GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHAEOLOGY. 337 



occurred previous to the present age of iron. But we are so accus- 

 tomed to precise dates in what has hitherto heen understood as history, 

 without troubling ourselves whether the figure indicated was true or 

 purely imaginary, that we cannot become accustomed at once to the 

 system of simply relative data of archeology ; to a history without 

 dates. Dates figure to advantage even in poetry. Witness the cele- 

 brated lines of Victor Hugo, on Napoleon II : 



Eleven and eighteen hundred, fateful year — 

 Which saw the nations, under gloomiest clouds 

 And prostrate, wait till Heaven should give assent. 



We have accustomed ourselves to relative dates in geology, where 

 we have, and shall continue to have for a long while, nothing else. 

 We have to make up our minds to it also in archaeology, for history, 

 with positive and direct dates, does not go very far back. 



The most ancient authentic geological data do not go further back 

 than the era of the Olympiads, (776 before Christ,) and the most 

 ancient Greek inscriptions that are known do not reach any further. 

 Previous dates are computed in genealogical series of generations, 

 either of names of kings or names of priests, for the authenticity of 

 which there is no warrant. Thus the historian Hectasus, of Miletus, 

 who lived about five hundred years before Christ, fixed the epoch, when 

 the gods still intermingled with men, at sixteen generations before 

 himself, which would make about nine centuries before the Christian 

 era. It is true that he met with opponents ; some added a certain 

 number of generations to his account, others, more rationalistic, per- 

 mitted themselves to doubt that men had descended from the gods. 1 

 This may give an idea of the value of the Greek dates previous to the 

 era of the Olympiads. 



As to the stamped coins, which are considered the most ancient, they 

 are the Greek silver pieces of Egina and Cyzicus, in Asia Minor, with- 

 out any date or legend, but which are thought to be of the end of the 

 eighth century before Christ. 2 Now, at this epoch iron must have been 

 in use, and for some time previous, for the above coins must have been 

 impressed by means of steel stamps, cut with steel gravers ; audit is 

 not by such a proceeding that people begin on first coming to the use 

 of iron. 



We may therefore calculate that iron was known in the South at 

 least a thousand years before the Christian era ; that is to say, about 

 3,000 years ago. 



We often hear it said that the knowledge of the metals has spread 

 very slowly from the South to the North, where it did not arrive till 



1 Herodotus II, 143. 



2 These pieces have an effigy only on one side. It is an animal, or only the head of an ani- 

 mal, without any inscription. On the other side we find the mark of the anvil on which the 

 piece was placed to give it the stamp, the quadratum incusum. The most ancient stamped 

 Roman coins are of 269 before Christ. They are of silver. 



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