Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/449

] between the island of Rugen and the Vistula, prove that its traces remained as late as the first century after Christ. It disappeared from Britain more than a hundred and fifty years before Christ, and from France probably long before.

The next question to be considered is the position of the British Isles in the Bronze age, as related to the Continental nations. Were they visited by the Mediterranean traders, or were they cut off from all contact with the Mediterranean civilisation? It may be answered that there is no proof of any direct intercourse with any southern people. The Cornish tin, and the Irish and Welsh gold, tempted daring Phœnician and Greek adventurers probably after the Bronze age had passed away, and within a few centuries before Christ. It is likely, however, that both were worked by the natives in the Bronze age, and that both found their way through Gaul to the Mediterranean. The glass beads discovered in the tombs of the Bronze age in these islands have, like those of France and Germany, been derived from the south, and many of the higher forms of bronze implements, such as the bronze sword (Fig. 131, p. 364), are to be looked upon as foreign. Both were probably passed from hand to hand, and from tribe to tribe, till ultimately they arrived in the islands of the great western ocean. Comparatively free communication might be carried on with the Continent by means of galleys, similar to those