ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERIODS. 7 



How the alloy of tin and copper came first to be used we can 

 only conjecture. Sir John Lubbock suggests that the ores of 

 tin may have early attracted notice on account of their great 

 heaviness. However this may be, it was probably quite by 

 accident that an alloy of tin and copper came to be made. But 

 when it was found that such a mixing of the metals produced a 

 material much better adapted for cutting-instruments, we may 

 be sure that the results of such a happy accident would soon 

 become noised abroad. 



From the fact that implements of pure copper are rarely met 

 with in Europe, it has been inferred that the art of making bronze 

 was introduced into our continent before copper came to be used. 

 The rarity of copper implements, however, may be partly owing, 

 as General Lane Fox has suggested, to their having been subse- 

 quently converted into bronze, when the advantageous properties 

 of the alloy came to be generally recognised. 



Just as it might have been inferred that the age in which 

 bronze implements were made would prove to be of more recent 

 date than the primitive period when man fashioned all his 

 weapons and tools of stone, horn, bone, and wood, so we might 

 reasonably conclude that the art of working intractable iron 

 would be acquired later on than that of beating native copper 

 into shape, and of forming instruments of the easily-cast alloy 

 of copper and tin. And this, as archaeologists assure us, is pre- 

 cisely what took place — an Age of Iron succeeded to one of 

 Bronze. 



From these few remarks it will be seen that the archaeological 

 periods are simply so many phases of civilisation, and it is con- 

 ceivable that Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages might have been 

 contemporaneous in different parts of one and the same con- 

 tinent. But although there is nothing inherently improbable in 

 such a supposition, nevertheless it has been perfectly well ascer- 

 tained that, so far as Europe is concerned, a true Stone Age to 

 which the use of metals was quite unknown endured through- 

 out the continent for a period so prolonged that we can but 

 vaguely grasp its immensity. And it has likewise been proved 



