Phoenicians, but by other civilized people dwelling more to the
south-east."

Professor E. Desor, in his work on the "Lacustrian Constructions of the
Lake of Neuchatel," says,

"The Phoenicians certainly knew the use of iron, and it can scarcely be
conceived why they should have excluded it from their commerce on the
Scandinavian coasts. . . . The Etruscans, moreover, were acquainted with
the use of iron as well as the Phoenicians, and it has already been seen
that the composition of their bronzes is different, since it contains
lead, which is entirely a stranger to our bronze epoch. . . . We must
look, then, beyond both the Etruscans and Phoenicians in attempting to
identify the commerce of the Bronze Age of our palafittes. It will be
the province of the historian to inquire whether, exclusive of
Phoenicians and Carthaginians, there may not have been some maritime and
commercial people who carried on a traffic through the ports of Liguria
with the populations of the age of bronze of the lakes of Italy before
the discovery of iron. We may remark, in passing, that there is nothing
to prove that the Phoenicians were the first navigators. History, on the
Contrary, positively mentions prisoners, under the name of Tokhari, who
were vanquished in a naval battle fought by Rhamses III. in the
thirteenth century before our era, and whose physiognomy, according to
Morton, would indicate the Celtic type. Now there is room to suppose
that if these Tokhari were energetic enough to measure their strength on
the sea with one of the powerful kings of Egypt, they must, with
stronger reason, have been in a condition to carry on a commerce along
the coasts of the Mediterranean, and perhaps of the Atlantic. If such a
commerce really existed before the time of the Phoenicians, it would not
be limited to the southern slope of the Alps; it would have extended