THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 509 



the other hand, the northern Enrasiatics had got as far as copper, 

 by the help of their own ingenuity, why deny them the capacity 

 to make the further step to bronze ? Carry back the borrowing 

 system as far as we may, in the end we must needs come to some 

 man or men from whom the novel idea started, and who after 

 many trials and errors gave it practical shape. And there really is 

 no ground in the nature of things for supposing that such men of 

 practical genius may not have turned up, independently in more 

 races than one. 



The capacity of the population of Europe for independent 

 progress while in the copper and early bronze stage the " palaeo- 

 metallic " stage, as it might be called appears to me to be dem- 

 onstrated in a remarkable manner by the remains of their archi- 

 tecture. From the crannog to the elaborate pile-dwelling, and 

 from the rudest inclosure to the complex fortification of the ter- 

 ramare, there is an advance which is obviously a native product. 

 So with the sepulchral constructions ; the stone cist, with or with- 

 out a preservative or memorial cairn, grows into the chambered 

 graves lodged in tumuli; into such megalithic edifices as the 

 dromic vaults of Maes How and New Grange ; to culminate in the 

 finished masonry of the tombs of Mycenae, constructed on exactly 

 the same plan. Can any one look at the varied series of forms 

 which lie between the primitive five or six flat stones fitted to- 

 gether into a mere box, and such a building as Maes How, and yet 

 imagine that the latter is the result of foreign tuition ? But the 

 men who built Maes How, without metal tools, could certainly 

 have built the so-called " treasure-house " of Mycenae with them. 



If these old men of the sea, the heights of Hindoo-Koosh-Pa- 

 mir and the plain of Shinar, had been less firmly seated upon the 

 shoulders of anthropologists, I think they would long since have 

 seen that it is at least possible that the early civilization of Europe 

 is of indigenous growth ; and that, so far as the evidence at pres- 

 ent accumulated goes, the neolithic culture may have attained its 

 full development, copper may have gradually come into use, and 

 bronze may have succeeded copper, without foreign intervention. 



So far as I am aware, every raw material employed in Europe 

 up to the palaeo-metallic stage is to be found within the limits of 

 Europe ; and there is no proof that the old races of domesticated 

 animals and plants could not have been developed within these 

 limits. If any one chose to maintain that the use of bronze in 

 Europe originated among the inhabitants of Etruria and radiated 

 thence along the already established lines of traffic to all parts of 

 Europe, I do not see that his contention could be upset. It would 

 be hard to prove either that the primitive Etruscans could not 

 have discovered the way to manufacture bronze, or that they did 

 not discover it and become a great mercantile people in con- 



