SCARCITY OF HUMAN BONES. 355 



what use could they not be applied ? Numerous and special- 

 ized as are our modern instruments, who could describe the 

 exact use of a knife ? But the primitive savage had no such 

 choice of weapons ; we see before us perhaps the whole con- 

 tents of his workshop ; and with these implements, rude as 

 they seem to us, he may have cut down trees, scooped them 

 out into canoes, grubbed up roots, attacked his enemies,* 

 killed and cut up his food, made holes through the ice in 

 winter, prepared fire-wood, etc. 



The almost entire absence of human bones, which has 

 appeared to some so inexplicable as to throw a doubt on the 

 whole question, is, on consideration, less extraordinary than it 

 might at first sight appear to be. If, for instance, we turn to 

 other remains of human settlements, we shall find a repetition 

 of the same phenomenon. Thus in the Danish shell-mounds 

 where worked flints are by far more plentiful than in the 

 St. Acheul gravel, human bones are of the greatest rarity, 

 only one piece in fact having ever been found. At that period, 

 as in the Drift Age, mankind lived by hunting and fishing, 

 and could not, therefore, be very numerous. In the era, 

 however, of the Swiss Lake-habitations, the case was different. 

 M. Tryon estimates the population of the " Pfahlbauten" 

 during the Stone Age at about 32,000 ; in the Bronze era, 

 42,000. On these calculations, indeed, even their ingenious 

 author would not probably place much reliance; still the 

 number of the Lake villages already known is very consider- 

 able ; in four of the Swiss lakes only, more than seventy have 

 been discovered, and some of them were of great extent : 

 Wangen, for instance, being, according to M. Lohle, supported 

 on more than 50,000 piles. Yet, if we exclude a few bones 

 of children, human remains have been obtained from these 

 settlements in six cases only. The number of flint imple- 



* Some savages even now fight with stones, which they simply hold 

 in their hands. 



2 A2 



