Bronze Age

Bronze Age appears as a point of comparison in Henry’s attempt to date a steel dagger found underground: he argues that it belongs neither to the Stone Age nor to the Bronze Age, but to a much later period. The reference helps turn the dagger into a chronological puzzle, while the novel’s geological layers and fossil discoveries make deep time a recurring, visible feature of the expedition.

A Chronological Boundary

The term enters the scene when Henry rejects the possibility that the dagger was an antediluvian warrior’s weapon. Its excellent steel, he reasons, places it beyond even the Bronze Age. The observation is part of his effort to fit an unexpected object into a sequence of human technologies and periods; it does not itself establish who carried the weapon or how it came to be there.

Geological Time Made Visible

Elsewhere, the underground route brings Henry through strata he identifies with the Silurian period and past rocks bearing the marks of changing forms of life. He reads the fossils as evidence of a progression from rudimentary trilobites toward more developed animal forms, and imagines the expedition ascending a scale of life toward humanity. These observations make geological chronology something the travelers encounter in the walls around them, even as Professor Hardwigg presses onward despite Henry’s interpretation of the strata.

The novel also sets the travelers’ underground discoveries against contemporary nineteenth-century disputes over human antiquity. It recounts the 1863 discovery of a human jawbone fourteen feet below the surface at Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, alongside stone hatchets and carved flints. The fossil’s age and authenticity became contentious: Professor Hardwigg supported the view that humans had lived in the Quaternary, while Elie de Beaumont argued that the soil was less ancient and rejected the idea that humans were contemporary with Quaternary animals. Further finds, as the narrative explains, strengthened claims for human presence in the Quaternary and suggested an even earlier human association with the Pliocene.

The Dagger and the Limits of Dating

Against this broad chronology, Henry’s Bronze Age comparison is a tentative step in interpreting the dagger. He proposes that it might have belonged to an ancient warrior, but immediately notes that its steel is too refined for either the Stone Age or the Bronze Age. Professor Hardwigg cuts short the speculation and identifies it as a Spanish-made sixteenth-century dagger, once worn by gentlemen and used to deliver a final blow to a defeated foe. He rules out Hans, Henry, and the other living beings they have encountered as its owners, but the identification does not explain how a comparatively recent weapon reached the underground world.

Narrative Significance

The Bronze Age reference marks a boundary in Henry’s reasoning rather than a settled date for the object. Throughout the expedition, geological formations and remains invite the travelers to translate physical evidence into historical sequence; the dagger then unsettles that sequence, because its workmanship points to a human past far later than the surrounding prehistoric setting seems to imply. The novel’s chronology is therefore built both from visible strata and from disputes over how securely objects and fossils can be dated.