Chapter III (1)

ON THE RESEMBLANCES OF THE WEAPONS OF EARLY RACES; THEIR
VARIATIONS, CONTINUITY AND DEVELOPMENT OF FORM: METAL PERIOD.[184]

Having in two previous lectures upon ‘Primitive Warfare’, delivered at this Institution, spoken of the general principles to be observed in studying the development of the weapons of savages and early races, I need not preface the remarks I am about to offer by any detailed allusion to the generalizations which I have already ventured to make, but I will proceed at once to lay before you some additional facts which I have collected in continuation of the same subject.

This I do the more readily, because I hold strongly to the opinion that the value of a communication of this kind may, in a great degree, be measured by the attention which is paid to the accumulation of facts, and to the comparative brevity and simplicity of that portion of it which relates to theory. Without general principles, however, we should have no incentive to collect and systematize our facts, and they are therefore valuable even where they involve--and in a new field of study, such as I am now treating, with very scanty materials as yet at our disposal to assist conjecture, I can hardly hope they should not involve--a certain amount of error.

Before entering upon the subject of the origin of metal implements, I must, however, revert to one part of my former communication, in order to show that a statement I then made in reference to the geographical distribution of the boomerang has since had some light thrown upon it by the researches of one of our most eminent men of science. It will, perhaps, be remembered by those who did me the honour of reading my last lecture, which was printed in vol. xii of the _Journal_, that, in describing the weapons of the Australians, I showed, by means of numerous illustrations of the varieties of each class of weapon from that country, that they all passed one into the other by connecting links, so that where a sufficient number of them are arranged in such a manner as to exhibit their continuity, it is often impossible to determine any definite line of separation between them. I also showed that the form of each weapon was determined by the form of the stem or branch of the tree out of which it was made, the outline of all these implements conforming to the grain of the wood; and the inference which I drew from this was, that it showed a very low state of intellect on the part of the constructors, the several classes of implements not having been designed originally for their respective purposes, but produced accidentally, and then applied during subsequent ages to the several uses to which in practice they appeared most suited.

As we have no reason to suppose that the Australian continent was peopled at a later date than other parts of the world, and as there is no evidence upon that continent of the people inhabiting it having ever been in a higher state of civilization than they are at present, we have grounds for supposing that they must have remained stationary, or have progressed very slowly, while the inhabitants of other parts of the globe advanced more rapidly, and that their existing arts and implements, simple and primitive though they be, nevertheless represent the highest development of constructive power to which these people have ever attained. Hence it follows, that if the inhabitants of any other portions of the globe can be traced to a common origin with the Australians, viewing the persistency of type observable as a characteristic of the arts of these people, and of all other people in a primitive state of culture, we must expect to find some traces of similar implements in use amongst all such people to whom a common origin can be assigned.

In my last lecture I mentioned that there were three countries in which the boomerang is either still used, or is known to have been used in ancient times, viz. Australia, the Deccan of India, and Egypt, and I also showed some grounds for believing that the same weapon, or something allied to it, may have spread from those countries over Europe, as it is known to have done over a great part of Northern and Central Africa.

Although the comparison of weapons from various parts of the globe can have no other object than to trace out an original connexion, I did not venture to build upon the coincidence of this weapon in these regions, any argument for the common origin of the people by whom it was used. Nor do I think that I should have been justified in assuming such origin upon the grounds of the identity of a single weapon. Such identity may have arisen in three ways:--(1) it may have arisen independently by the spontaneous development of like weapons under similar conditions of life; (2) the weapon itself may have been communicated from some primal source; (3) the races using it may have been themselves derived from a common origin. Of these, the first view, viz. the independent origin of the weapon, would perhaps strike any one at first sight, before having studied the conservatism and persistency of type which is so especially characteristic of savages, as the most probable; it appears so exceedingly simple in its form and uses to our trained and educated minds, that it seems hardly necessary to account for it in any other way; besides which, there are slight differences between the Indian and Australian boomerangs, which have been considered by some to distinguish the two weapons.

I will not here revert to the arguments which I have used to combat this opinion. Suffice to say, that I have since been favoured with much valuable information on the subject by Sir Walter Elliot, who has frequently accompanied the natives of India in their hunting expeditions with this weapon. He says that it is formed on the grain of the wood, like the Australian boomerang, the curve varying with the bend of the stem; it is whirled horizontally, with the end foremost, like the Australian practice, and is used by two tribes in the Deccan, viz. the Kolis of Guzerat and the Marawárs of Madura, but more especially in its simplest form by the former, who are of the Dravidian or black race of the Deccan. In a letter to me he says, speaking of these tribes:--‘I have seen both, and, indeed, served ten years in the latter district (Southern Mahratta), where the crooked stick is used by all the lower orders every Sunday during the hot season, when all agricultural labour is at a stand. The villagers turn out in large numbers, and scour the jungle armed with these sticks. Everything that rises is knocked over; deer, hares, birds, even the wild hog and the tiger are occasionally (though rarely, of course) included in the bag. I have seen a line of upwards of 100 men and boys, and the boomerang whirling about in such numbers, and with such precision, that even birds on the wing are brought down. I never met with any regularly formed specimens, except in the South; those in the North were mere angular sticks, of very various form, as natural branches occurred; the favourite form was a rather obtuse angle--nearly a right angle.’ Thus, whether we regard the purposes for which it is used, the material of which it is constructed, the manner of throwing, or the varieties of its form, the Indian and Australian boomerang is virtually the same weapon; and I think those who dispute their identity appear rather to have had in view the ‘collery stick’ of Madras and of the Marawárs than the boomerang of the Kolis.

