THERE are four principal theories as to the Bronze age. According to some archaeologists, the discovery, or introduction, of bronze was unattended by any other great or sudden change in the condition of the people; but was the result, and is the evidence of a gradual and peaceable development. Some attribute the bronze arms and implements, found in Northern Europe, to the Roman armies, some to the Phoenician merchants; while others, again, consider that the men of the Stone age were replaced by a new and more civilized people of Indo-European race, coming from the East; who, bringing with them a knowledge of bronze, overran Europe, and dispossessed—in some places entirely destroying—the original, or rather the earlier inhabitants.

It is not, indeed, necessary to suppose that the introduction of bronze should have been effected everywhere in the same manner; so far, for instance, as Switzerland and Ireland are concerned, Dr. Keller and Sir W. R. Wilde may be quite right in considering that the so-called “primitive” population did not belong to a different race from that subsequently characterised by the use of bronze.

Still, though it is evident that the knowledge of bronze must necessarily have been preceded by the separate use of copper and of tin; yet no single implement of the latter metal has been hitherto found in Europe, while those of copper are extremely rare. Hungary and Ireland, indeed, have been supposed to form partial exceptions to this rule. The geographical position of the former country is probably a sufficient explanation; and as far as Ireland is concerned, it may perhaps be worth while to examine how far that country really forms an exception.

THE first appearance of man in Europe dates back to a period so remote, that neither history, nor even tradition, can throw any light on his origin, or mode of life. Under these circumstances, some have assumed the past to be hidden from the present by a veil, which time would probably thicken, but could never remove. Thus, the memorials of antiquity have been valued as monuments of ancient skill and perseverance, but it has not been supposed that they could be regarded as pages of ancient history; they have been recognized as interesting vignettes, not as historical pictures. Some writers have assured us that, in the words of Palgrave, “We must give it up, that speechless past; whether fact or chronology, doctrine or mythology; whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or America; at Thebes or Palenque, on Lycian shore or Salisbury Plain: lost is lost; gone is gone for ever.” While if others, more hopefully, have endeavoured to reconstruct the story of the past, they have too often allowed imagination to usurp the place of research, and written rather in the spirit of the novelist, than in that of the philosopher.

But of late years a new branch of knowledge has arisen; a new Science has, so to say, been born among us, which deals with times and events far more ancient than any of those which have yet fallen within the province of the archaeologist. The geologist reckons not by days or by years; the whole six thousand years, which were until lately looked on as the sum of the world's age, are to him but as a unit of measurement in the long succession of past ages.

IN reading almost any account of savages, it is impossible not to admire the skill with which they use their rude weapons and implements. The North American Indian will send an arrow right through a horse, or even a buffalo. The African savage will kill the elephant, and the Chinook fears not to attack even the whale. Captain Grey tells us that he has often seen the Australians kill a pigeon with a spear, at a distance of thirty paces. Speaking of the same people, Mr. Stanbridge asserts that “it is a favourite feat on the Murray to dive into the river, spear in hand, and come up with a fish upon it.” Woodes Rogers says that the Californian Indians used to dive and strike the fish under water with wooden spears, and Falkner tells us that some of the Patagonian tribes live chiefly on fish, “which they catch either by diving, or striking them with their darts.” Wallace, again, says the same of the Brazilian Indians. The South Sea Islanders are particularly active in the water. They dive after fish which “take refuge under the coral rock; thither the diver pursues him, and brings him up with a finger in each eye.” They are even more than a match for the shark, which they attack fearlessly with a knife. If they are unarmed “they all surround him and force him ashore, if they can but once get him into the surf;” but even if he escapes they continue their bathing without the least fear. Ellis more cautiously says only that “when armed they have sometimes been known to attack a shark in the water.”

ALTHOUGH our knowledge of ancient times has of late years greatly increased, it is still very imperfect, and we cannot afford to neglect any possible source of information. It is evident that history cannot throw much light on the early condition of man, because the discovery—or, to speak more correctly, the use—of metal has in all cases preceded that of writing. Even as regards the Age of Bronze we derive little information from it, and although, as we have seen, the Age of Stone is vaguely alluded to in the earliest European writers, their statements have generally been looked upon as imaginative rather than historical; and are, indeed, confined to a mere mention of the fact that there was a time when metal was unknown.

