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212 It would seem from this that as yet the Britons knew nothing of the making of steel, or using iron in any other way than as a currency.

It was even worse in the north-east of Europe. The Esthonians, a Lettish–Prussian people, for hundreds of years of our present reckoning used iron as a rarity, and as weapons employed wooden clubs. The Finns at the same time pointed their spears and arrows with bone ‘through deficiency of iron’ as Tacitus says.

A curious story is told us by the Byzantine historian Simocatta. When the Emperor Maurice, in 591, was marching against the Avars on the shores of the Sea of Marmora, there were brought to him two unarmed men of strange aspect, who carried musical instruments like lutes. It was ascertained from them that the Khan of the Avars had sent to their people, who lived on the coast of the Baltic, demanding aid against the Byzantine Emperor, and they were sent as messengers to reply that they were a peaceable people, unaccustomed to wars, and unacquainted with the use of iron.

That the Gauls and Celts, at least on the continent, were acquainted with steel weapons is certain from the Hallstadt and La Tène