We may therefore, I think, fairly consider the causes which may have led to the adoption of this weapon as sprung from a common source.

Since my last communication to this Institution, Professor Huxley has given to the world, in a paper read at the meeting of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology--of which I had the honour to be general secretary--in August, 1868, his views ‘on the distribution of the races of mankind, as bearing on their antiquity’.[185] The paper created a considerable sensation in the scientific world, owing to the boldness of the generalizations contained in it, and, it may be added, a certain amount of opposition. The accompanying map (Plate XVII) is taken from one drawn by Professor Huxley himself for the Ethnological Society, to illustrate this subject (_Journ. Ethno. Soc._ (1870) N. S. ii. 404-12).

Basing his distribution of the human race on the principle that the characters of the hair and complexion are more permanent, and of greater value as a means of classification, than the bony structure of man, Professor Huxley traces back the numerous varieties of tribes and races into what, for the present, may be regarded as four primary groups.

Commencing, for the convenience of my present subject, with the highest, or those which have shown themselves most capable of development--which, in all probability, is the wrong end of the scale to begin with, if we regarded them in their natural succession--the first of these groups is what he terms Xanthochroid type (the distribution of which is marked [shading] in the map), a people characterized by yellow hair and fair complexions, with blue eyes, who form a strong element in the composition of the population of this country and a great part of Europe, extending from thence through Scandinavia and Central Europe eastward into Northern India. Next to these he classes the great Mongoloid race (marked by various shades of [shading] on the map), with yellow-brown complexions and black hair and eyes, of which the Kalmucs and Tartars represent the purest types, occupying the whole of Northern Europe and Asia, from Lapland to Behring Strait, and down to the southernmost parts of China; including also the Esquimaux, the Polynesians, and the whole of the inhabitants of the two continents of America. Thirdly, the Negro race (marked [shading] and [shading] in the map), long headed, with woolly hair, which has its head quarters in all that part of Africa south of the Sahara, but has outlying branches widely detached, and occupying a broken line of islands extending in a belt, from the Andaman Isles in the Bay of Bengal, to the peninsula of Malacca, New Guinea, New Caledonia, and the adjoining isles, and having its southmost limits in the distant island of Tasmania. Lastly, we come to the Australioid race (marked [shading]), distinguished by dark chocolate complexions and black eyes, with long heads and soft wavy hair; these the Professor, upon physiological grounds, and after intimate acquaintance with these people in the distant regions in which they are found, traces in three distinct portions of the globe, viz. Australia, the Deccan of India, and Egypt; the three identical countries, it will be observed, in which, unconscious of Professor Huxley’s distribution of races, I had traced the occurrence of the boomerang. I think, therefore, it is not an unreasonable conjecture, assuming the correctness of Professor Huxley’s premises, that this peculiar weapon may be a relic of the original Australioid stock, which having been originally an effective weapon for all purposes amongst the aborigines of this race, and continuing still to be used as such in Australia, survived in India and in ancient Egypt merely as an implement for the chase and for amusement, much in the same way that, in Europe, bows and arrows have survived amongst children to the present day.

In the remarks which I made (p. 127) upon the varieties of the African boomerang, I drew attention to the peculiarly curved form of the Nubian and Abyssinian sword, and I ventured an opinion that its form may have been originally derived from that of the boomerang, of which weapon a variety, constructed of wood, is still in use by the inhabitants of the country; and I see no reason to doubt that the Abyssinian sword may have been the prototype of those numerous allied forms of iron weapons, the ‘hunga-munga’, &c., which throughout Africa are still used as missiles, and thrown with a rotatory motion like the boomerang. My conjecture on this subject appears to receive some confirmation from the very peculiar construction of one of these swords, which has lately been added to the museum of this Institution, and which is represented in Plate XIX, figure 1. The angular form of the blade, swelling in the middle, presents such a close affinity to the Australian boomerang, as to strike even those who have not been led, by the considerations I have mentioned, to look for a coincidence in these weapons. I noticed at the same time the very great resemblance between the rudimentary shields of the Australians and those of some of the inhabitants of the valley of the Upper Nile, which may also perhaps be accounted for in the same way. With a view of further connecting this primitive form of shield with similar defensive weapons in India, it is worthy of notice that the hand-shield, having antelopes’ horns projecting from it, a representation of which was given in my first lecture, Plate X, figs. 66, 67_a_, and 69 (many of which are furnished with a small iron shield, or guard for the hand, though some are without this accessory), is used--Sir Walter Elliot now informs me--precisely in the same way as the Australian and African parrying-shields, viz. by catching the arrows and darts of the assailant, and parrying them off with the horns, thus favouring the conjecture that I ventured to put forward, that the square, oblong, and circular targets are defensive weapons of comparatively recent origin, being represented in a primitive stage of culture by a simple parrying-stick, derived originally from the club. The club is, as a general rule, the only defensive guard employed by races in the lowest stages of culture. These seem to have been replaced by parrying-sticks, held in the centre, and subsequently hollowed to receive the hand, or furnished with hand-guards, forming rudimentary shields; of which stage in the development of the weapon we are now able to establish connected traces in the three countries under consideration.

