ORNAMENTS
OF
THE
BRONZE
AGE
Sir W. R. Wilde says, “It is remarkable that so few antique copper implements have been found (in Europe), although a knowledge of that metal must have been the preliminary stage in the manufacture of bronze.” He thinks that this may be accounted for by supposing that “but a short time elapsed between the knowledge of smelting and casting copper ore and the introduction of tin, and the subsequent manufacture and use of bronze.”
But here we have in America the evidence that thousands of years must have elapsed during which copper was used alone, before it was discovered that by adding one-tenth part of tin it gave a harder edge, and produced a superior metal.
The Bronze Age cannot be attributed to the Roman civilization. Sir John Lubbock shows (“Prehistoric Times,” p. 21) that bronze weapons have never been found associated with Roman coins or pottery, or other remains of the Roman Period; that bronze articles have been found in the greatest abundance in countries like Ireland and Denmark, which were never invaded by Roman armies; and that the character of the ornamentation of the works of bronze is not Roman in character, and that the Roman bronze contained a large proportion of lead, which is never the case in that of the Bronze Age.
It has been customary to assume that the Bronze Age was due to the Phoenicians, but of late the highest authorities have taken issue with this opinion. Sir John Lubbock (Ibid., p. 73) gives the following reasons why the Phoenicians could not have been the authors of the Bronze Age: First, the ornamentation is different. In the Bronze Age “this always consists of geometrical figures, and we rarely, if ever, find upon them representations of animals and plants, while on the ornamented shields, etc., described by Homer, as well as in the decoration of Solomon’s Temple, animals and plants were abundantly represented.” The cuts on p. 242 will show the character of the ornamentation of the Bronze Age. In the next place, the form of burial is different in the Bronze Age from that of the Phoenicians. “In the third place, the Phoenicians, so far as we know them, were well acquainted with the use of iron; in Homer we find the warriors already armed with iron weapons, and the tools used in preparing the materials for Solomon’s Temple were of this metal.”
This view is also held by M. de Fallenberg, in the “Bulletin de la Societe des Sciences” of Berne. (See “Smithsonian Rep.,” 1865-66, p.
383.) He says,
ORNAMENTS
OF
THE
BRONZE
AGE
“It seems surprising that the nearest neighbors of the Phoenicians—the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, and the Romans—should have manufactured plumbiferous bronzes, while the Phoenicians carried to the people of the North only pure bronzes without the alloy of lead. If the civilized people of the Mediterranean added lead to their bronzes, it can scarcely be doubted that the calculating Phoenicians would have done as much, and, at least, with distant and half-civilized tribes, have replaced the more costly tin by the cheaper metal. . . . On the whole, then, I consider that the first knowledge of bronze may have been conveyed to the populations of the period tinder review not only by the Phoenicians, but by other civilized people dwelling more to the south-east.”
Professor E. Desor, in his work on the “Lacustrian Constructions of the Lake of Neuchatel,” says,
“The Phoenicians certainly knew the use of iron, and it can scarcely be conceived why they should have excluded it from their commerce on the Scandinavian coasts. . . . The Etruscans, moreover, were acquainted with the use of iron as well as the Phoenicians, and it has already been seen that the composition of their bronzes is different, since it contains lead, which is entirely a stranger to our bronze epoch. . . . We must look, then, beyond both the Etruscans and Phoenicians in attempting to identify the commerce of the Bronze Age of our palafittes. It will be the province of the historian to inquire whether, exclusive of Phoenicians and Carthaginians, there may not have been some maritime and commercial people who carried on a traffic through the ports of Liguria with the populations of the age of bronze of the lakes of Italy before the discovery of iron. We may remark, in passing, that there is nothing to prove that the Phoenicians were the first navigators. History, on the Contrary, positively mentions prisoners, under the name of Tokhari, who were vanquished in a naval battle fought by Rhamses III. in the thirteenth century before our era, and whose physiognomy, according to Morton, would indicate the Celtic type. Now there is room to suppose that if these Tokhari were energetic enough to measure their strength on the sea with one of the powerful kings of Egypt, they must, with stronger reason, have been in a condition to carry on a commerce along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and perhaps of the Atlantic. If such a commerce really existed before the time of the Phoenicians, it would not be limited to the southern slope of the Alps; it would have extended also to the people of the age of bronze in Switzerland. The introduction of bronze would thus ascend to a very high antiquity, doubtless beyond the limits of the most ancient European races.”
For the merchants of the Bronze Age we must look beyond even the Tokhari, who were contemporaries of the Phoenicians.
The Tokhari, we have seen, are represented as taken prisoners, in a sea-fight with Rhamses III., of the twentieth dynasty, about the thirteenth century B.C. They are probably the Tochari of Strabo. The accompanying figure represents one of these people as they appear upon the Egyptian monuments. (See Nott and Gliddon’s “Types of Mankind,” p.
108.) Here we have, not an inhabitant of Atlantis, but probably a representative of one of the mixed races that sprung from its colonies.
Dr. Morton thinks these people, as painted on the Egyptian monuments, to have “strong Celtic features. Those familiar with the Scotch Highlanders may recognize a speaking likeness.”
It is at least interesting to have a portrait of one of the daring race who more than three thousand years ago left the west of Europe in their ships to attack the mighty power of Egypt.
They were troublesome to the nations of the East for many centuries; for in 700 B.C. we find them depicted on
