The Book of History (Vol. 1 of 18): A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times to the PresentVarious
History
The Book of History (Vol. 1 of 18): A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times to the Present
Various
World history
The lowest stratum, lying immediately on the original ground, belongs
accordingly to the oldest, or first town, on the citadel-hill of Troy.
Furtwängler says:
[Sidenote: The First Town of Troy]
By moderate computation this settlement must belong to the first
half of the third millennium before Christ, but it may very well
date back even to the fourth millennium. The inhabitants already
used copper implements in addition to stone ones. Their whole
culture is most closely connected with that which prevailed in
Central Europe during the Copper Period. Clay vessels of the Copper
Period from Lake Mond, in Austria, agree completely with those of
the first Trojan town. Troy represents only an offshoot of Central
European culture, and its inhabitants were in all probability of
European origin.
We have already learned that the Copper Period is the end of the
Neolithic Period and the beginning of the Metal Age. In the first
Trojan town there is still extraordinarily little metal used, the
axes, hatchets, knives, and saws still being of stone, of the familiar
Central European types, and of the same materials, among which nephrite
is particularly frequent. Other materials are serpentine, diorite,
porphyry, hematite, flint, etc.
[Sidenote: The First Period of Troy’s Glory]
The forms of these implements correspond entirely to those of the later
Stone Age of Europe. The character of the ceramics also conforms in
many respects, according to Virchow, to that of the European Stone
Age; and the Stone Age finds at Butmir, in Bosnia, and similar ones
in Transylvania seem especially to offer close analogies. It would be
a highly important step toward connecting history with the Neolithic
Period if the first town could be even more closely investigated,
and perhaps more sharply divided from that second stratum which lies
between it and the stratum described by Schliemann as the second or
burnt city, and which Schliemann afterward separated into two strata,
corresponding to two towns. Perhaps the metal comes only from the
second or higher stratum under the burnt city. In that case the oldest
would belong purely to the Stone Age. The ceramics would seem to
contradict this. Furtwängler continues:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account