Night Is Before the Dawn ii 



about their makers, including information on the whaling enterprises 

 of these people of ten thousand years ago. 



The method of examination of these structures entails cutting out 

 and isolating square pillars of the refuse. For purposes of comparison 

 it is arranged that these should be a yard square at the top, though 

 they vary in volume, of course, according to the depth of the heap. 

 The surrounding material is cleared away and the pillar is then taken 

 apart item by item and catalogued; the results are most revealing. 

 The main body of the heaps is invariably composed of shells. The 

 most common species around the North Sea is oysters and it is 

 thus manifest that these early seamen made this delicacy their staple 

 diet. The Baltic Sea used to be more open to the ocean and was 

 consequently more saline so that oysters were much more abundant 

 in those days. With the oysters are found, in descending order of 

 importance from the point of view of edibility, cockles, mussels, 

 winkles, whelks, and some land snails, all of which are still eaten 

 about those parts. Along with these shells are found the remains of 

 crabs and many bones of herring, cod, and flatfish. There are also 

 numerous bones of birds and mammals. For instance, from one group 

 of three pillars examined, one contained 175 mammal and 35 bird 

 bones, the second 121 mammal, 9 bird, and the third 309 mammal 

 and 10 bird bones. 



These bones found in kitchen-middens have been identified and 

 tell us many more facts. The birds prove to be varied — the caper- 

 caillie, which is like a huge black grouse; ducks; geese; swans; and 

 the now extinct great auk. There are never any signs of such species 

 as storks, sparrows, or domestic fowls, from which we infer the 

 latter were unknown. The mammals commonly represented are 

 even more interesting. There are red deer, roe deer, wild boar, the 

 extinct giant ox known as the aurochs, mice, dogs, foxes, wolves, 

 marten, otter, water rats, beaver, lynx, wild cat of the species still 

 inhabiting Scotland, bear, seals, and the porpoise, blackfish, and 

 the killer whale. Note the last three. It is strange that the remains 

 of moose, reindeer, bison, hare, sheep of any kind, or pigs other 

 than the wild boar are not found. Certain bones of all skeletons are 

 missing, which leads us to suppose that they were used as imple- 

 ments, or possibly for some religious purposes, and the longbones 

 of the limbs are always broken at both ends. This was done to 



