378 PREHISTORIC E UROPE. 



It is of course quite impossible in very many cases to cor- 

 relate the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages of one country with 

 the similar stages in the history of other regions. We may say 

 in a general way that the Neolithic cave-dwellers of Wales, 

 Belgium, the Pyrenees, and other areas, and the constructors of 

 the long barrows in Britain, were contemporaneous with the 

 Neolithic lake-dwellers of Switzerland. But the subsequent 

 Bronze Age would, no doubt, commence in some places earlier 

 than in others. We cannot tell how or in what way a know- 

 ledge of metals was introduced. In Switzerland, as we have 

 seen, it would appear to have been acquired in a peaceful way. 

 But we can readily believe that before the universal diffusion 

 of metallurgical knowledge, those tribes who had possessed 

 themselves of bronze weapons might now and again invade 

 and overcome people, who, owing to poverty, ignorance, or the 

 inaccessibility of their country, had remained for a much longer 

 time in the Neolithic phase of civilisation. We know, indeed, 

 that this was actually the case, and that people in the north of 

 Scotland were living very much after the same manner as the 

 Danish shell -mound builders, destitute apparently of metallic 

 implements, long after the Bronze Age had been succeeded by 

 the Age of Iron. 



This very short and imperfect outline of the later archaeo- 

 logical periods will yet suffice to show how great the gap is that 

 separates Palaeolithic from Neolithic times. During the closing 

 scenes of the Palaeolithic Period Europe passed through its 

 last excessive glacial epoch — man was then associated in the 

 south of Prance with the arctic mammalia ; but when we first 

 meet with Neolithic man we find him surrounded by a group 

 of animals that differs in no essential degree from the present 

 fauna. Palaeolithic man had no knowledge of agriculture ; he 

 was ignorant of weaving and the potter's art, nor does he 

 appear to have had any domestic animals. Neolithic man on 

 the other hand was deficient in none of these respects ; he 

 seems to have excelled his Palaeolithic predecessor in everything 

 save in art. There are no sculptures, no etchings or outline- 



