Briefly to describe the Sword of the Early Bronze Age, during which, by the by, cremation became almost universal in Europe. The weapon is to a certain extent North European, and seems to have travelled up the valleys of great rivers: Denmark has yielded two hundred and fifty to six Italian bronze blades.[318] They are as a rule of fair length, averaging about seventy-five centimetres: the profile is either leaf-shaped, sub-leaf-shaped, or straight, ending in a bevelled point. The hilt is of two kinds: either tanged or untanged: the tang is broad, long, and pierced, with one or more holes for riveting; in this case the handle was of wood, bone, or horn. Many hefts, however, as will afterwards appear, are cast in a single piece with or without guard; and the latter often disappears in a hollow triangular base, a crescent or horse-shoe containing the shoulders with the concavity of the arch towards the point; this also served in many weapons to receive the rivets. The pommel is of various patterns, frequently a cone, oval, globe, or dome with steps or with melon-like ridges.[319] In others, especially amongst the old Kelts and Germans, it ended with a crutch or crescent whose cusps were, in the richer kinds, adorned with spirals. CHAPTER VI. THE PROTO-SIDERIC OR EARLY IRON AGE OF WEAPONS. ‘Of all metallurgical processes, the extraction of malleable iron may be regarded as amongst the most simple.’—Percy, _Iron, &c._ p. 573. We now come to the King of Metals that ‘breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things’; the only ore friendly as well as fatal to the human form; the most useful and the most deadly in the hand of man[320]—Iron.[321]