lo W. J. Perry — Cultural Significance of the use of Stone 



stone gradually disappears. The tumulus over the graves 

 becomes smaller and smaller ; it turns into a small mound of 

 earth, and finally becomes a flat grave, the chamber having 

 gone altogether. 



It is fashionable to say that the coming of bronze was due 

 to trade — that the small daggers and other bronze implements 

 were bartered or hawked from one end of Europe to the other 

 by men coming from the places of manufacture. That state- 

 ment, I am convinced, is, generally speaking, a profound 

 mistake, and it can only have been made when the evidence 

 from the rest of the world is ignored. It is quite possible to 

 imagine the bartering of the triangular bronze daggers, but it 

 is impossible to barter a grave of the type that appeared in 

 those days. It is also impossible to conceive how the solar 

 symbols could have appeared in w^estern Europe as the result 

 of trade. It is patent, from the study of the sun-cult in other 

 parts of the world, that any community in which the sun-cult 

 is practised is ruled over by men calling themselves The 

 Children of the Sun. When these Children of the Sun 

 disappear, as they have done throughout Polynesia, for 

 instance, usually because they were massacred or outlawed by 

 their nobles, the sun-cult also disappears (9, Chapters lo, ii). 

 The use of solar symbols is a sure sign of the existence of a 

 sun-cult. No signs whatever exist in western Europe of such 

 signs until the coming of bronze daggers. It is therefore 

 possible, and indeed probable, that the real event that took 

 place in those days was the spread, by way of Crete, of 

 members of the Egyptian royal family, calling themselves 

 Children of the Sun, who took with them the practice of 

 making these great graves. These graves are, we are told, 

 modelled on the pyramids of the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt 

 (6, 78). The use of the triangular bronze dagger appears in 

 Crete with these new tombs. Such triangular daggers, but of 

 copper, are figured on steles of First Dynasty mastabas in 

 Egypt, the dagger being a sign for '"chief" or ''ruler." 

 Since, throughout European pre-history, the wearing of 

 swords, which developed out of the triangular dagger, was a 

 mark of noble birth, it follows that the hypothesis of trade in 

 bronze daggers at the beginning of the bronze age has nothing 

 whatever to support it ; all the evidence going to show that 

 these daggers were the exclusive possession of a small group 

 of men of royal birth. Traders would not have been able 

 to get hold of them, even if such men existed in those days, 

 which is doubtful. 



Whatever explanation it is wished to put forward to 



