OF THE LAKE OP NEUCHATEL. 385 



the fact that silver has been found in none of these places, while gold is qutte 

 frequent. It must be inferred that the populations to whom silver was unknown 

 had no more knowledge of lead as a particular metal. The case is AvhoUy dif- 

 ferent with the bronzes of the Greeks, Egyptians, Etruscans, and Romans, in 

 which lead appears as an intentional element in considerable proportions. It 

 has been shown that all these nations were acquainted with silver from a remote 

 period, and partially possessed it before iron. The appearance of lead as a 

 special metal, applicable in large quantity to technic uses, can only be explained 

 by the metallurgic elaboration of the ores of silver, since, in ancient times, silver 

 was principally extracted fiom the argentiferous ores of lead, and, indeed, could 

 be extracted from them only, for no other sources were known. This does not 

 imply that it may not often have happened, during the age of bronze, that lead 

 was produced in a metallic state by the Celtic smelters, but without being con- 

 sidered by them as other than an isolated result, which led to no other conse- 

 quences. The question is not whether lead might have been known before 

 silver, but whether lead was in general use among the ancient populations before 

 silver. This question appears to have been resolved negatively, inasmuch as, 

 even in the time of Pliny, the. Romans only distinguished lead from tin by the 

 names of flumhum nigrum and plumhum candidum or alhum, and possessed no 

 particular appellation for tin. By stanman they only understood certain alloys 

 of lead destined for the soldering or lining of vessels of copper. If this was so 

 among the people of civilized antiquity, it caa scarcely be admitted that the 

 half savage tribes of the age of bronze were more advanced in this respect. 



" The presence, therefore, of lead in bronzes, in such proportions as to denote 

 that it has been designedly introduced, seems a sufficient criterion for recognizing 

 these alloys as proceeding from civilized populations, and not fi"om those of the 

 age of bronze. The vase of Groechwyl* affords, in this respect, an instructive 

 example. The bronze of the group of lions does not differ only from that of 

 the vase by the object represented, but also by its proportion of lead, which is 

 10 per 100. From the considerations here developed, then, I regard lead as a 

 fiictor altogether as important as zinc in the estimate formed regarding bronzes, 

 and I repeat that lead is not found in the bronzes of the age of bronze properly 

 so called, in the quality of a principal element. The plumbiferous bronzes pro- 

 ceed from populations among whom that period was past, in consequence of 

 their knowledge of iron and of silver, and who had acquired a superior degree of 

 culture. 



'■'■Origin of bronzes. — Opinions on the origin of bronzes are contradictory. 

 There are very competent authorities who maintain that it was the Pheuicians 

 who discovered and also diffused bronze over the European continent, and that 

 the bronzes which come to us from the north, from the Celtic tombs and lacus- 

 trian constructions, are Phenician bronzes. They receive it as an ascertained 

 fact that the Phenicians alone possessed the commerce of tin, because they alone 

 knew the route to the tin islands, the Cassiterides, and likewise that they had 

 penetrated to the Baltic, and while they sought there for the yellow amber, con- 

 veyed lead and a knowledge of the preparation of bronze to the inhabitants of 

 the coasts. But it does not follow that the fabrication of bronze was confined 

 to the Phenicians. This supposition is contradicted in a positive manner by the 

 very different composition of the bronzes of different nations, by the very vari- 

 able proportions between the copper and tin and the inequality of the accid'^ntal 

 elements. Moreover, it seems surprising that the nearest neighbors of the Phe- 

 nicians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, and the Romans, should 

 have manufactured plumbiferous bronzes, while the Phenicians carried to the 



*See A. Jaliu, Etruskische Altcrthumcr gefunden in der Sclncciz, (Mem. de la Soc. des 

 Antiq. de Zurich, VIII, 1865.) A. Morlot, Etudes geolugico arclu£ologiques, (Soc. vaudoise 

 Sc. nat., T. VI, p. 314.) 



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