THE IKON, THE BKONZE, AND THE STONE AGES. 667 



between Birmah and Banca, inclusively. This is what Mortillet 

 writes, ' Revue d'Anthrop.' i. v. 1875, p. 653 : — 



' Reste le groupe de I'extreme Orient Asiatique. C'est la ^videmment oti il faut 

 chercher I'origine du bronze. Les principaux gisements sont dans la presqu'ile de 

 Malacca et surtout dans I'lle de Banca, niais ils s'etendent dans d'autres iles de la 

 Sonde et reinontent j usque dans I'empire Birman oh. I'etain est encore exploits ac- 

 tuellement dans le district de Merguy. Ce mineral dans tous ces gisements se recueille 

 de la maniere la plus simple et plus facile dans les alluvions. Ce sont bien certaine- 

 nient les alluvions les plus riches du monde en dtain et celles qui occupant la plus 

 grande ^tendue. II est done tout naturel que ce soit celles qui les premieres aient 

 attird I'attention de I'homme. La cuivre se rencontre dans les memes regions. Tout 

 le monde connait les gisements de cuivre des iles de la Sonde, Timor, Macassar, 

 Borneo. La Birmanie anglaise presente des mines de cuivre k c6t^ des ses exploita- 

 tions d'etain. Le pays se trouve done dans les meilleures conditions pour avoir vu 

 naitre I'industrie du bronze.' 



Von Baer himself, I. c, thinks that Ceylon may very probably 

 have been one source whence tin was procured by the Phoenicians 

 trading for it with the Malays, as they traded doubtless with them, 

 at second, if not at first hand, for the cinnamon which still retains 

 its Malay name, little altered though it has passed through the 

 mouths of so many Western races. I a little doabt the correctness 

 of the introduction of the Malays into the picture ; for if the 

 Malays brought bronze, or even only the ores of either or both of 

 the metals forming it, to meet the Phoenicians at Ophir, it is 

 difficult to understand how they should have failed to carry the 

 knowledge they could not thus have failed to gain, with them on 

 their colonising expeditions over Polynesia. Yet Polynesia was 

 in the Stone Age till quite recently, though the common fowl and 

 the pig had been carried to some of the most remote of its islands, 

 aad the dog even to New Zealand, in times beyond the memory, 

 if not beyond the traditions of the natives, and long before they 

 came into rajpport with Europeans ; and we learn from Mr. J. Craw- 

 furd, 'Trans. Ethn. Soc./ iii. 1865, p. '^^'>^, that it was the Gentoo 

 traders of the Coromandel coast who brought tin from Malaysia to 

 India, when the Europeans first came into relation with Malaysia 

 in the early years of the sixteenth century. 



There can be no doubt that many of the bronze weapons now 

 found in this country were imported as made up ; if my memory 

 does not deceive me, hollow bronze weapons have been found upon 

 our south coasts, containing still the cores on which they had been 

 moulded for the use of our natives, who were balked of them by 



