No doubt their incredulity was partly due to want of appreciation of the
Egyptological evidence, partly to disinclination to accept a conclusion
which did not at all agree with the knowledge they had derived from
their own study of prehistoric Europe. In Southern Europe it was quite
certain that iron did not come into use till about 1000 B.C.; in Central
Europe, where the discoveries at Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut exhibit
the transition from the Age of Bronze to that of Iron, about 800 B.C.
The exclusively Iron Age culture of La Tène cannot be dated earlier than
the eighth century, if as early as that. How then was it possible that,
if iron had been known to the Egyptians as early as 3500 B.C., its
knowledge should not have been communicated to the Europeans until over
two thousand years later? No; iron could not have been really known to
the Egyptians much before 1000 B.C. and the Egyptological evidence was
all wrong. This line of argument was taken by the distinguished
Swedish archaeologist, Prof. Oscar Montelius, of Upsala, whose previous
experience in dealing with the antiquities of Northern Europe, great as
it was, was hardly sufficient to enable him to pronounce with authority
on a point affecting far-away African Egypt. And when dealing with Greek
prehistoric antiquities Prof. Montelius's views have hardly met with
that ready agreement which all acknowledge to be his due when he is
giving us the results of his ripe knowledge of Northern antiquities. He
has, in fact, forgotten, as most "prehistoric" archaeologists do forget,
that the antiquities of Scandinavia, Greece, Egypt, the Semites,
the bronze-workers of Benin, the miners of Zimbabwe, and the Ohio
mound-builders are not to be treated all together as a whole, and that
hard and fast lines of development cannot be laid down for them, based
on the experience of Scandinavia.

We may perhaps trace this misleading habit of thought to the influence
of the professors of natural science over the students of Stone Age and