THE BRONZE AGE.
The people of the Bronze age introduced a higher civilisation into the
world than their predecessors of the Stone ages. There appears to be a
great overlap between the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages of Central
and Northern Europe, and the historic periods of the Eastern countries
bordering on the Mediterranean. We have evidence that great periods of
time must have marked the epochs of the prehistoric ages, and that the
Bronze age, like the Stone and Iron ages, began at different times in
different countries. The tribes who brought with them the age of Bronze
into Europe composed the Celtic van of the Aryan race. The earliest
productions of this period were the simple wedges resembling flat stone
axes, the sides of which are slightly thickened to form ridges or
flanges; the centres are also raised, which produces a ridge to prevent
the head from going in too far in the handle; in some the flanges are
much developed, and have also a loop cast on the side for the purpose of
tying it on to the haft. Some are made with a socket and loop; these
have been called “Paalstabs,” and have a flat chisel-like shape (Figs.
28, 30).
[Illustration: Fig. 28.]
[Illustration: Fig. 29.]
[Illustration: Fig. 30.]
Figs. 28 to 30.—Bronze and Paalstabs. (From _Danish Arts_.)
[Illustration: Fig. 31.]
[Illustration: Fig. 32.]
[Illustration: Fig. 33.]
[Illustration: Fig. 34.]
Figs. 31 to 34.—Bronze Axes, Paalstabs, and Moulds. (From _Danish
Arts_.)
[Illustration: Fig. 35.]
[Illustration: Fig. 36.]
[Illustration: Fig. 37.]
[Illustration: Fig. 38.]
Figs. 35 to 38.—Bronze Swords and Spear-Head. (From _Danish Arts_.)
[Illustration:
Figs. 39 and 40.—Bronze Button for Sword Belt.
(From _Danish Arts_.)
]
These earlier implements are often made of pure copper. Bronze is a
mixture of copper and tin, generally from two to four per cent. of tin,
and is consequently harder than copper. Knives, hammers, gouges,
sickles, daggers, spears, swords, shields, many kinds of vessels, and
articles of personal adornment made in bronze, belong to the earlier
time of the Bronze period, and similar articles were made in this
material in the prehistoric Bronze ages all over the known world (Figs.
35 to 40).
An interesting object is a breast-plate, belonging to this early Bronze
period; it is decorated with zigzags in bands, and a well-arranged
scheme of spiral ornamentation (Fig. 41). Urns of earthenware, sometimes
decorated with zigzags and sacred signs, have been found in graves.
These urns contained ashes of the dead (Figs. 43, 44).
[Illustration: Fig. 41.—Breast-plate, with Spiral Ornaments. (From
_Danish Arts_.)]
Many of the bronze implements and other articles have been found in
tombs, in caves in great quantities, both finished and unfinished, in
“Kitchen Middens,” or refuse heaps, in river-beds, and in bogs.
[Illustration: Fig. 42.]
[Illustration: Fig. 43.]
[Illustration: Fig. 44.]
Figs. 42, 43, and 44.—Urns of the Bronze Age (From _Danish Arts_.)
[Illustration: Fig. 45.—Bronze Bowl found in Sweden. (_Scand. Arts._)]
[Illustration: Fig. 46.—Urn of the Stone Age found in Swedish Dolmen.
(_Scand. Arts._)]
Some of the objects found in North Germany, and particularly in Denmark,
Sweden, and Norway, are exceedingly beautiful in their shape and
decoration. From nowhere else in the world come so many objects, and so
much that is characteristic of the prehistoric Bronze age. This period
has been ably treated, and at great length, by Mr. J. J. A. Worsaae, in
his “Danish Arts,” and by Mr. Hans Hildebrand, in his “Arts of
Scandinavia,” to which books we are indebted for the accompanying
illustrations. It may be noticed that much of the decoration on these
objects consists of a few simple elements with much geometric
repetition. The varied forms are chiefly spirals interlocking at
regulated distances, concentric rings, triangles, zigzag lines, and
bands formed of lines which are reminiscences of the earlier withy
lashings, with which the stone celts were fastened to their hafts. The
raised, as well as the flat twisted-like bands, are derivatives from the
twisted strings that would naturally be tied around the pottery of an
early date to carry it by (Fig. 45).
[Illustration: Fig. 47.—Bronze Hatchet found in Sweden. (_Scand.
Arts._)]
The spirals, zigzags, ring-crosses, wheels, triskeles, reciprocal
meanders, semicircles, &c., are geometrical developments of sun-snake,
lightning, the sun itself, cloud-forms, moon-forms, star-forms, and the
sacred fylfot or swastika, all of which had their origin in Egypt,
India, Central Asia, or Greece. At first they were used as isolated
signs, or pictographs, to represent physical phenomena, that were
objects of Nature-worship with almost all the nations of the world after
the dawn of civilisation, and when these signs migrated into the art of
other nations or later peoples, who were either ignorant of their
meaning or understood them in an imperfect way, they ceased to be
employed as isolated signs of the various divinities they originally
represented, and were copied, and repeated, as required, to fill in a
geometrical way the space at hand to be ornamented.
[Illustration:
Fig. 48.—Sun Signs.
A, Wheel Cross or Wheel; B, Sun God Signs; C, Fylfot, or Swastika; D,
Triskele; E, Stars or Sun Signs.
]
A beautiful piece of workmanship is the bronze horn (Fig. 50). Worsaae
thinks that this horn was used in the worship of the gods in the early
Bronze age, owing to the great number of sacred signs engraved on it.