Nor will tradition supply the place of history. At best it is untrustworthy and short-lived. Thus, in 1770 the New Zealanders had no recollection of Tasman's visit. Yet this took place in 1643, less than 130 years before, and must have been to them an event of the greatest possible importance and interest. In the same way the North American Indians soon lost all tradition of De Soto's expedition, although “by its striking incidents it was so well suited to impress the Indian mind.”

WHILE we hare been straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching excavations in Egypt and Assyria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us; and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among the ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or the Euphrates, but in the pleasant valleys of England and France, along the banks of the Seine and the Somme, the Thames and the Waveney.

So unexpected were these discoveries, so irreconcileable with even the greatest antiquity until lately assigned to the human race, that they were long regarded with neglect and suspicion. M. Boucher de Perthes, to whom we are so much indebted for this great step in the history of mankind, observed, as long ago as the year 1841, in some sand containing mammalian remains, at Menchecourt, near Abbeville, a flint, rudely fashioned into a cutting instrument. In the following years other weapons were found under similar circumstances, and especially during the formation of the Champ de Mars at Abbeville, where a large quantity of gravel was moved and many of the so-called “hatchets” were discovered. In the year 1846 M. Boucher de Perthes published his first work on the subject, entitled “De l'lndustrie Primitive, ou les Arts et leur Origine.” In this he announced, that he had found human implements in beds unmistakeably belonging to the age of the drift. In his “Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes” (1847), he also gave numerous illustrations of these stone weapons, but unfortunately the figures were so small as scarcely to do justice to the originals.

IT is hardly necessary to say that the preceding chapters do not contain all the facts upon which those who believe in the great antiquity of the human race chiefly rely. It is, indeed, by no means only of late years, or among archaeologists, that the difficulties in Archbishop Usher's chronology have been felt to be insuperable. Historians, philologists, and physiologists have alike admitted that the short period allowed could hardly be reconciled with the history of some eastern nations, that it did not leave room for the development either of the different languages, or of the numerous physical peculiarities, by which the various races of men are distinguished.

Thus, Dr. Prichard says, “Many writers who have been by no means inclined to raise objections against the authority of the Sacred Scriptures, and in particular Michaelis, have felt themselves embarrassed by the shortness of the interval between the Noachic Deluge and the period at which the records of various nations commence, or the earliest date to which their historical memorials lead us back. The extravagant claims to a remote and almost fathomless antiquity, made by the fabulists of many ancient nations, have vanished before the touch of accurate criticism; but after abstracting all that is apparently mythological from the early traditions of the Indians, Egyptians, and some other nations, the probable history of some of them seems still to reach up to a period too remote to be reconciled with the short chronology of Usher and Petavius. This has been so universally felt by all those writers who have entered on the investigation of primeval history that it is superfluous to dwell upon the subject.”

Esquimaux

THE Esquimaux, and the Esquimaux alone among savage races, occupy both the Old and the New World. They inhabit the shores of the Arctic Ocean from Siberia to Greenland; and throughout this great extent of country the language, appearance, occupations, weapons, and habits of the natives are very similar, and it must be added that the latter are most ingenious. The language of the Innuit or Esquimaux is akin to that of the North American Indians in structure, while their appearance has a decided likeness, particularly about the eyes, to the Chinese and Tartars.

Their dwellings are of two kinds. The summer they pass in tents or wigwams, with the entrance to the south or south-east. In those observed by Captain Parry, the tentpoles were, in the absence of wood, formed of stags' horns, or bones lashed together. The lower borders of the skins were held down by large stones. These were sometimes built up into regular circles, eight or nine feet in diameter and four or five feet high. These circles were at first supposed to be the remains of winter-houses, but it was subsequently ascertained that they were exclusively used for extending the skins of the summer-tents. Near these “hut circles” long rows of standing stones were several times observed, The winter-houses, in the southern districts are constructed of earth or drift-timber, which is very abundant in some places. In the north, however, wood becomes extremely rare.