To return, however, to Greece and Italy, there can, as I have already said, be little question that even on historical grounds we must accept the fact that in those countries, at all events, the use of bronze preceded that of iron. We may therefore infer theoretically that the same sequence held good with the |7| neighbouring and more barbarous nations of Western Europe. Even in the time of Pausanias[26] (after A.D. 174) the Sarmatians are mentioned as being unacquainted with the use of iron; and practically we have good corroborative archæological evidence of such a sequence in the extensive discoveries that have been made of antiquities belonging to the transitional period, when the use of iron or steel was gradually superseding that of bronze for tools or weapons, and when the forms given to the new metal were copied from those of the old. The most notable relics of this transitional period are those of the ancient cemetery at Hallstatt, in the Salzkammergut, Austria, where upwards of a thousand graves were opened by Ramsauer, of the contents of which a detailed account has been given by the Baron von Sacken.[27] The evidence afforded by the discoveries in the Swiss lakes is almost equally satisfactory; but I need not now enter further into the question of the existence and succession of the Bronze and Iron Ages, on which I have dwelt more fully in my book on Ancient Bronze Implements.[28] I am at present concerned with the Stone Age, and if, as all agree, there was a time when the use of iron or of bronze, or of both together, first became known to the barbarous nations of the West of Europe, then it is evident that before that time they were unacquainted with the use of those metals, and were therefore in that stage of civilization which has been characterized as the Stone Age.