Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/453

] the days of Cæsar, was sufficient for the needs of the inhabitants, as it was in Gaul, and his statement that the Britons of his day used iron rings, or bars of a certain weight, in place of money, while their bronze articles were imported from abroad, expresses the relation of the two metals to one another in Britain in the Prehistoric Iron age with the greatest accuracy. It was sufficiently abundant, not merely for the manufacture of weapons, but for making tires for the wheels and other fittings for the chariots The historic evidence that iron gradually supplanted bronze is confirmed by numerous discoveries in various parts of Europe. A bronze socketed celt, with a thin edge of iron let into it, has been met with in an ancient Etruskan tomb at Villanova, near Bologna; and bronze axes have been discovered in Scandinavia with their edges formed in the same way. Bronze swords have been discovered in Switzerland in the lake-dwellings, at Moeringen, and elsewhere, with the hilts inlaid with iron, and in association with iron swords of the leaf-shaped type so characteristic of the Bronze age. In Britain also, iron and bronze swords have been found together of the same leaf-shaped pattern; and a spear-head found in Scotland consists of an iron core covered with the harder and more brittle bronze. It may therefore be concluded that iron was introduced into these countries first of all in small quantities, that it was highly esteemed, and that it gradually supplanted bronze.