GEOLOGY. 327 



the shells have been broken according to a certain system, most probably 

 for getting out the marrow. The committee, without knowing of the Indian 

 mound described by Sir Charles Lyell, unanimously came to the conclusion 

 (1849-50) that the mounds in Denmark indicated the places where the abo- 

 rigines used constantly to eat their meals. 



The implements of bone and stone discovered in these mounds are mostly 

 of the same forms, and of the very rudest description. The implements of 

 flint are in general neither ground nor polished; they present, even, quite 

 peculiar simple forms, different from the forms of the common hatchets and 

 implements of the stone-age. At the commencement, when we only knew 

 a few such mounds, I believed these differences of forms to be accidental, and 

 I ascribed, accordingly, the mounds with their rude implements of flint to 

 the same period as the common stone implements, and the large tombs, 

 stone-chambers, or cromlechs of the stone-age. 



But two years ago, in comparing the many flints from the mounds with 

 the still more numerous flints from the cromlechs, I discovered that several 

 of the rudest flint implements of the mounds never appear in the cromlechs 

 or graves of the stone-age; and, on the other hand, that a great many of the 

 highly finished or polished stones of the cromlechs never are to be found in 

 the mounds. In Lectures delivered at the University of Copenhagen (1857), 

 I tried to show that the rude flint implements of the mounds were exactly 

 like some other rude and undoubtedly extremely old flint implements found 

 in great abundance in different places on the sea-shores of Denmark, and 

 also in Schonen, at the bottom of old bogs, which now are, and which 

 probably for thousands of years have been, covered with large hills of 

 gravel, clay, and sand, as well as remarkably like the rude hatchets, and 

 other implements of flint, discovered under circumstances pointing to a very 

 high antiquity, in different bone-caves in England and France, and in the 

 gravel-pits at Abbeville and Amiens. Of these implements I had seen some 

 at Abbeville, in the museum of M. Boucher de Perthes, who also afterwards, 

 when more of them had been found, with great liberality forwarded several 

 specimens for comparison to our Royal Museum of Northern. Antiquities at 

 Copenhagen. I extended my comparison to the implements of the very 

 rudest savage tribes of America and the South Sea, preserved in different 

 museums, and I came to the result, that the peculiarly formed, very rude 

 flint implements of the mounds of Denmark, and of the bone-caves and 

 gravel-pits of England and France, must belong to an earlier time of the 

 stone-age than the cromlechs or large stone chambers; and that they, per- 

 haps, are to be ascribed to some peculiar savage tribes, who were the real 

 aborigines of the North and AVest of Europe, and who afterwards must have 

 been subdued by more powerful, more advanced tribes, of whom the beauti- 

 fully-finished stone implements, and the very remarkable, sometimes quite 

 astonishing, stone chambers, or cromlechs, are speaking memorials. Last 

 spring, at a meeting of the Royal Academy, I further explained this new 

 subdivision of the stone-age, which was preceded by an equally new subdi- 

 vision of the bronze-age. Six months ago I had succeeded in establishing a 

 subdivision of the iron-age, in such a way that we, according to my opinion, 

 now are enabled, for the Pagan time alone, to point out six different great 

 periods of civilization in Denmark, and I dare say in a good many other 

 countries of Europe. 



This new system, however, especially the division of the stone-age, was natu- 

 rally opposed by several antiquaries. When, a few months after, the news of 



