Note 94 — Chapter II

W. Belck attributes the introduction of iron into Crete in 1500 B.C. to the Phoenicians, whom he derives from the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf. He suggests that these traders were already acquainted with the metal in S. Arabia in the fourth millennium, and that it was through them that a piece found its way into Egypt in the fourth dynasty. "Die Erfinder des Eisentechnik," Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie, 1910. See also F. Stuhlmann, Handwerk und Industrie in Ostafrika, 1910, p. 49 ff., who on cultural grounds derives the knowledge of iron in Africa from an Asiatic source.