ARCHsEOLOGY IiV DENMARK. 



J 5 



Fig. 5. Knife or 

 Scraper. Flint. 



point arrowheads ; one Danish specimen has been found still at- 

 tached to its slender shaft. The pottery fragments from the shell 



heaps are usually small, plain, and very rude 



and coarse. Bone piercers and combs are found 



occasionally. All the relics and the conditions 



of life hinted at by the food supply indicate 



that the primitive Danes were a low and savage 



people. Sir John Lubbock reproduces a picture 



of their life, no doubt very similar to that of 



the modern Fuegians. He says : " On the low 



shores of the Danish archipelago dwelt a race 



of small men, with heavy, overhanging brows, 



round heads, and faces probably much like those 



of the present Laplanders ; living in tents of 



skin, they had weapons and implements of stone, 



bone, horn, and wood. Their food, consisting 



mainly of shellfish, comprised also fish and 



game. Probably eating was gorging and mar- 

 row was a delicacy. They were not summer 



visitors, but may likely enough have migrated frequently." (Not 



literal quotation.) 



Yet this savage or barbarous man was not entirely without 

 brute helpers. Among the mammalian bones 

 in the heaps are those of the dog. Of course, 

 the question arises whether these are the re- 

 mains of wild dogs hunted as food, or those 

 of domesticated or semi-domesticated dogs liv- 

 ing about the settlement. Steenstrup's at- 

 tempts to answer the question are sufficiently 

 well known. He observed that nearly all the 

 long bones of animals and birds were reduced 

 to shafts, the heads or extremities having dis- 

 appeared ; he observed also that short bones 

 were rare or almost lacking there being fully 

 twenty or twenty-five long bones for every 

 short one. Struck by these facts, he experi- 

 mented with dogs, giving them bones to gnaw. 

 He found that they devoured short bones and 

 gnawed the heads off the long bones, leaving 

 the shafts in precisely the condition of those 

 from the shell heaps. He concluded that dogs, 

 at least half tamed, lived around the village 

 and gnawed the bones thrown upon the refuse 

 heaps. 



The Danish shell heaps are old. Worsaae 

 Flint. estimates that they date to 3000 to 2000 B. c. 