If the comparisons which I have made, and the conclusions I have ventured to draw from them, are found to stand the test of further investigation, as it appears to me reasonable to hope they will, the importance of studying the forms and uses of these primitive weapons in connexion with other sociological and biological phenomena, as a means of tracing back the early history of mankind, will be well established. Of this, however, we may feel certain, that if a connexion formerly existed between the inhabitants of India, Australia, and Egypt, the evidence of such connexion will not be limited either to the colour of the hair and skin, or to the resemblance of their weapons, but will be found in other customs and institutions which they brought with them from their fatherland. The important generalizations of Professor Huxley, whether or not they ultimately hold good, have had the good effect of drawing attention to a comparison of the inhabitants of these countries; and though it would be foreign to my present purpose to anticipate the result of these investigations in other branches not immediately connected with my present subject, I may mention that officers acquainted with India and Australia have since pointed out resemblances in the hymeneal and other customs of those countries, which have not before been noticed, but which, when put together and compared, making all due allowance for the variations which are inevitable in the continuous development of all human arts and institutions, will, I doubt not, tend to give confirmation to the theory of races which the author of it has so ably advanced.

Having strayed thus far into the geological and biological aspect of the question, it is necessary to go a step further in order to apply the subject more generally to the origin of weapons, and at the same time to point out some difficulties which stand in the way of accepting this theory of races--difficulties of which Professor Huxley himself appears by his paper to be fully sensible.

The detached portions of the Australioid race are separated from each other by seas of considerable depth, and the same thing applies to the Negroid race. The Australians, he points out, though possessing ample materials for the construction of canoes, have never learnt to make any that are capable of traversing the great seas which separate them from their apparent kindred in other lands, and it is unlikely they should have forgotten the art of navigation if they had once known it. It is inconceivable, therefore, that they should have migrated from Australia to the Deccan, and to Egypt, during the existing geographical arrangement of sea and land, more especially as no trace of such migration is found upon intervening isles. He points out, however, that great geographical changes have probably taken place, and that those changes, in so far as our knowledge of them goes, are of a nature to account for the phenomena observed.

The region of the negro race in Africa is separated from Northern Africa and from Europe by the desert of Sahara, of which there is geological evidence to show that it was sea at a recent geological period. The same applies to the Deccan of India, which is separated from the Himalaya by the great alluvial plains of the Indus and the Ganges, which, having probably formed a strait before the miocene epoch, may have divided the black men inhabiting the Deccan from the Xanthochroid and Mongoloid races to the north. At the same time large tracts now occupied by the sea may then have been land, uniting or connecting by a chain of easily accessible islands the regions in which men of the same colour and physical peculiarities are now found. But it will be seen by the map that the lines of distribution of two of the races, the Negroid and the Australioid, cross each other, and this, according to the theory of migration by land, appears to involve a succession of submersions and upheavals during the human period, which it is difficult to account for.

The distribution of races, according to supposed original distinctions of colour and complexion, will be seized upon by polygenists as an argument in their favour; for it will be said that, according to this theory, the distinctions of race in the earliest times must have been as great, or greater, than they are at present.

There are three ways in which it has been attempted to account for these early distinctions of colour and persistency of type--(1) by supposing the several races of man to have been separately created upon distinct continents of land; (2) by assuming that on each primaeval continent, man was evolved from the anthropoid apes of that continent;[186] or (3), by supposing that these divisions of race, remotely and immeasurably distant though they be, nevertheless carry us only a short way back into the history of man, and that still earlier ages, if we could penetrate them, would show the races of man united.

Now, with respect to the first assumption, that of creation, though we are not, of course, in a position to deny the possibility of it, I confess it appears to me unwarranted by any of the phenomena of nature. We have no knowledge of the special creation of any organized being; and how can we scientifically assume as probable, that, for the probability of which there is no sort of evidence of a nature that inductive science would be warranted in building upon? Continuity and development are seen to be the order of the universe. Man is seen to be, both mentally and physically, amenable to that law; and on what grounds can we assume that he was ever an exception to it? I cannot conceive how those who believe geological changes to have been brought about by causes which are still in operation in our own day, and who make great calls upon time in order to reconcile those causes to the phenomena observed, can, in treating biological phenomena, advocate belief in so great a break in the observed order of the universe as is implied by the special creation of man. Still less willing am I, in the absence of more cogent argument than has ever yet been advanced in support of it, to assent to hypotheses of the separate development of races, which appears to me equally at variance with nature. There can be no doubt that all the existing races of man, whatever their colour and physical peculiarities, have greater affinity to each other than any of them have to the apes, or to any other class of animals. The tendency of progress is from simplicity to complexity, from unity to diversity, and it would be a complete inversion of the order of nature that animals so various as the apes should independently produce animals so much resembling each other as the races of man. The recognized law that, with certain variations, like begets like, appears to me to negative this assumption as fully as it would do the notion, if it were put forward, that because the horse and some other classes of the mammalia, say the rhinoceros, for instance, have some affinities in their bony structure, therefore the black horse is descended from the African rhinoceros, and the white horse from that of India. Moreover, all the races of mankind interbreed, and I am at a loss to understand how a circumstance like this, which throughout the animal kingdom is regarded as a proof of unity of species, should be discarded in its application to humanity. If, then, it is true that diversity of colour is as old as the very earliest traces of man, and there is evidence that the several coloured races were inhabitants of distinct continents, which have disappeared through geological changes dispersing and mixing the races, blending the colours and obliterating the traces of their formerly isolated homes; then to the same causes, which produced the mixing and the blending, we must also attribute the original separation. According to the view I hold, we must ask for more time, and still further geological changes, to bring them together again in the primaeval cradle of the human race.

