Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/386

358 tumulus at Lake, in Wiltshire. The gold beads in Fig. 124 show that sometimes their ornaments were made of precious metals. On their arms they wore bracelets, round, flat, or hollow, ornamented with various designs, generally in chevrons or right lines, either continuous or dotted, and sometimes with circles. The golden coronets or minns and collars worn in Ireland in the legendary times preceding history perpetuate a form of ornament in use in the Bronze age, as is proved by the identity of the patterns in chevrons and right lines (Fig. 146) with those on some of the bronze weapons. Similar ornaments in gold have been discovered in Brittany and Germany, and in Scandinavia in bronze, as in Fig. 147.

Fire was obtained in the Bronze age by striking a flint flake against a piece of iron pyrites, and these are sometimes found together in the tumuli, as in Fig. 125.

The name of pyrites (πῦρ) is itself, as Mr. Evans remarks, sufficient evidence of the purpose to which the mineral was applied in ancient times; and the statement of Pliny that fire was first struck out