Implements and 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,

Ornamentsof the bronze age