er sitting or reclining; these monuments,
therefore, were used as tombs. Arms, vases, and ornaments are placed
at the side of the dead. In the oldest of these tombs the weapons are
axes of polished stone; the ornaments are shells, pearls, necklaces of
bone or ivory; the vases are very simple, without handle or neck,
decorated only with lines or with points. Calcined bones of animals
lie about on the ground, the relics of a funeral repast laid in the
tomb by the friends of the dead. Amidst these bones we no longer find
those of the reindeer, a fact which proves that these monuments were
constructed after the disappearance of this animal from western
Europe, and therefore at a time subsequent to that of the lake
villages.

THE AGE OF BRONZE

=Bronze Age.=--As soon as men learned to smelt metals, they preferred
these to stone in the manufacture of weapons. The metal first to be
used was copper, easier to extract because found free, and easier to
manipulate since it is malleable without the application of heat. Pure
copper, however, was not employed, as weapons made of it were too
fragile; but a little tin was mixed with it to give it more
resistance. It is this alloy of copper and tin that we call bronze.

=Bronze Utensils.=--Bronze was used in the manufacture of ordinary
tools--knives, hammers, saws, needles, fish-hooks; in the fabrication
of ornaments--bracelets, brooches, ear-rings; and especially in the
making of arms--daggers, lance-points, axes, and swords. These objects
are found by thousands throughout Europe in the mounds, under the more
recent dolmens, in the turf-pits of Denmark, and in rock-tombs. Near
these objects of bronze, ornaments of gold are often seen and, now and
then, the remains of a woollen garment. It cannot be due to chance
that all implements of bronze are similar and all are made according
to the same alloy. Doubtless they revert to the same period of time
and are anterior to the coming of the Romans into Gaul, for they are
never discovered in the midst of debris of the Roman period. But what
men used them? What people invented bronze? Nobody knows.

THE IRON AGE

=Iron.=--As iron was harder to smelt and work than bronze, it was
later that men learned how to use it. As soon as it was appreciated
that iron was harder and cut better than bronze, men preferred it in
the manufacture of arms. In Homer's time iron is still a precious
metal reserved for swords, bronze being retained for other