HKB
tree which now flourishes luxuriantly in Denmark. Again, at the still later epoch when the beech-tree abounded, tools of iron were introduced, and were gradually substituted for those of bronze.
On the coasts of the Danish islands in the Baltic, certain mounds, called in those countries “Kjökken-mödding,” or “kitchen-middens,” occur, consisting chiefly of the castaway shells of the oyster, cockle, periwinkle, and other eatable kinds of molluscs. The mounds are from three to ten feet high, and from 100 to 1000 feet in their longest diameter. They greatly resemble heaps of shells formed by the Red Indians of North America along the eastern shores of the United States. In the old refuse-heaps, recently studied by the Danish antiquaries and naturalists with great skill and diligence, no implements of metal have ever been detected. All the knives, hatchets, and other tools, are of stone, horn, bone, or wood. With them are often intermixed fragments of rude pottery, charcoal and cinders, and the bones of quadrupeds on which the rude people fed. These bones belong to wild species still living in Europe, though some of them, like the beaver, have long been extirpated in Denmark. The only animal which they seem to have domesticated was the dog.
As there is an entire absence of metallic tools, these refuse-heaps are referred to the Neolithic division of the age of stone, which immediately preceded in Denmark the age of bronze. It appears that a race more advanced in civilisation, armed with weapons of that mixed metal, invaded Scandinavia, and ousted the aborigines.
Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.—In Switzerland a different class of monuments, illustrating the successive ages of stone, bronze, and iron, has been of late years investigated with great success, and especially since 1854, in which year Dr. F. Keller explored near the shore at Meilen, in the bottom of the lake of Zurich, the ruins of an old village, originally built on numerous wooden piles, driven, at some unknown period, into the muddy bed of the lake. Since then a great many other localities, more than a hundred and fifty in all, have been detected of similar pile-dwellings, situated near the borders of the Swiss lakes, at points where the depth of water does not exceed 15 feet.[2] The superficial mud in such cases is filled with various articles, many hundreds of them being often dredged up from a very limited area. Thousands of piles, decayed at their upper extremities, are often met with still firmly fixed in the mud.
As the ages of stone, bronze, and iron merely indicate successive stages of civilisation, they may all have coexisted at once in different parts of the globe, and even in contiguous regions, among nations having little intercourse with each other. To make out, therefore, a distinct chronological series of monuments is only possible when our observations are confined to a limited district, such as Switzerland.
The relative antiquity of the pile-dwellings, which belong respectively to the ages of stone and bronze, is clearly illustrated by the associations of the tools with certain groups of animal remains. Where the tools are of stone, the castaway bones which served for the food of the ancient people are those of deer, the wild boar, and wild ox, which abounded when society was in the hunter state. But the bones of the later or bronze epoch were chiefly those of the domestic ox, goat, and pig, indicating progress in civilisation. Some villages of the stone age are of later date than others, and exhibit signs of an improved state of the arts. Among their relics are discovered carbonised grains of wheat and barley, and pieces of bread, proving that the cultivation of cereals had begun. In the same settlements, also, cloth, made of woven flax and straw, has been detected.