The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps
222 PHCENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS
their tin-mines in Britain. This discloses the existence there in the Late Stone Age of colonies of Eastern sea-traders, presumably from “ Syria’ and in contact with Egypt and N. Europe, who searched for metallic ores and bartered manufactures like the Phoenicians. Their culture was in several ways like that of the builders of the Stone Circles in Britain.
[M. Siret found? that these prehistoric Stone Age settlers in S. Spain were civilized sea-going traders from “ Syria,”’ seeking ores, and they traded in and manufactured [as did the Phoenicians] oriental painted vases in red, black and green pigmentsthe latter two colours derived from copper, also statuettes in alabaster of non-Egyptian type, supposed to be “‘ Babylonian,”’ alabaster and marble cups and perfume flasks of Egyptian type, burials with arched domes and corridor entrances of Egypto-Mycenian type, amber from the Baltic and jet from Britain, and a shell from the Red Sea; and they introduced already manufactured the highest grade flint implements of the Late Stone Age period, and axes of a green stone which is found in veins of tin ore. They exported to the East all the tin and copper ore they obtained ; and although thus engaged in the bronze trade, they appear to have left no traces in Spain of that precious metal in their graves. This is explained on the supposition that they kept the natives in the dark in regard to the value of bronze ; and that they preceded the later bronzeusing people of the Bronze Age proper. |
Against the probability of Phoenicians being the erectors of the prehistoric megaliths in Britain and Western Europe it was argued by Fergusson, who attempted to prove that both Stonehenge and Avebury were post-Roman, that no dolmens had been reported from Pheenicia in his day.? Since then, although Syria-Phcenicia is as yet little explored, “a circle of rough upright stones ”’ is reported to stand a few miles to the north of Tyre itself ;* and several ‘“‘ Stone Circles "’ have been reported by Conder‘, Oliphant and others in South Syria as well as in Hittite Palestine, * and especially
1 L’ Anthropologie, 1921.
*“F.R.M., 409.
* Stanley, cited by A.P.H., 105.
*C.S.S., 42 ; Heth [= Hittite] and Moab, chaps. 7 and 8; Thirty Years
Work in Holy Land (Pal. Expl. F.) 142 and 176, 187, pp. 394, 410, etc ° See distribution map and figures, H. Vincent, Canaan, Paris. to14,