FIG. 26. Side view.

FIG. 27. Flat face.

CARVED BONES AND HORN.

103

who raised these great stone monuments, and those who have left the refuse of their meals in the kitchen middens, are one and the same. Worsaë, de Quatrefages, and Desor do not share this opinion. According to the famous Danish archæologist, the refuse heaps represent in the north the beginning of the age of splintered stone, while the dolmens belong to the end of it. M. de Quatrefages, again grounding his belief upon the fact that the remains of the industry of the people who formed the shell mounds are never found with the remains of Elephas primigenius, nor even with those of the reindeer (although, as we have seen, Steenstrup affirms that the latter do occur in the refuse heaps), concludes that the construction of the kitchen middens is of a much later date than the race of Aurignac and of Moulin-Quignon; he adds that, 'between the stone age of our earliest ancestors and that of the primitive Danes a whole geological period intervenes.’ M. Desor, for his part also, denies the identity of the people of the kitchen middens with that of the dolmens, for, independently of the numerous domestic animals to be met with in the latter, objects in bronze and even in iron occur also, which are never found in the kitchen middens. It is therefore more than doubtful whether these two kinds of monuments date from the same epoch; we may even go so far as to say that the problem is now solved; the dolmens, and especially those in which iron and bronze occur, being proved to be far more recent than the kitchen middens of Denmark.

Blackish ashes have been found in the latter, which chemical analysis has shown to contain a considerable proportion of manganese; these ashes were produced by the combustion of a species of sea-weed (Zostera marina) sprinkled with sea-water. This double process resulted in a sort of saline efflorescence (the sal nigrum of Pliny).

Bones and antlers of the stag carved into fish-hooks, chisels, axe blades, &c., have been found among the débris. A sort of bone comb was discovered at Meilgaard, destined probably to split the tendons then used as thread and cordage. The remains of Danish cooking seem to show

that the tribes who formed one layer after another in such a way that they bear a certain resemblance to geological strata, lived under the shelter of tents, and practised hunting and fishing, eating their spoils on the spot.

Refuse heaps of still earlier date than those of Denmark have been observed in Suabia at Schüssenried. Others occur in certain caves of France, Belgium, in the Orkney Isles, in Scotland, England, &c. We may mention among others the cave at Brixham, where, associated with fragments of rude pottery and bones of extinct species, heaps of .oyster shells and other saltwater molluscs occur, as well as fishbones of the genus scarus.

Cook observed débris of a similar character at Cape Leveque, in Australia. Lastly, Darwin and Lyell mention others in Guinea, and on the coasts of New Finland. They have even been found in America; in the States of Maine, Florida, Massachusetts, &c. Those of America are of two kinds, some containing marine shells in abundance, the others, situated in the interior of the continent, especially on the banks of the Mississippi and the St. John rivers, contain only freshwater molluscs (unio, paludina, ampullaria). In all of them occur axes, arrow heads and flint knives simply splintered, rude pottery, but never metal. The fauna excavated from them differs in no respect from that of the present day. Everything in these refuse heaps indicates a civilisation similar to that of the people who formed the Danish shell mounds, but not perhaps of such remote antiquity.

CHAPTER V.

THE LAKE DWELLINGS AND THE NURAGHI.

I. THE LAKE DWELLINGS OF SWITZERLAND.

It was during the winter of 1853-54, at an epoch when the waters of the lake of Zurich had fallen to the lowest level they are ever known to have attained, that Keller observed near Obermeilen the first piles, which led to so many important discoveries and such remarkable strides in the science of archæology.

Anyone may have observed in the Paris Exhibition of 1867, in the galleries devoted to Natural Science, those curious specimens which displayed before our eyes the dawning arts, industry, agricultural labours, and domestic life of the first inhabitants of Helvetia.

If we read the successive reports communicated by Keller to the Antiquarian Society of Zurich; Troyon's book on the lake dwellings, which Carl Vogt styles somewhat severely an historical romance, a pious fancy; lastly, the work on the lake dwellings of Neufchâtel, published by M. Desor, in 1865; if we add to these works the general views of Morlot on archæology, several critical articles of Pictet on fossil man, independently of what he has said in his great treatise on palæontology; the Crania Helvetica' of His, the studies of Rütimeyer on the fossil fauna of Switzerland, the Crania Germaniæ Meridionalis Orientalis' of Ecker, the 'Vorlesungen über den Menschen, seine Stellung in der Schöpfung und in der Geschichte der Erde,' by Carl Vogt, the Pfahlbaualterthümer von Moosseedorf,' by Jahn and Uhlmann, &c., we shall be convinced that love of science, allied to the noblest patriotism, could alone have brought to light so many

interesting discoveries in so short a time and in so limited. a space of ground. The following details are taken from these original sources and from personal recollection.

It has been justly remarked that the lake dwellings of Switzerland are at the same time monuments of prehistoric architecture, a zoological museum, and a gallery of anthropology. Framework and piles, remains of wild and domestic animals, various forms of human skulls, implements of

every description in bone, flint, bronze, and iron, pottery of more or less artistic workmanship, objects of art and ornament, woven stuffs, grinding stones, millstones for crushing, grains, bread, fruits, ashes, coal, &c., all these are found therein, or at least were found there in a state of confusion, which the science of antiquaries and palæontologists has reduced to the most perfect order (fig. 31).

Long known to the fishermen, who often entangled their nets in them, the piles of the Swiss lakes only at