290 REY. J. MAGENS MELLO, M.A., F.G.S., ETC. 
have yielded very numerous skeletons of this age, all of them 
clearly belonging to one and the same race, a race which has 
been identified by anthropologists with the modern Basques 
and the small, dark men of Aquitaine, who, together with 
others of a similar type, may be regarded as the survivors of 
this once widely-distributed pre-historic people, who occupied, 
not Europe only, but were also found in Asia Minor, in Sicily, 
in Sardinia, and in Northern Africa. 
During the Neolithic age the principal implements and 
weapons were made of stone, often polished after having been 
carefully chipped into shape; others of bone, and antlers of 
deer were also used. It was amongst these Neolithic peoples 
that the use of metals was introduced; but by whom? ‘The 
question is not easily answered. That the manufacture of 
bronze and the smelting of metals was not the independent 
discovery of the Neolithic inhabitants of Europe, but was 
introduced from without, and by a different race, is evident 
from many facts. One important one that has been pointed 
out is that over the whole of the Continent, wherever bronze 
implements have been found, they are everywhere nearly 
identical in form, although ‘‘ each country has certain minor 
peculiarities.”’ 
Sir John Lubbock, in his work on ‘ Prehistoric Times,” 
observes that the bronze swords found in Scandinavia must 
have been introduced by a smaller race than those now in- 
habiting Europe, as the hilts of those weapons could not be 
grasped by hands as large as ours. He also says that Nillson 
considers that the ornamentation of the age, as shown on 
Scandinavian finds, is Semitic rather than Aryan, and his 
opinion seems to be that the Phoenicians introduced the bronze 
into the North of Hurope: this, however, has been questioned, 
on the ground that when the Phoenicians appeared in Europe 
they must have been acquainted with iron, and had they been 
the mtroducers of bronze they would, at the same time, have 
introduced iron and probably also lead. As to the smallness 
of the hands, Sir John Lubbock remarks that ‘‘ the Indo- 
Kuropean (Aryan) Hindoos share this peculiarity with 
Egyptians, and this characteristic is, therefore, equally recon- - 
cilable with an Indo-European origin of the bronze civilisa- 
tion as with a Phoenician.” Itis to be noted that the use of 
bronze did not prevail in Scandinavia until a comparatively 
late part of the Bronze age ; the Stone age was prolonged there, 
and when bronze appeared the various objects made of that 
material were of a very high type; we do not meet there with 
the-primitive forms characteristic of the earlier metal age, 
