Abstract
IN a paper read a year ago before the Scientific Society at Christiania, I discussed the old doubts of the greater age of bronze in comparison with iron. The relative slight reducibility of the oxidised iron ores, and the difficulty of the preparation of metallic copper from its most common (sulphuretted) ores, as well as the high degree of human civilisation required for making an alloy such as bronze, are circumstances weighing very heavily in favour of the greater antiquity of the Iron Age. Nevertheless, the paradoxical nature of the theory of the greater antiquity of the Bronze Age is somewhat mitigated by recent researches.
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SEBELIEN, J. The Chemical Composition of the Prehistoric Bronzes. Nature 113, 100–101 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113100a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113100a0