VI THE ARYAN QUESTION 313 



Are we then to bring down the discovery of 

 the use of copper in Switzerland to, at earliest, 

 1500 B.C., and to put it down to Phoenician hints ? 

 But why copper ? At that time the Phoenicians 

 must have been familiar with the use of bronze. 

 And if, on the other hand, the northern Eurasiatics 

 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 demon- 

 strated in a remarkable manner by the remains 

 of their architecture. From the crannog to the 

 elaborate pile-dwelling, and from the rudest 

 enclosure to the complex fortification of the 

 t err am are, there is an advance which is obviously 

 a native product. So with the sepulchral con- 

 structions ; the stone cist, with or without a pre- 

 servative or memorial cairn, grows into the 

 chambered graves lodged in tumuli; into such 



