214 



REMARKS ON SOME COINCIDENCES BETWEEN PRIMITIVE ANTIQUITIES. 



1854.] 



to the dawn of history, or to the intrusion of even the oldest of 

 the historic races on regions from which they were being dis- 

 placed, or had already disappeared, at the early dates when the 

 lirst glimpses of transalpine Europe are met with in the pages of 

 Greek or Roman historians. The recent investigations of the ar- 

 chaeologist and philologist, though pursued on entirely different . 

 grounds, and with little concurrent aim or purpose, alike disclose 

 the fact that there have existed on the Continent of Europe races 

 entirely distinct from the great historic group to whom the Indo- 

 Germanic languages pertain ; and while the philological investiga- 

 tions of Dr. Pritchard have extended this group so as to embrace 

 the Celtic languages, and convert the whole into a more compre- 

 hensive Indo-European classification, the researches of Nilsson, 

 Retzius, Worsaae, and their British coadjutors, appear no less 

 conclusively to establish the fact that the ancient Keltai were 

 intruders on still older Allophylian races. 



It is probable that some of the results of such investigations 

 are already familiar to members of the Canadian Institute, 

 especially as the labours of Scandinavian antiquaries, to whose 

 researches some of the most valuable results are due, have 

 acquired a special interest for the colonists of this Western 

 World since the recent publication of the " Antiquitates Ame- 

 , ricance " has by the Society of Antiquaries of Copenhagen, 

 added upwards of three centuries to the historic era of the conti- 

 nent re-discovered by Columbus. To others, however, a reference 

 to such archaeological investigations may not be without novelty 

 as well as interest. It had long been known to antiquaries that, 

 along with the relics of classic art, there were also to be found 

 throughout Europe monolithic structures, fictile ware, and wea- 

 pons and implements of stone, copper, and bronze, the manifest 

 productions of ruder artificers than even the legionary artizans of 

 Imperial Rome. These, when they attracted any attention, were 

 loosely designated as " aboriginal " or "Celtic," and were sup- 

 posed to receive a sufficient classification by being thus set apart 

 from the classic remains, which were alone thought worthy of 

 careful study. During the present century, however, the archae- 

 ologists of Northern Europe have devoted special attention to 

 such traces of aboriginal arts and primitive civilization, and the 

 result has been the classification of their various sub-divisions 

 on principles of scientific chronological order and logical analo- 

 gies, akin to those by which the palaeontologist has reduced to 

 order and method the older chaos of unsystematized and unin- 

 terpreted geology. 



The first class in this system of primitive archaeology is desig- - 

 nated " the Stone Period,''' as embracing the European era of 

 rudest aboriginal arts, during which the necessities of war and 

 the chase, and of the simple domestic economy of its ancient 

 people, were supplied by weapons and implements constructed 

 entirely of such ready natural materials as stone, horn, bone, etc. 



After referring to the abundant evidence of the existence and 

 duration -of such an era of primitive savage arts in Europe, as is 

 proved by collections including many thousand specimens in 

 European Museums, Professor Wilson next proceeded to show 

 the remoteness of the era to which they belong, as demonstrated 

 by the circumstances under which some of them have been 

 found. In proof of this he referred, among other examples, to 

 the discovery in the alluvial valley of the River Forth, in Scot- 

 land, at different periods from 1819 to 1824, of gigantic fossil 

 balaenopteree, at heights varying from twenty to nearly forty feet 

 above the present level of the sea; and while the situation of 

 such cetaceous fossils manifestly proved a gain of dry land from 

 the sea, and that not by the filling up of the ancient estuary, but 

 by the upheaval of the whole area, the discovery along with them, 



in more than one instance, of the rude bone lance or harpoon by 

 which it may be presumed they had been assailed by some hardy 

 Caledonian whaler of the remote era which they reveal, no less 

 conclusively establishes the fact that such changes must have 

 occurred since the British Islands were occupied by a human 

 population. He then drew attention to the well ascertained 

 examples of the upheaval of large areas within the historic 

 period, apart from such instances of active volcanic action as 

 Puzzuoli and other parts of the Bay of Baiae, in Italy, exhibit. 

 Special reference was made to the ascertained rate of upheaval 

 still going on over a large portion of the Scandinavian peninsula, 

 extending from Gothenburg to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, 

 if not indeed to the North Cape, and from this he inferred that 

 the evidence of the colonization of the British Isles pointed to a 

 date, at the very lowest confutation, of some fifteen centuries 

 before the Christian era. 



At a period thus approximately defined, the primitive races 

 of Northern Europe and the British Isles were practising arts 

 precisely analogous to those with which we are familiar on this 

 continent, as still pursued among its rude aboriginal tribes. At 

 a later period, as appears from the investigations of European 

 archaeologists, the metallurgic arts were introduced among the 

 primitive tribes of the Old World, and implements and weapons 

 of copper and of bronze gradually displaced their ruder stone 

 predecessors. Such would appear to have been the common 

 experience of the untutored races of mankind, for no primitive 

 and barbarous people has been met with in modern limes, cut 

 off from intercourse with civilized nations, among whom any 

 knowledge of the metallurgic arts existed; and no partially civilized 

 people, when similarly isolated, appears to have acquired the art 

 of smelting and working the iron ore. The Esquimaux, and the 

 whole natives of the Polynesian Islands, were, when first dis- 

 covered, in precisely the same condition as the Allophylian races 

 of E urope duing its Stone Period. They were without any know- 

 ledge of the metals, and supplied all their wants by means of 

 implements of stone, shell, bone, and wood. Such also was the 

 condition of the Indians of North America when first brought 

 into contact with Europeans. Nor is this conclusion affected by 

 such discoveries of mining operations as those referred to in Mr. 

 Whittlesey's paper on the Ancient Mines of Lake Superior.* 

 In so far as any traces of the employment of their products, 

 either by the Indians or by the mound-builders of an older era, 

 have been recovered, they prove the extremely primitive and 

 untutored arts of both races, while amply bearing out the justice 

 of that writer's observations that "the copper is apparently cold 

 wrought, and does not show that it has been melted. It must, 

 therefore, have been found by the mound-builders in its native 

 state, and there are no mines in North America known at this 

 time from which native metal can be had except those of Lake 

 Superior." 



Such a process of working the malleable ores has already been 

 recognised as far too partial a manifestation of any knowledge 

 of the properties of metals to be accepted in proof of the intro- 

 duction of the metallurgic arts among a people. It has been 

 remarked, in reference to similar specimens of "cold wrought" 

 metallic relics: — "It is not impossible that the working in gold 

 may have preceded even the age of bronze. If metal could be 

 found capable of being wrought and fashioned without smelting 

 or moulding, its use was perfectly compatible with the simple 

 arts of the Stone Period. Of such use masses of native gold, 

 such as have been often found both in the Old and the New 



* Canadian Journal, Vol. I., p. 132. 



