Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/101

 and Babylon. At least Sir Henry Layard discovered scarcely a fragment of any articles of gold in the course of his excavations on the site of those two cities, which nevertheless we have the strongest grounds for believing were amongst the wealthiest of those of ancient days. In dealing with the question of Northern Italy we cannot separate it from the contiguous region of Switzerland or Helvetia. Dr Keller, in his well-known work on the Lake-dwellings (p. 459), gives instances where gold has been found in lake-dwellings amongst remains that indicated the owners to have been in the bronze period. Of course it may be said and said with truth that the lake-dwellings of Switzerland continued to be occupied down to a time posterior to those found in the Aemilia. But when we find that a gold ornament has been found in a dwelling of neolithic age, we have a positive proof not simply of the knowledge, but probably of the skill requisite to manufacture the metal. If any upholder of the negative method urges that gold has been found very sparingly in these lacustrine dwellings, let him remember that the existence of one single object of gold in these remains is sufficient to demolish all his argument. The objects found in the lakes are chiefly débris, the offal of the house, bones of animals, which had formed the food of the former owners, broken and disused implements, and such like. Ornaments of gold were not likely to have been flung into the bottom of the lake for the purpose of getting rid of them. Such precious articles were probably handed down with great care from generation to generation, and possibly in later days gold that once graced the neck or arms of prehistoric men and women has reappeared time after time in the form of coins, first the rude imitations of the staters of Philip of Macedon, again under the form of Roman aurei, and perhaps even bore the impress of some mediaeval monarch at a later time. There have been issues of coins both in ancient and modern times of which not a single specimen is at present known; yet if any one were to argue from this against the truth of the documentary evidence, the spade of a peasant by turning up a single coin might on the moment wreck all his logic. The sum of positive knowledge which we obtain