31 



CHAPTER II. 



THE BRONZE AGE. 



are four principal theories as to the Bronze age, 

 JL According to some archaeologists, the discovery, or 

 introduction, of bronze was unattended by any other great 

 or sudden change in the condition of the people ; but was 

 the result, and is the evidence of a gradual and peaceable 

 development. Some attribute the bronze arms and imple- 

 ments, found in Northern Europe, to the Roman armies, some 

 to the Phoenician merchants ; while others, again, consider 

 that the men of the Stone age were replaced by a new and 

 more civilized people of Indo-European race, coming from 

 the East ; who, bringing with them a knowledge of bronze, 

 overran Europe, and dispossessed in some places entirely 

 destroying the original, or rather the earlier inhabitants. 



It is not, indeed, necessary to suppose that the introduction 

 of bronze should have been effected everywhere in the same 

 manner ; so far, for instance, as Switzerland and Ireland are 

 concerned, Dr. Keller* and Sir W. R. Wilde f may be quite 

 right in considering that the so-called " primitive " popula- 

 tion did not belong to a different race from that subse- 

 quently characterised by the use of bronze. 



Still, though it is evident that the knowledge of bronze 

 must necessarily have been preceded by the separate use of 

 copper and of tin; yet no single implement of the latter metal 



* Mittheil. der Antiquar. Gesellsch. in Zurich, Bd. xiv. H. 6. 

 f Wilde, 1. c. p. 360. 



