EARLY MAN 



head. The face was oval, and the cheek bones only slightly developed. 

 The forehead was low and the nose aquiline. 



THE BRONZE AGE 



One of the most important events which happened in our islands 

 during the prehistoric period was unquestionably the introduction of 

 metal. It is difficult if not impossible to understand all that was 

 involved in the introduction of bronze and the knowledge of working it. 

 Hitherto the only materials available for the manufacture of the toughest 

 and hardest tools had been flint and stone. But, excellent as some 

 of the neolithic work undoubtedly was, the implements were extremely 

 liable to be injured by use, and the fear of damaging an elaborately 

 wrought celt, for example, must have been a source of constant care to 

 the neolithic warrior or hunter. 



The need of some hard and at the same time more pliable 

 material for the manufacture of weapons and tools must have been 

 keenly felt before the discovery of the wonderful properties of metals, 

 the method of extracting them from their natural ores, and convert- 

 ing them into their most useful form. 



How that knowledge was first acquired is not known, and perhaps, 

 seeing how great an interval of time separates the earliest age of metal 

 from our own, it will never be discovered, but a distinguished metal- 

 lurgist l has made the ingenious suggestion that it may have been 

 discovered accidentally at the period when neolithic man cooked for 

 food entire animals by means of heating small pits dug in the surface of 

 the ground. The intense heat generated in such a fire was in all prob- 

 ability quite sufficient to produce fusion of the metal if easily workable 

 ores happened to be present in the soil closely adjacent to the fire. Such 

 fires of intensely high temperature were made, as may be clearly seen by 

 the existing remains, near the neolithic dwellings at Hayes, 2 Kent. 



It is not suggested that the first discovery of metals was made in 

 these islands in this manner. The evidence goes to show that the art 

 of extracting copper and tin from their ores and the skill of blending 

 them in the proportions which gave the desirable property of hardness 

 were both acquired in some other part of Europe or Asia or even Africa. 

 This is pretty clear from the fact that some of the earliest metal objects 

 found in the British Isles are made of good bronze, and have evidently 

 been made by people skilled in the art of blending metals. 8 



The discovery of metal must have produced results which revolu- 

 tionized the earlier methods of war, of hunting, and the more humble 

 arts of the carpenter and the builder. 



The earliest forms of metal tools or weapons used in the British 

 Isles were the small bronze hand-daggers and the flat axes or celts, both 

 of which are found to have been formed of bronze of the best quality. 



1 Mr. William Gowland, F.S.A., Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 

 n.s. ii. 140. 



* Op. cit. pp. 1*7, 134-6. 8 Dr. Munro, Prehistoric Scotland, pp. 177-8. 



239 



