6 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



relative antiquity, archaeologists have selected the implements 

 and ornaments as affording the most satisfactory basis for such 

 an arrangement, and they divide prehistoric time into three 

 periods, which are termed respectively the Stone Age, the Bronze 

 Age, and the Iron Age. Of these periods the earliest was the 

 Stone Age, when implements and ornaments were formed ex- 

 clusively of stone, wood, horn, and bone. The use of metal 

 for such purposes was then quite unknown. To the Stone 

 Age succeeded the Age of Bronze, at which time cutting- 

 instruments, such as swords and knives and axes, began to be 

 made of copper, and an alloy of that metal and tin. When in 

 the course of time iron replaced bronze for cutting-instruments, 

 the Bronze Age came to an end and the Iron Age supervened. 

 This classification has received the strongest support from inde- 

 pendent geological investigations, and is now generally accepted. 

 But apart altogether from these and other considerations, the 

 arrangement suggested by archaeologists must commend itself to 

 every one who shall give the subject any attention. Those at 

 all events who believe in the progressive development and 

 improvement of our race will readily admit that a long time 

 must necessarily have elapsed before men acquired the art of 

 reducing metals from their ores. It is most natural to suppose 

 that in the earliest times stones chipped or ground to an edge 

 would continue for an indefinite period to be used for all kinds 

 of purposes. The smelting of ores implies a further advance on 

 the road to civilisation. But it seems at first sight strange that 

 the use of bronze should have preceded that of iron, the ores of 

 which are so much more abundantly and widely diffused than 

 those of copper and tin. The former, however, though more 

 plentiful, are, as Sir John Lubbock remarks, much less striking 

 in appearance than those of copper. Moreover, while copper is 

 often found in the metallic state, iron very seldom occurs in 

 that condition, being met with only in meteorites. The extreme 

 malleability of copper would also be as much an advantage as 

 the intractable nature of iron would be a disadvantage to the 

 primitive makers of weapons and tools. 



