The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

6o THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
Time will show whether the suggestion, which I have put forward, that the
Prospectors, who seem to have been responsible for introducing the use of metal into the
west and north, to which they came in search of precious ores, started originally from the
Persian Gulf, or whether, indeed they were but sojourners in southern Mesopotamia,
having arrived there by sea from some more distant land, bringing with them the seeds
of civilisation) as the legends of Oannes, the exalted fish-man, as given by Berosus, seem
to indicates.'*^
Be this as it may, there seems to be adequate evidence of a trade, starting in the
eastern Mediterranean and going first to Malta and Sicily, and thence to Spain, Brittany,
the British Isles and the Baltic. That the prime object of such trade was the procuring
of gold, copper, tin and amber, seems equally certain, as does the fact that megahthic
monuments are found associated with all the sites whence these commodities could
be obtained, as well as upon the land routes connecting them. Further, a certain type
of man, whom we term the Prospector, is found Hving in no small numbers in most of
these megahthic areas, as weU as becoming a successful merchant at many of the sea-port
towns of Europe. Lastly we have seen that this trade, then in the hands of Babylonians,
had reached the Mediterranean by 2800 B.C., was in touch with Malta, Sicily and Spain
between 2600 and 2300 B.C., and scarcely later had reached Brittany, Ireland and
the Baltic.
Thus it seems clear that the Prospectors, in search of metal, reached Celtic lands,
where their descendants may yet be found. What language they spoke is uncertain ;
it may have been aUied to Etruscan or to Sumerian. But judging from their
cosmopolitan habits, one may surmise that they were polyglot, and adopted the language
of the country in which they settled. We can, then, hardly expect to detect any
survivals of the Prospector tongue in the modern Celtic languages, unless undeed it be some
loan words connected with the metal trade.
48 King (1910) 53.