Now, to apply this reasoning to the origin of weapons. The only vestiges of the primaeval tools of mankind now left to us are those constructed of stone; others of the more perishable materials have decayed, and their representatives only have remained in some few cases as survivals. In my last lecture I showed how uniform in shape and in development these stone implements are found to be in all parts of the world, whether derived from the northern or southern continent of America, from Siberia, Australia, India, Africa, or the surface soils and river gravels of Europe. This uniformity of shape has been used as an argument that mankind must have independently designed the same forms of tools in various parts of the world, and that under like conditions, like forms will be produced by men, however remotely separated. I am not prepared to deny the possibility of some of these forms having had an independent origin; but if the proof of it is to be based upon the separation of continents, we see how entirely groundless such an argument is when applied to the earliest ages of humanity. For if, as has been conjectured, the races of man may have been dispersed by geographical changes of land and sea, it is obvious they may have carried with them, from some primal source, the art of manufacturing stone weapons; the resemblance of which is far more satisfactorily accounted for by this means[187] than by supposing such singular and invariable coincidence in design to be the result of independent discovery. As we contemplate man in his lower and lowest conditions, we find the imitative faculty stands out more and more prominently by the absence of those higher qualities which characterize civilized races; and whatever power of originality for the invention of new arts may have been possessed by the earliest inhabitants of the globe, its results appear to have been spread over so vast a lapse of time that it can scarcely be accounted at all as an element in the mental attributes of primaeval man.

I now pass to what has been announced as the subject proper of my present communication, viz. the origin and development of metal tools. I use the word _metal_ intentionally, in preference to specifying bronze, because, although we have good reason for supposing that in Europe, Egypt, Assyria, and the central parts of America, bronze preceded iron as a material for weapons, it is not so certain that this was the case in all parts of Asia; and in Africa we know that iron was the first metal employed by the negroes.

Perhaps no subject has given rise to so much difference of opinion amongst archaeologists as this question of the origin of metal implements, or has been accompanied with such uncertain results, owing to the great mass of conflicting evidence to be dealt with, and the great doubt which rests upon much of it, whether in regard to the casual mention of the subject in ancient authors, or to the often ill-directed researches of modern times. It would be hopeless, in the brief time allotted me on the present occasion, to attempt to throw fresh light on this intricate subject, even if I possessed the materials for so doing. All I shall endeavour to do is, to put together, in as intelligible a form as possible, some of the more salient points upon which archaeologists are divided, and trace the continuity observable in passing from the stone to the metal age.

We have already seen, in speaking of the implements of the stone age, a gradual improvement in form and fabrication, developing itself in proportion as the wild animals which were contemporaneous with the first traces of man in Europe became extinct, partly, no doubt, through the efforts of man himself in exterminating them, and partly, as there seems reason to suppose, owing to an alteration of temperature, rendering the climate unsuited to the constitution and habits of those animals, which therefore migrated by degrees, and the majority of which are now found chiefly, though not exclusively, in arctic regions. Thither they have been accompanied by races of men whose arts and implements show them to be very nearly in a corresponding stage of civilization to the early races, the relics of which are found associated with the same animals in Europe. The simultaneous migration of races of men in the hunting stage of civilization, with the animals, the pursuit of which forms the almost sole occupation of their lives, is well shown in the case of the North American Indians, whose geographical distribution is now almost identical with that of the buffalo. This forms a strong point in the arguments of those who are disposed to attribute all the changes in the world’s civilization to the influx and extermination of antagonistic races. But it must be remembered that progress advances in an increasing ratio, and the phenomenon now seen in America and Australia of a highly civilized race constantly fed by steam-communication from the Old World, driving before it and rapidly exterminating other races so vastly its inferior as the Australians and American Indians, is one which could have had no parallel at the early period of which I am now speaking. We must here look for a slower process, though doubtless the operating causes may, to a great extent, have been the same.

The fabrication of stone implements would of itself lead by degrees to a knowledge of the metals which are contained in stones. Thus, for example, I have here a specimen of a stone mace-head from Central America, figure 2, Plate XIX, composed of a nodule of haematite partially coated with micaceous iron ore, the particles of which are distinctly visible on its glittering surface. The weight of this implement, being nearly double that of a mace-head composed of ordinary stone, would at once attract the notice of the savage fabricator, and lead him to investigate the uses of metal.

