Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/488

460 ancient world. We have already pointed out that it is widely distributed in the Iberian peninsula, where it was worked by the Phœnicians and the Romans, and that it was obtained in the Bronze age in Brittany, and worked by the Etruskans in Tuscany. It is very probable that the mines first worked by the Phœnicians were those nearest to Gades, and afterwards those farther away to the north of Lusitania and of Galicia, then those of Brittany, and lastly those of Britain and Ireland, the regions most remote from their influence.

The reader will see from the position held by the Phœnicians in the ancient world that they must have made known the arts and civilisation of the southern peoples among the barbarians living on the borders of the ocean. They must have exchanged the products of the Mediterranean for the metal, furs, and other articles of the natives. But their influence has left little evidence behind, because the metal-work which they brought bore nothing distinctively Phœnician about it. They manufactured articles for the various markets just as the cutlers of Birmingham make creases for the Malays, and peculiar hoes for the plantations in the West Indies, and just as the cotton-spinners of Lancashire suit their wares to the markets, and the calico-printers use one set of designs for Japan and another set for the trade of Asia Minor. They may have introduced into the west, and probably did introduce, vast quantities of swords, daggers, spears, glass beads, and other things; but these cannot be identified as Phœnician, because of the absence of a distinctive style. This view is materially strengthened by the reflection that their fleets navigated the western seas about 200 years before the Homeric times, the date of which is fixed by Mr.