Europe were the people described by Plato, who were workers in metal,
who were highly civilized, who preceded in time all the nations which we
call ancient. It was this people who passed through an age of copper
before they reached the age of bronze, and whose colonies in America
represented this older form of metallurgy as it existed for many
generations.

Professor Desor says:

"We are asked if the preparation of bronze was not an indigenous
invention which had originated on the slopes of the Alps? . . . In this
idea we acquiesced for a moment. But we are met by the objection that,
if this were so, the natives, like the ancient tribes of America, would
have commenced by manufacturing utensils of copper; yet thus far no
utensils of this metal have been found except a few in the strand of
Lake Garda. The great majority of metallic objects is of bronze, which
necessitated the employment of tin, and this could not be obtained
except by commerce, inasmuch as it is a stranger to the Alps. It would
appear, therefore, more natural to admit that the art of combining tin
with copper--in other words, that the manufacture of bronze--was of
foreign importation." He then shows that, although copper ores are found
in the Alps, the probability is that even "the copper also was of
foreign importation. Now, in view of the prodigious quantity of bronze
manufactured at that epoch, this single branch of commerce must itself
have necessitated the most incessant commercial communications."

And as this commerce could not, as we have seen, have been carried on by
the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, or Phoenicians, because their
civilizations flourished during the Iron Age, to which this age of
bronze was anterior, where then are we to look for a great maritime and