But, as a general rule, races engaged exclusively in hunting, who rarely turn their attention to the ground except to examine a trail or to search for water, would have little opportunity of profiting by the mineral wealth of the soil over which they roamed. Witness the Australians, who have continued for ages in ignorance of the gold and other mines which are now so attractive to Europeans; or the North and South American Indians, and the Esquimaux, amongst whom the art of smelting metal has never been found associated with those races who are in a purely hunting stage of existence; the wrought metals used by such races to point their weapons being invariably derived from civilized sources.

From hunting wild animals, the savage, in the natural sequence of progress, would turn his attention to their capture and domestication, and thus he creeps gradually into the pastoral life; and as the bones of animals under domestication, through want of exercise and good living, become smoother and of finer texture, the experienced anatomist is thereby afforded the means of distinguishing, amongst the vestiges of antiquity, the remains of domesticated animals from those derived from the chase, and of observing to what extent the domestication of animals was contemporaneous with other changes in the social condition of the people.[188] Still, however, in the pastoral state, the barbarian is not necessarily brought in contact with metals; and hence we should expect in many cases to find the traces of domesticated animals associated with people who are still in the stone age. This was notably the case amongst the ancient inhabitants of the Swiss lakes, where the sheep and horse have been found at Moosseedorf, and other lake habitations which are proved to belong to the stone age, though not in such abundance as in the settlements belonging to the bronze age.[189]

From the pastoral life, the barbarian, hampered by his flocks and herds, and no longer obliged to wander in search of food, settles down to a more stationary life, and by degrees takes to agriculture. Then, for the first time, he digs into the soil, and becomes acquainted with its mineral treasures. It has been proved by the discovery of quantities of carbonized grains of wheat, lumped together, in the Swiss lake-habitations of the stone age, together with the materials for preparing it for food, that a knowledge of agriculture preceded the general employment of bronze in that region,[190] whilst in Britain, and in Denmark also, bronze is almost invariably associated with evidence of domestication and agriculture.

The metals first employed would be those that are most attractive. Copper, in Europe, from the bright colour of its ores, would be noticed more readily than iron, which is often scarcely distinguishable from the soil, and requires greater temperature and more skilled labour to render it available than could be expected of a people emerging out of the savage state. It is not, therefore, surprising that in Europe, copper first, and subsequently its alloy, bronze, should have been employed before iron as a material for weapons. But in those countries where iron is found upon the surface in an attractive form, and in a condition to be easily wrought, we must for the same reason suppose that it would be used instead of copper in the earliest ages of metallurgy.

DEVELOPMENT OF FORM IN CELTS OF COPPER, BRONZE AND IRON.]

It is natural to suppose that, in the ordinary course of development, an age of pure copper must have intervened between the ages of stone and bronze. But implements of pure copper are comparatively rare, bronze being the metal almost invariably found following immediately upon the age of stone.[191] Notwithstanding the comparative rarity of copper tools, however, there is reason to believe that this metal was used in a pure state before the discovery of the alloy. According to Professor Max Müller, copper was the metal spoken of by Hesiod and Homer as the material generally employed for weapons in their time.[192] Mr. Rawlinson, in his _Five Ancient Monarchies_, says that the metallurgy of the early Chaldeans was of a very rude character, indicating a nation but just emerging from an almost barbaric simplicity, and that copper often occurs pure.[193] Copper implements, of a very early form, beaten into shape, occur not unfrequently in Ireland, as may be seen by specimens represented in Class A, Plate XVIII. They have also been found in Mecklenburg and in Denmark, and Klemm[194] says that they occur in Greece, Italy, Spain, Egypt, and Hindustan. At Maurach, in Switzerland, a copper celt was found in a lake dwelling, which Dr. Keller, notwithstanding this circumstance, attributes to the stone age.[195] In the lake dwelling of Peschiera, on the lake of Garda, several copper implements were discovered,[196] and in certain localities in Hungary copper implements are said to be as plentiful as those of bronze.[197] An axe of pure copper was discovered in Ratho Bog, near Edinburgh, under 20 feet of stratified sand and clay, and Dr. Wilson mentions that others have been found in Scotland.[198] Copper implements occur in Peru, to prove that, in the central parts of America also, the manufacture of bronze was preceded by the use of copper in a pure state; and in the ancient mines of Lake Superior we have distinct evidence of a stage of early metallurgy in which copper was used simply as a malleable stone, and beaten out into the form of implements without the aid of any alloy or a knowledge of the process of casting.[199] (See Plate XIX, figures 3, 4, 5, and 6.) When it is considered that without the admixture of a small portion of alloy of zinc or tin, copper is very difficult to melt, and can only be used by a laborious process of beating into form, and also what a great superiority bronze has over copper as a cutting material, whilst at the same time the process of fabrication is actually in some degree facilitated by the addition of tin, it is not surprising that on the first discovery of the advantages of this mixture, all the old implements of copper, wherever procurable, should have been taken to the melting-pot for conversion into bronze, and we should thus be left with such scanty evidence of the existence of an age of copper.

