Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/507

] in the year 1879 by the expedition under the command of Professor Nordenskiold. Thule was considered an island by Ptolemy and the later Greek and Latin writers, and its true relation to the mainland of Europe was not known before the fifth century after Christ.

It is unnecessary for us to inquire into the Roman influence on the nations of the north, since it was felt in this country only at the beginning of the Historic period. As the Roman power gradually mastered the Phœnician, Etruskan, and Greek, Roman coins and merchandise passed along the old routes to the north, which remain the great highways of commerce to this day. The discoveries of Pytheas were followed by those of the Roman navigators, and in the first century after Christ the British Isles, the Hebrides, and the Orkneys were known to the geographers.

The preceding pages offer us the materials for arriving at a just idea of the condition of Europe at the beginning of history. The civilisation of Egypt was being felt in the Mediterranean area before the fifteenth century, and the Assyrian by the tenth century before Christ, but the influence of these, spread principally by the Phœnicians, was not known beyond the Pillars of Hercules before the twelfth century. Then the Phœnicians pushed as far as Gades, and gradually extended their trade along the Atlantic until it arrived in Britain in the fifth century before Christ. The Etruskans became masters of Italy at least one thousand years before Christ, and