Sun-wheels, sun-snakes, and sun-boats, developed into spiral ornament,
may be seen on it.
[Illustration:
Fig. 49.—Sun Signs. (From _Danish Arts_.)
F, Sun-snakes; G. Swastika; H, Triskele; I, Star or Sun.
N.B.—The Swastika here is evidently a double Sun-snake.
]
[Illustration: Fig. 50.—Bronze Horn or Trumpet, found at Wismar, in
Mecklenburg. (From _Danish Arts_.)]
There is one ornament that plays an important part in the Bronze and
Iron periods, of which much has been written, the “fylfot” or
“swastika.” It has been found in nearly every quarter of the ancient
world, except Egypt and Assyria, both in savage ornament and in the art
of cultured races. The “fylfot” or “many” or “full-footed” cross in
Anglo-Saxon, it is also known by the names of “gammadion,” “croix
gammée,” “croix cramponée,” “tetraskele,” &c. The Indian name for it is
the “swastika” or “svastika,” which means “good luck,” or “it is well.”
The fylfot, according to the opinion of many archæologists, was
originally the sign of the sun, and used as a sacred symbol in the
worship of the sun; others think it was a sign used to symbolize the
rotatory motion of the planets; it is quite likely it has been used by
different early peoples for both. It has been associated with other sun
signs, as the circle, concentric circles, with the S-shaped sun-snakes,
as on the prehistoric whorls from Hissarlik, and very frequently with
the solar divinities, as the horse, boar, ram, lion, ibex, and goose,
&c. It is found on Cyprian and Rhodian pottery and on the “geometric”
pottery of Greece. Its appearance on many objects of early Christian art
can be accounted for. In these cases the Christian missionaries
permitted the continued use of it to their pagan converts, but they
themselves attached a new meaning to it, regarding it as merely a
substitute for the symbol of the cross.
[Illustration: Fig. 51.—Pinak or Plate, Archaic Period, from Camiros,
Rhodes, showing Fylfot, and Sun Signs, and Sacred Boar. (British
Museum.)]
Some writers have argued, with a good deal of plausibility, that the
Greek fret pattern, Chinese and Japanese frets, were only developments
from the fylfot. This is purely conjectural, for as regards the Greek
fret, it is more likely that it had an Egyptian source, as so many of
the Greek ornaments are but developments of Egyptian and Assyrian forms.
The fret used by the Greeks has been found in Egypt in the ceiling
ornament of tombs more than a thousand years before it appeared in
Greece. The Chinese frets may have in some instances a fylfot origin,
but at present this is doubtful, as it has not yet been proved. The
drawing of the archaic Greek plate (_pinak_), in the British Museum,
given at Fig. 51, from the Greek colony of Rhodes, is very interesting,
as it shows a well-developed fylfot between the legs of the boar, and an
early Greek fret band; the fret here may only be a water-sign, or a
river-edge representation. The spaces around the boar (animal sacred to
the sun) are filled up with sun-signs and star-signs; even the large
segment of radiating lines, and the form over the animal’s back may
typify the sun. The whole decoration has a high religious meaning in
reference to sun-worship, and is evidently a copy by a Greek artist of
an oriental embroidery motive.
[Illustration: Fig. 52.—Silver Brooch, Plated with Gold, in the form of
a Double Sun-snake or Swastika; found in Iceland. (_Danish Arts._)]
[Illustration: Fig. 53.—Gold Bowl, with Bronze Handle and Sacred Horse’s
Head. (_Danish Arts._)]
[Illustration: Fig. 54.—Bronze Horn found in Denmark. (_Danish Arts._)]
The fylfot has been found stamped on the pottery of the lake dwellings
of the Zuni, Yucatan, and other American pottery, and on objects from
Iceland, Ireland, and Scandinavia. A circular form of it is seen on the
gold Scandinavian ornament (Fig. 52).
Whether it originally was a pure sun-sign, or whether it signified the
axial rotation of the earth round the North Pole, it is full of
remarkable interest, and enters more than any other symbolic sign into
historic ornament generally. In India, China, and Japan, it has been
much used; this was owing to the spread of the Buddhist religion in
these countries. It is found on the toes of the “Footprint” of Buddha,
at the Amarávati Tope, India; and owing to its great religious
significance in China, Japan, and Ceylon, we find it stamped on the
account books, coins and dresses of both the living and the dead, as a
universal sign of good luck.
[Illustration: Fig. 55.—Collar of Bronze found in Sweden. (_Scand.
Arts._)]
[Illustration: Fig. 56.—Danish Bronze Knives, decorated with Sun-ships
and other Sacred Figures. (_Danish Arts._)]
[Illustration: Fig. 57.]
[Illustration: Fig. 58.]
Figs. 57 and 58.—Bronze and Gold Buttons found in Women’s Graves, with
the Triskele, Moon-Signs, and Sun Snakes. (_Danish Arts._)
The swastika, both straight and curved-armed variety, was used
indiscriminately in the decoration of objects of the Iron age, whether
in bronze, iron, gold, silver, wood, or stone. It was the sign among the
Romans of Jupiter Tonans, who wielded the thunder and lightning; was the
sign used for Thor, the god of thunder and lightning, with the early
German peoples, and the curved variety of it was used as a symbol of
their highest divinity by the northern nations of Scandinavia. From this
widespread use of the swastika it is conjectured that it is an Aryan
symbol, brought by the people of the Bronze age from their primitive
home in the plateau of Central Asia.