Up to this point we meet with no difficulty in supposing that the use of metal may have been at first adopted by many nations independently, without intercourse one with another. But when we find in both hemispheres of the globe a very wide diffusion of weapons of bronze, consisting of a mixture of the same metals, which, though varying slightly in its proportions, as we shall afterwards see, is nevertheless, for the most part, constant in its adherence to a standard of about nine parts copper to one of tin in all parts of the world, the question arises whether the knowledge of this mixed metal could have been arrived at independently in different countries, or whether it must have been diffused all over the universe from a common source. It is true that copper and tin materials are sometimes found in the same locality, as, for instance, in Cornwall, the locality which, from the remotest time up to the present, has afforded the most plentiful supply of both metals perhaps in the world. We have evidence, also, that in ancient copper mines fire was employed by the miners for softening the metal and detaching it from the matrix,[200] and it is, therefore, highly probable that the admixture of the two metals occurring so close together, and a knowledge of the advantages accruing therefrom, may have been brought about accidentally in the process of mining.[201] But this connexion of the metals in a state of nature is not common, and in those countries, such as Denmark and Scandinavia, where bronze implements occur, and in which neither metal is found native, it is most improbable that the inhabitants should have discovered the merits of these particular ingredients, unless they had derived the knowledge of them from without.

Hence we find archaeologists as much divided in their opinions upon what I may call the monogenesis or polygenesis of bronze, as biologists and anatomists are upon the monogenesis or polygenesis of the human race. The same question repeats itself again and again in dealing with the vestiges of the early history of man, and we may therefore divide the consideration of this question of the origin of bronze under pretty nearly the same heads to which I have adverted when speaking of the distribution of races, and of the age of stone (pp. 147-54). The questions to be considered may be numbered as follows:--(1) that bronze was spread from a common centre by an intruding and conquering race, or by the migration of tribes; (2) that the inhabitants of each separate region in which bronze is known to have been used discovered the art independently, and made their implements of it; (3) that the art was discovered, and the implements fabricated, on one spot, and the implements disseminated from that place by means of commerce; (4) that the art of making bronze was diffused from a common centre, but that the implements were constructed in the countries in which they are found.

Amongst the advocates for the first hypothesis, viz. introduction by the intrusion of fresh races, are to be found chiefly the Scandinavian archaeologists, amongst whom may be especially mentioned Professors Worsaae, of Copenhagen[202], and Nilsson, of Stockholm. Both metals are foreign to the soil of Denmark, and must, therefore, have been imported. In the graves, bronze weapons are in Denmark invariably found with burials by cremation, while those of the stone age are by inhumation, the former being recognized, in an early stage of civilization, as a later process than burial by inhumation. Bronze is here markedly associated with traces of agriculture, the evidence of which is wanting in the stone age. The age of bronze, it is asserted by these antiquaries, was ushered in in Denmark by the employment of implements showing the highest perfection of art, and at a later period, when they are associated with weapons of iron, they are inferior in the quality of their workmanship. The weapons of bronze have remarkably small handles, denoting a smaller race, and hypothetically an eastern origin, small handles being to this day the characteristic of weapons from India. Some of the bronze spear-heads in Denmark have been found with nails driven into them, a practice which still exists in India, each nail denoting a victim; and in the Asiatic islands the custom of boring a hole in the weapon for each victim is found to the present time.[203] The peculiar ornamentation so often found on the bronze swords of Denmark, known as the spiral ornament, is said, though I think erroneously, to be of Phoenician origin. To these and other arguments for the introduction by intruding races, Professor Nilsson adds, that in the countries of the north, where bronze implements are found in greatest abundance, the graves in which they occur are usually situated in groups, proving that bronze was introduced, not by isolated individuals, merchants, or travellers, but by tribes or colonies more or less numerous, occupying especial tracts of country.

The theory of race-origin is also not without its adherents in this country. Dr. Thurnam, who has excavated a large number of barrows in the south of England, divides them--as, indeed, they have been divided by former antiquaries--into several classes, amongst which we may chiefly distinguish two principal types, viz. the long and the round barrows. The former he attributes to the stone age, containing usually implements of that material, whilst implements of bronze are almost invariably found in the round barrows. He also gives it as the result of his researches, extending over some years of exploration--and Canon Greenwell, in so far as his experience of long barrows in the north of England goes, confirms the statement--that the long barrows are generally associated with dolichocephalic, or long skulls, whilst in the round barrows brachycephalic, or round skulls, are found, thus leading to the supposition that the long-headed people of the stone age who erected the long barrows may have been succeeded by another race with round heads importing bronze, and burying their dead in round barrows. But after having heard Dr. Thurnam’s last papers on this subject, read before the Society of Antiquaries and other societies[204], I confess, although he has no doubt established a sequence, that he does not appear to me to have determined a clear line of separation between the two classes of interments; the long barrows pass by intermediate links into the round ones, and the long skull, although no doubt it may be considered characteristic of an earlier period, and therefore connected with an earlier form of barrow, also passes by gradations into the round skull, the variations of form being considerable. Then, with respect to the implements, although the absence of bronze in the long barrows of the earlier period appears to be determined, yet it is notorious to all those who have paid attention to the subject--and is not by any means denied by the learned antiquaries whose names I have mentioned--that the transition from stone to bronze in this country was gradual, and extended over a long period, flint weapons being found in nearly all the barrows of the bronze age in such positions as to show they were used contemporaneously by the same people; and from discoveries which have been made both by myself and others[205], there seems good reason to suppose that flint weapons continued to be used by some of the inhabitants of this country even during the Roman era. This distinction of long heads in long barrows, and round heads in round barrows, is one so easily remembered, that it is liable on this account, perhaps, to receive greater attention than it really deserves as a criterion of race. The difficulty of distinguishing in all cases the primary from the secondary interments in the barrows--it being an established fact that these barrows were used as places of burial by successive generations, and even perhaps by successive races, including also the Anglo-Saxons--the possible distortion of some of the crania by time and pressure, and the other facts of the case, as I believe I have correctly stated them, are, I think, sufficient to justify us in withholding for the present our entire acceptance of the theory of the introduction of bronze into this country by intruding races, as drawn from any evidence derived from the graves.

