give a still higher date for the earliest use of copper there," i.e. in Britain.
In the first place, I am impressed by the number of copper and bronze objects found here and in Scandinavia, and which seems to indicate a very long period.
Secondly, the gradual development of new forms and ornaments must have taken very long. We can hardly, I think, attribute less than say three hundred years to each of Montelius' five periods.
In the third place, if the dates given for Egypt and Greece are correct, even Montelius' earliest date assumes that metal was used in the South two thousand years before the knowledge reached Britain. I cannot think it could have taken so long.
Coins were invented about 650 B.C., and our earliest coins were struck in Kent about 200 B.C., i.e. after an interval of under five hundred years.
Fourthly, the copper and early bronze objects found in Britain belong to the earliest and simplest types. Now, if the use of bronze had been known in Southern and Eastern Europe two thousand years before it reached us, it must have attained to a high stage. Our earliest specimens would be socketed celts, leaf-shaped spear-heads, swords, etc. As a matter of fact they are, as we have seen, simple flat axes, evident copies of stone implements, small bronze knife-blades, etc., evidently dating back to quite archaic times. We cannot, then, surely allow more than a thousand years, if so much, to have elapsed between the discovery of copper in the East and its appearance on our shores.
The tendency of recent researches has been to carry back our dates, and, taking all the facts into consideration, it seems reasonable to estimate that the Bronze Age in Northern Europe and Great Britain commenced about 2500 B.C.
