The Bronze Age
The introduction of bronze into the arts and industries of the Stone Age people of Europe speedily revolutionized their whole system of social economy. Not only had all the primitive implements and weapons to be remodelled in accordance with the principles of a metallic régime, but new industries and higher artistic aspirations were engendered which, by degrees, greatly modified the commercial and social aspects of life.
That bronze objects first found their way into Britain in the form of cutting implements and weapons imported from abroad there can be little doubt, as the oldest metallic specimens found in graves were made of the best quality of bronze, viz. 10 per cent, of tin to 90 per cent, of copper. Now, since a knowledge of this compound implies a previous acquaintance with its component elements, it follows that progress in metallurgy had already reached the stage of knowing the best combination of these metals for the manufacture of cutting tools before bronze was practically known in Britain. That this skill in the working of metals had not been acquired by the ancient nations on the shores of the Mediterranean without long experience of the qualities of copper and tin, and of the various methods of hardening the former, was demonstrated by the late Dr. Gladstone, F.R.S., at the meeting of the British Association held at Liverpool in 1896.
