and Asia. But trading 

 and other relations would appear to have been established between 

 North Africa and especially Egypt and the Mediterranean 

 peoples at a much earlier period than is generally supposed. 

 Thus may perhaps be explained the allusions to iron long before 

 it had come into common use amongst these peoples, and in fact 

 at a time when it was almost regarded as a "precious metal." 

 " Iron," writes Mr S. Laing, "was no doubt known at a very early 

 period, but it was extremely scarce, and even as late as Homer's 

 time was so valuable that a lump of it constituted one of the 

 principal prizes at the funeral games of Patroclus 1 ." 



From this it would seem evident that there could have been 

 no Iron Age in Europe, but only a slight knowledge of the metal, 

 when the Homeric rhapsodies are commonly supposed to have 

 taken shape, say, about 1000 B.C., or at most some 150 years 

 before the beginning of the Olympiads (884 B.C.), that is, mostly 

 before the beginning of authentic history for the Greek world. 

 But archaeologists now distinguish not one, but two Iron Ages, the 

 first of which alone must have lasted a considerable time. It pre- 

 vailed in a large portion of Italy (Umbria and Venetia) ; it had its 

 chief, or one of its chief, centres at Halstatt beyond Haiistatt 

 the Alps, and its domain extended thence eastwards and LaTene 

 so as to embrace the present German and Slavonic 

 lands of Carniola, Styria, Carinthia, Istria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, 

 and other parts of the Danubian basin. 



With this period Sergi even associates the pre-Phcenician or 

 old Italic script, which he has partly reconstructed from the signs 

 or characters occurring on the bronzes and earthenware of 

 Villanova, Bologna, and other parts of Umbria 2 . These characters 

 he connects on the one hand with those of the pre-Neolithic 

 Maz-d'Azil cave, described by M. Ed. Piette 3 , and on the other 



1 Human Origins, p. 168. 



2 Arii e Italid, p. 218 sq. 



3 V Anthropologie^ 1896, p. 385 sq. 



