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The evidences of commerce and of navigation are equally obvious. Bronze itself consists of tin and copper: and there are only two parts of the world from which tin in any large quantities can be procured–namely, Cornwall and the Malay Archipelago. The very existence of bronze, therefore, necessarily implies the existence of a sea-going trade in tin, for which some corresponding benefits must of course have been offered by the early purchaser. As a matter of fact, we know with some probability that it was Cornish tin which first tempted the Phoenicians out of the inland sea, past the Pillars of Hercules, to brave the terrors of the open Atlantic. Long before the days of such advanced navigation, however, the Cornish tin was transported by land across the whole breadth of Southern Britain and shipped for the Continent from the Isle of Thanet. A very old trackway runs along the crest of the Downs from the West Country to Kent, known now as the Pilgrim’s Way, because it was followed in far later times by mediaeval wayfarers from Somerset and Dorset to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. But Mr. Charles Elton has shown conclusively that the Pilgrim’s Way is many centuries more ancient than the martyr of King Henry’s epoch, and that it was used in the Bronze Age for the transport of tin from the mines in Cornwall to the port of Sandwich. To this day antique ingots of the valuable metal are often dug up in hoards or finds along the line of the ancient track. They were evidently buried there in fear and trembling, long ages since, in what Indian voyageurs still call a cache, by caravans hurriedly surprised by the enemy; and owing to the unfortunate accident of the possessors all getting killed off in the ensuing fray, the ingots have been left undisturbed for centuries for the benefit of antiquaries at the present time. ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.’ Probably the inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii had very little notion what valuable relics their bodies and houses would prove in the end for curious posterity.

The converse evidence of a return trade in other goods is no less striking. Not only are articles in amber found in Bronze Age tombs all over Europe (though the gum itself belongs to the Baltic and the North Sea alone), but also gold objects of southern workmanship occur in British barrows; while sometimes even ivory from Africa is noticed in the inlaid handles of some Welsh or Brigantian chieftain’s sword. Glass beads were likewise imported into Britain, as were also ornaments of Egyptian porcelain. In fact, the Bronze Age clearly marks for us the period when trade routes extended in every direction from the Mediterranean, north and south, and when the world began to be commercially solidified by a primitive theory of foreign exchange. It is a little odd that the basis of all this traffic was tin, and that we still use the name of that same metal as a brief equivalent for coin in general: but persons of serious economical or philological intelligence are particularly requested not to enter into grave correspondence with the author of this paper on any possible levity which they may detect lurking in this innocent remark.

Some small idea of the rapid advance in civilization which marked the Bronze Age may perhaps be formed from a brief enumeration of the principal classes of remains which have come down to us intact from that first epoch of metal. Besides all the various celts, hatchets, and adzes, whose name is legion, and whose patterns are manifold, many other tools or implements occur abundantly in the barrows or caches. Chisels, either plain, tanged, with lugs, or socketed; gouges, hammers, anvils, and tongs; punches, awls, drills, and prickers; tweezers, needles, fish-hooks, and weights; all these are found by dozens in endless variety of design. Knives are common, and the vanity of Bronze Age man made him even put up without a murmur with the pangs of shaving with a bronze razor. Daggers and rapiers naturally abound, many of them of rare and beautiful workmanship. Halberds turn up less frequently, but swords are abundant, and are sometimes tastefully decorated with gold or ivory. Even the scabbards sometimes survive, while the shields, adorned with concentric rings or with knobs and bosses, would put to shame the rank and file of cheap modern metal work. Nay, the very trumpets which sounded the onset often lie buried by the warrior’s side, and the bells which adorned his horse’s neck bring back to us vividly the Homeric pictures of Bronze Age warfare.

The private life of Bronze Age man and his correlative wife is illustrated for us by another great group of more strictly personal relics. There are pins simple and pins of the infantile safety-pin order: there are brooches which might be worn by modern ladies, and ear-rings so huge that even modern ladies would in all probability object to wearing them, unless, indeed, a princess or an actress made them the fashion. The torques, or necklets, are among the best known male decorations, and are still famous in Ireland, where Malachi (whoever he may have been) wore the collar of gold which he tore from the proud invader. Many of the bracelets are extremely beautiful; but, strange to say, as if on purpose to spite the common prejudice about the degeneracy of modern man, they are all so small in girth as to betoken a race with arms and legs hardly any bigger than the Finns or Laplanders. Of the clasps, buttons, and buckles I will say nothing here. I have enumerated enough to suggest to even the most casual observer the vastness of the revolution which the Bronze Age wrought in the mode of life and the civilisation of ancient man.

Bronze found our early ancestor, in fact, a half-developed savage: it left him a semi-civilized Homeric Greek. It came in upon a world of skin-clad hunters and fishers: it went out upon a world of Phoenician navigators, Egyptian architects, Achaean poets, and Roman soldiers. And all this wide difference was wrought in a period of some eight or ten centuries at the outside, almost entirely by the advent of the simple bronze axe.