8 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



that long after the knowledge of bronze had become general in 

 Europe, our ancient predecessors continued through many cen- 

 turies perfectly ignorant of the use of iron. 



It is not to be supposed, however, that the close of the 

 Stone Age was marked by the total abandonment of stone for 

 bronze implements. On the contrary, stone continued to be 

 used for some kinds of implements far on into the Bronze Age, 

 and even down to historic times. Indeed the substitution of 

 metal for stone cutting -instruments might have been very 

 slowly effected in some parts of Europe ; and one can readily 

 believe that in certain countries bronze might come to be almost 

 exclusively employed for such purposes, while elsewhere it 

 remained much longer either only partially in use or quite 

 unknown. One can hardly doubt, for example, that long after 

 the natives of Southern Europe had commenced to cut and stab 

 their enemies with bronze swords and daggers, and to decorate 

 their own persons with trinkets of the same alloy, the inhabitants 

 of the wild mountain- valleys of Scotland and its outlying islands 

 might still be living in a "Stone Age." It must be under- 

 stood, therefore, that there was no abrupt transition from an 

 age in which only stone implements were used to one in which 

 bronze was exclusively employed. Moreover, it woidd be a 

 mistake to suppose that the Stone and Bronze Periods of one 

 country are necessarily strictly contemporaneous throughout 

 with the similar stages in the archaeological history of all other 

 parts of Europe. It is quite possible that the closing scenes of 

 the true Stone Age in North-western Europe may be synchron- 

 ous with the earliest stage of the Bronze Period in the south- 

 east of the Continent. This would necessarily follow if it be 

 the case, as many archaeologists believe, that the knowledge of 

 metals was introduced from the East. The difference in point 

 of antiquity, then, between the commencement of the Bronze 

 Age in two such countries as Greece and Britain, let us say, 

 would simply be measured by the length of time the natives of 

 the latter country remained ignorant of bronze after those of 

 the former had acquired a knowledge of that alloy. But that 



