THE MOST ANCIENT MEN 



375 



travel back through the ages, and proceed to do so. 

 We find that there are three well-marked successive 

 periods in Europe which are called the Iron Age, the 

 Bronze Age, and the Stone Age. When we go back to 

 Julius Caesar conquering Gaul and parts of Germany and 

 Britain, we find that the Romans had steel swords, and 

 freely made use of that metal 

 for a variety of tools and con- 

 structive purposes. The Gauls 

 and Belgi and Allemanni and 

 Britons were still in the Bronze 

 Age ; they had beautifully made 

 bronze swords and daggers and 

 helmets and shields, which were 

 weaker and softer than those 

 of iron used by the Romans. 

 The use of iron was soon spread 

 by the conquerors, and the rest 

 of Europe entered on the Iron 

 Age. When the Anglo-Saxons 

 arrived in England they had 

 iron weapons. At what date 

 precisely the Romans them- 

 selves took to the use of iron is 



not known, probably they learnt FIG. 67. A polished flint axe- 

 its use from the peoples of 

 Africa ; but at no distant date, 

 a few hundred years before Christ, they, too, and the 

 Greeks were in the Bronze Age. In Western Europe 

 we see the Bronze Age, as we travel back in time, 

 disappearing, and we come to the Stone Age, about 

 2000 B.C. Copper was used at the later stage of the 

 Stone Age, and then the alloy with tin, which is called 

 "bronze." At the time that the big stones of Stone- 

 henge were set up (the smaller stones of the outer circle 



head, of Neolithic Age, from 

 Denmark. 



