point for the Bronze-culture, both in Asia and subsequently in other quarters of the globe. By the side of local distinctions in the products of the Bronze-Age we everywhere see unmistakable marks of internal similarity in their chief features. Attention has only recently been directed to the pre-historic antiquities of India; but already numerous discoveries have been observed of characteristic weapons and articles of castbronze in very primitive forms, sometimes collected in hoards of hundreds, with traces which show that they were cast in the locality itself, or at all events in the country. On the Sunda Islands, in Sumatra Java and Celebes, in Kambodja China and Japan, discoveries have been and are still being made of not a few axes swords spear-heads and other objects cast in bronze, the forms of which are similar, though they differ in detail. So antique are they and unknown to the present inhabitants, that they readily attribute them to a divine origin. When found in the earth they are treasured as holy relics and protecting amulets. In China they are chopped into small bits and retailed at a high price as health-giving amulets. In many places they are even ground to a powder, which is used as a medicine in cases of very dangerous illness.

East of China Japan the Sunda Islands and New Guinea (?) articles of copper or bronze have not yet been brought to light in the South Sea Islands.

Even in America there are only a few places, and those chiefly among the most highly civilised Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas of Peru, where objects of castmetal have been met with; and these date from a comparatively recent period in the civilisation of ancient

America, and are perhaps to be regarded as products of an alien prehistoric influence from Asia.

On the other hand, north of China, in north-western Siberia remains are shown both from graves and elsewhere of a vastly more complete and comparatively distinct group of bronze articles, but closely allied to the Chinese. But to the west it disappears towards the Ural Mountains on the frontiers of Europe. Here in many places traces have been detected of the old mines worked with tools of stone and copper, as well as of ancient gold-washing by the side of rivers. But this remote north Asiatic Age of Bronze had very slight connexion with the Finns in north-western Russia and Scandinavia, and cannot be regarded as the real starting-point for the widely different superior Bronze-culture which appeared in the south of Scandinavia and in the rest of Europe.

The source of this latter must be sought in quite other streams of culture. These also took their rise in India. But as they spread, they followed the western ways, which were certainly opened during the StoneAge, until they reached the south-eastern boundaries of Europe after traversing Syria Egypt and Asia Minor, countries in which the Bronze-culture has everywhere left its traces, at times in unusually large "cast-finds" (Stöbefund).

With the commencement of history Herodotus describes the Massageta 2 in these regions as a people even then acquainted only with copper and gold. They had not therefore got beyond a Copper- or Bronze-Age.

2 Hdt. i. 201. În iii. 36 he places them east of the Caspian in the Steppes beyond the Araxes (Jaxartes or Sir Daria).

According to the latest investigations they dwelt in Afghanistan between Herat and Kabul, that is to say, on the great land-route between India and western Asia. On this same land-route also, but more to the west, in Persia, bronze weapons now begin to come to light.

The high antiquity of the bronze objects in Asia as a whole is shown by the popular belief in Persia the Sunda Islands and many other places that they have fallen from heaven in thunderstorms. Traces of a corresponding ancient superstition about the sanctity and venerableness of bronze objects are also found among the Assyrians Jews Greeks and Romans." In the erection of temples, as in the celebration of solemn ceremonies, only bronze might be used. Moreover historians inform us that, just as now in the temples of Japan, in Greek temples various sacred objects of bronze were displayed as having belonged to the goddess Athene or some of the most famous mythical heroes.

Naturally many separate objects of metal-the forerunners of the new culture-would be introduced both by peaceful and hostile inroads among the Stone-Age peoples of southern Europe. Long intercourse with the neighbouring and far more highly civilised races living in Asia and Egypt must also have influenced them in various ways. Already they had attained a considerable development in the regions immediately bordering on Asia, e.g. in Greece, where metals lay to hand. They would infallibly therefore soon take to casting bronze articles of their own, copies partly of the 4 e.g. the ancilia.

3 Exod. xxviii. &c.

foreign models, partly of the indigenous forms previously used in objects of stone and bone.

But along with such gradual transitions new immigrations of metal-using races from Asia most probably laid the real foundations for the general spread of the higher Bronze-culture as well as for the colonisation of central Europe on a scale heretofore unknown. Contemporaneously with the new culture an entirely new fashion of burial-cremation-made its first appearance in Europe. Everywhere, so to say, it gradually expelled the custom of interring corpses. This is an additional indication of the fresh growth of population following steadily in the wake of the Bronze-culture, as it advanced by different routes from those pursued by the culture and form of burial characteristic of the preceding Age of Stone.

Comparatively few remains of the Bronze-Age have, it is true, been as yet observed in the vast tracts of Asia, and these intrinsically are somewhat various in kind. But the number is steadily increasing, and already it is evident that they fall into numerous groups. From this it is evident that the Bronze-culture cannot have continued exclusively to be the characteristic of a single people, which supplied the whole of Asia with articles of bronze.

In Europe also the Bronze-culture presents itself in groups. So wide-spread and diversified was it, that here too it must have been a common possession of many tribes standing on pretty much the same level of civilisation, though, as in Asia, at very various times. It is even probable that the Bronze-Age in the southeast of Europe was originally founded by immigrations

from Asia, not merely of one and the same race, but of various races, each with its own special taste and general development. Otherwise it is not easy to explain how the strongly marked differences between the Bronze-Age of south and central Europe can from the very first have arisen. About 1000 B.C. iron, as before mentioned, began to be known and used in Greece and other regions in the extreme south of Europe. We may therefore provisionally place the introduction of the Bronze-Age into the lands on the Black Sea and Mediterranean several centuries earlier.

Steadily flowing in from Asia the new stream of the Bronze-Age culture and peoples appears to have poured over Europe chiefly by two main routes. The southern followed the coast-lands previously settled by the peoples of the Stone-Age, that is to say, first Greece and then the southern portion of the Italian peninsula, countries which are closely related in the nature of the bronze objects found in them. From this point the current in after-times evidently set westward along the north and south shores of the Mediterranean to Africa Spain and France to some extent; also northwards, though but feebly, to the British Isles. The other branch diverged more to the north from the Black Sea along the basin of the Danube into the heart of Europe.

5 And yet Dennis ("Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria ") quotes our author among other distinguished archeologists in support of the assertion that "antiquarians are now generally agreed that all the ancient bronzes found in various lands north of the Alps, from Switzerland to Denmark and from Ireland to Hungary and Wallachia, are of Etruscan origin." Could evidence be more grossly misrepresented?