From amongst those who have advocated the totally independent origin of bronze, the opinion of Professor Daniel Wilson may be selected, as affording a most ingenious argument derived from an analysis of the metals.[206] He quotes some experiments conducted by Dr. George Pearson, and communicated by him to the Royal Society of London in 1796, to ascertain the results of various proportions of the ingredients of tin and copper in bronze. ‘Having fused these metals in various united proportions, commencing with 1 part of tin to 20 parts of copper, which produced a dark-coloured bronze, he reduced the proportion gradually to 15 parts of copper to 1 of tin, when the colour was materially affected, and the red copper hue was no longer seen, but an alloy of greater strength was produced. The experiments were continued with 12, 10, 9, 8, and 7 parts of copper to 1 of tin, and when the last fusion of the metals was tested, increased hardness and brittleness of the metals became very apparent. The same characteristics were still more marked on successively reducing the proportions of copper to 6, 5, 4, and 3; and when alloy was made of 2 parts of copper to 1 of tin, it was, according to Dr. Pearson’s report, as brittle as glass.’

From the result of these experiments we see that the best average proportions, of about 9 parts of copper to 1 of tin, would invariably show itself by a practical experience in the use of these ingredients, and it is therefore unnecessary to assume that these particular proportions, when found in the bronzes of different countries, must necessarily have been communicated.

Dr. Wilson then proceeds to give the results of analyses of ancient bronzes discovered in Europe, America, and elsewhere, contained in the accompanying tables. And he concludes his observations on the subject as follows:--

‘From the varied results which so many independent analyses disclose, varying, as they do, from 79 to 94 per cent, of copper, or more than the total amount of the supposed constant ratio of tin, besides the variations in the nature, as well as the quantity of their ingredients’ (a proportion of lead will be seen in some of the analyses of European bronzes, the small proportion of iron being probably accidental), ‘it is abundantly obvious that no greater uniformity is traceable than such as might be expected to result from the experience of isolated and independent metallurgists, very partially acquainted with the chemical properties of the standard alloy, and guided for the most part by practical experience derived from successive results of their manufacture.’ The comparison of the two tables here given, from Professor Wilson’s work, also shows a smaller average amount of tin in the American bronze (Table I) than in that of ancient Europe (Table II).

TABLE I.--ANALYSES OF ANCIENT AMERICAN BRONZES

--------------------------+---------+-----------------+-------+-----+-----+ Object. |Locality.| Observer. |Copper.| Tin.|Iron.| --------------------------+---------+-----------------+-------+-----+-----+ 1 Chisel from Silver Mines|Cuzco |Humboldt |94.0 |6.0 | | 2 Chisel „ „ |Cuzco |Dr. J. H. Gibbon |92.385 |7.615| | 3 Knife „ „ |Atacama |J. H. Blake, Esq.|97.870 |2.130| | 4 Knife | | Ditto |96.0 |4.0 | | 5 Crowbar |Chili |Dr. T. C. Jackson|92.385 |7.615| | 6 Knife |Amaro |Dr. H. Croft |95.664 |3.965|0.371| 7 Perforated Axe | | Ditto |96.0 |4.0 | | 8 Personal Ornament |Truigilla|T. Ewbank, Esq. |95.440 |4.560| | 9 Bodkin from Female Grave| | Ditto |96.70 |3.30 | | --------------------------+---------+-----------------+-------+-----+-----+

