584 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



afterwards became the Baltic provinces of Russia, another 

 culture, represented mainly by implements of stone, existed 

 contemporaneously with the Maglemose culture ; and these 

 stone-workers pressed north into Finland. This early civilisa- 

 tion of Finland is known as the Suomusjarvi culture ; and 

 speaking of this culture and that into which it immediately 

 developed, Nordman says that most Finnish archaeologists 

 believe that " the originators of this civilisation were the 

 forerunners of the Finno-Ugrian peoples," In Denmark the 

 Maglemose culture developed directly into the culture of the 

 kitchen-middens, the geographical conditions having changed 

 remarkably in the meantime — changed, by the way, with most 

 astonishing rapidity, unless the accepted chronology is totally 

 erroneous — the Baltic being once more oceanic and the climate 

 genial and appreciably warmer than at the present day. During 

 the same period the Suomusjarvi culture developed and im- 

 proved, and seems to have spread over a wide area ; it was now 

 characterised by earthenware vessels ornamented with comb 

 impressions. The next stage is the appearance in Denmark 

 of a megalithic civilisation, which is totally new, and is obviously 

 an incursion from south-western Europe. Whether there was 

 any great ethnic infusion accompanying the north-eastern 

 spread of megalithic civilisation, it is at present impossible 

 to say. After the megalithic people, there came another 

 people who buried their dead in single earth-graves and were 

 addicted to the use of battle-axes ; this " battle-axe culture " 

 has now been definitely isolated from the confusion of early 

 Scandinavian relics, but the men who were responsible for it 

 are not yet known. The battle-axe culture spread to Finland, 

 and seems to have imposed itself upon the people of the greater 

 part of both Scandinavia and Finland so thoroughly that at 

 the very end of the Neolithic Age and in the Bronze Age 

 there was a homogeneous culture (though by no means a 

 homogeneous race) throughout Denmark, the Scandinavian 

 Peninsula, and Finland. Nordman believes that in the spread 

 of this battle-axe culture we see the arrival of the Teutons in 

 the north, the culture itself being most closely related to the 

 contemporary civilisation of Central Europe, whence it obviously 

 came. Later, about the beginning of the Christian Era, there 

 was a resurgence of native Finnish culture in Finland, owing 

 to contact with and probably immigration from the Baltic 

 provinces. 



This in brief outhne is Nordman 's story. It will be seen 

 that the early Scandinavian cultures have been to a considerable 

 extent disentangled the one from the other. On the other hand, 

 scarcely anything is known of the somatology of the peoples 

 responsible for the cultures, and therefore on the ethnological 



