We may quote from Hoernes as follows regarding the dates: “The temporal limits of the Hallstatt period are uncertain, according to the districts which one includes and the phenomena which one considers. It is now known that the Hallstatt relics for the most part belong to the first half of the last millennium B. C. But while some assign these relics as from the time of perhaps 1200 to perhaps 500, others are satisfied with the period from 900 to 400, or bring them even farther forward. It is certain that one must differentiate in these questions between the west and the east of the Hallstatt culture areas; in the one the particular Hallstatt forms would come nearer to the close than in the other. One or perhaps more centuries lie between the first appearance of the La Tène forms in Western Germany and in the eastern Alps. Also the beginning varies according to the locality and the criteria which one takes for a guide, that is to say, according to whether the phenomena of the time about 1000 B. C. are considered as belonging still in the pure Bronze Age, to a transition period, or indeed to the first Iron Age.” 129 : 26. Ridgeway, speaking of the Achæans, says: “They brought with them iron which they used for their long swords and cutting implements.... The culture of the Homeric Achæans” (these are dated about 1000 B. C., about the time of the Dorians, according to Bury, p. 57) “corresponds to a large extent with that of the early Iron Age of the Upper Danube (Hallstatt) and to the early Iron Age of Upper Italy (Villanova).” Myres, _Dawn of History_, p. 175, says that there was a gradual introduction of iron, first for tools and then for weapons. It had been known as “precious metal” in the Ægean since the late Minoan third period, or even the late Minoan second period, which is usually dated with the XVIIIth Egyptian dynasty as about 1500–1350. Most other writers, however, including Bury, p. 57, Myers, _Anc. Hist._, p. 136, and Deniker, _Races of Man_, p. 315, ascribe the general use of iron to a much later invasion, namely that of the Dorians, about 1100 B. C.