TABLE II.--ANALYSES OF ANCIENT EUROPEAN BRONZES

----------------+--------------+----------------+-------+-----+-----+-----
Object. | Locality. | Observer. |Copper.|Tin. |Lead.|Iron.
----------------+--------------+----------------+-------+-----+-----+-----
1 Lituus |Lincolnshire |Dr. G. Pearson, | 88.0 |12.0 | |
| | F.R.S., Phil. | | | |
| | Trans. | | | |
2 Anglo-Roman | | Ditto ditto | 86.0 |14.0 | |
Patellae | | | | | |
3 Spear-Head | | Ditto ditto | 86.0 |14.0 | |
4 Scabbard |Danish? | Ditto ditto | 90.0 |10.0 | |
5 Axe-Head |Ireland | Ditto ditto | 91.0 | 9.0 | |
6 Axe-Palstave |Cumberland | Ditto ditto | 91.0 | 9.0 | |
7 Axe-Head | | Ditto ditto | 88.0 |12.0 | |
8 Bronze Vessel|Cambridgeshire|Professor Clark,| 88.0 |12.0 | |
| | M.D. | | | |
9 Sword |France |Mongez, Mémoires| 87.47 |12.53| |
| | de l’Institut | | | |
10 Caldron |Berwickshire |G. Wilson, M.D.,| 92.89 | 5.15| 1.78|
| | Prehist. | | | |
| | Ann. Scot. | | | |
11 Sword |Duddingstone | Ditto ditto | 88.51 | 9.30| 2.30|
12 Kettle |Berwickshire | Ditto ditto | 88.22 | 5.63| 5.88|
13 Axe-Head |Mid-Lothian | Ditto ditto | 88.5 |11.12| 0.78|
14 Caldron |Duddingstone | Ditto ditto | 84.8 | 7.19| 8.53|
15 Palstave |Fifeshire | Ditto ditto | 81.19 |18.31| 0.75|
16 Sword |Ireland |Professor Davy, | 88.63 | 8.54| 2.83|
| | Prehist. | | | |
| | Ann. Scot. | | | |
17 Sword | | Ditto ditto | 83.50 | 5.15| 8.35| 3.0
18 Sword |Thames |J. A. Phillips, | 89.69 | 9.58| | 0.33
| | F.G.S., &c. | | | |
19 Sword |Ireland | Ditto | 85.62 |10.02| | 0.44
20 Celt | | Ditto | 90.68 | 7.43| 1.28|
21 Axe-Head | | | 90.18 | 9.81| |
22 Axe-Head | | Ditto | 89.33 | 9.19| | 0.33
23 Celt | | Ditto | 83.61 |10.79| 3.20| 0.58
24 Celt |King’s County,|Dr. Donovan, | 85.23 |13.11| 1.14|
| Ireland | Chem. Gazette | | | |
25 Drinking-Horn| | | 79.34 |10.87| 9.11|
26 Bronze Vessel|Ireland |Mr Gibbon, | 88.0 |12.0 | |
| | U.S. Mint | | | |
27 Wedge | | Ditto | 94.0 | 5.9 | | 0.1
----------------+--------------+----------------+-------+-----+-----+-----

This argument, however, is defective when taken to determine the question of the origin of bronze in favour of independent discovery, for we have already seen, in speaking of the stone age,--and I have endeavoured to show that it is a peculiarity observable in the works of all savage and barbarous races,--that being devoid of rule or measure, and having very imperfect means of securing adherence to a uniform standard, their productions are characterized by incessant variations, even in cases where the first idea is known to have been derived from a common source. The variations here shown to exist in the composition of bronze are no greater than are capable of being accounted for by the universal prevalence of a law of variation, resulting from many causes, and amongst others from want of precision, and carelessness, which is a defect common alike to all tyros in their art, whether ancient or modern. It is a fault we have many of us to complain of almost daily in our cooks. A batter pudding is composed of milk, flour, and eggs, in proper proportions, but a careless cook will constantly vary her proportions, and will fail in adjusting her quantities to the total amount; but we must not, on that account, assume that each cook has invented the art of making batter puddings independently. So, in like manner, it is quite consistent with the facts observed even in America, to suppose that the first knowledge of bronze, and of those many features in the civilization of the Mexicans and Peruvians which present such striking analogies to the civilization of Egypt, may have been originally communicated by some casual wanderer or some shipwrecked castaway from the then centres of Eastern culture (for the theory of geographical changes is, of course, out of the question when speaking of the origin of bronze), and that they have varied in their development on American soil no more than might naturally be expected from their introduction to an entirely new and partially civilized race. Such an assumption, though difficult to account for, and wanting in evidence, is more in accordance with the well-known traditions of the Mexicans and Peruvians, who attribute their civilization to the advent of a god; or with that of the natives of Nootka Sound, on the north-west, who state that an old man entered the bay, in a copper canoe, with paddles of copper, and that the Nootkans by that means acquired a knowledge of that metal.

As illustrations of the modern metal-work of the natives of Nootka Sound and its neighbourhood, several examples are given in Plate XIX, figs. 7 to 11. Figures 7 and 8 represent two sides of an iron dagger in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution. The ornamentation on the handle is that of the natives of the country, but the workmanship of the blade, which is ribbed on one side, appears to indicate foreign manufacture. Figures 9 and 10 are two sides of a copper dagger of the same form; this specimen is now in the Belfast Museum, in which it was deposited in the year 1843 by Mr. A. Thompson, who brought it from the north-west coast of America, and described it as having been fabricated by the Flathead Indians; it is undoubtedly of native workmanship; in both these weapons one side of the blade and handle is concave, the other convex, a form which appears to denote that it was originally taken from some similar weapon of bone or cane. The nearest approach to the form of this weapon in bone, that I am aware of, is that of the Indian ‘kandjar’, a figure of which was given in my first lecture on Primitive Warfare, Plate X, fig. 63. This weapon has also one concave and one convex side, derived from the natural curvature of the bone out of which it is made.