Skulls of the age of stone, Denmark

This people must have sent out colonies to the shores of France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway, who bore with them the arts and implements of civilized life.  They raised crops of grain, as is proved by the bronze sickles found in different parts of Europe.

It is not even certain that their explorations did not reach to Iceland.  Says Humboldt,

“When the Northmen first landed in Iceland (A.D. 875), although the country was uninhabited, they found there Irish books, mass-bells, and other objects which had been left behind by earlier visitors, called Papar; these papae (fathers) were the clerici of Dicuil.  If, then, as we may suppose from the testimony here referred to, these objects belonged to Irish monks (papar), who had come from the Faroe Islands, why should they have been termed in the native sagas ‘West men’ (Vestmen), ’who had come over the sea from the westward’ (kommer til vestan um haf)?” (Humboldt’s “Cosmos,” vol. ii., 238.)

If they came “from the West” they could not have come from Ireland; and the Scandinavians may easily have mistaken Atlantean books and bells for Irish books and mass-bells.  They do not say that there were any evidences that these relics belonged to a people who had recently visited the island; and, as they found the island uninhabited, it would be impossible for them to tell how many years or centuries had elapsed since the books and bells were left there.

The fact that the implements of the Bronze Age came from some common centre, and did not originate independently in different countries, is proved by the striking similarity which exists between the bronze implements of regions as widely separated as Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, and Africa.  It is not to be supposed that any overland communication existed in that early age between these countries; and the coincidence of design which we find to exist can only be accounted for by the fact that the articles of bronze were obtained from some sea-going people, who carried on a commerce at the same time with all these regions.

Celts

Compare, for instance, these two decorated bronze celts, the first from Ireland, the second from Denmark; and then compare both these with a stone celt found in a mound in Tennessee, given below.  Here we have the same form precisely.

Leaf shaped bronze swords

Compare the bronze swords in the four preceding illustrations-from Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark-and then observe the same very peculiar shape—­the leaf-shape, as it is called—­in the stone sword from Big Harpeth River, Tennessee.