GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHAEOLOGY. 291 



all delineations of animated objects, either in the shape of plants or 

 animals. It is only with the Iron-age that art, taking a higher range, 

 rose to the representation of plants, animals, and even of the human 

 frame. No wonder, then, if idols of the Bronze-age as well as of the 

 Stone-age are wanting in Europe. It is to be presumed that thy 

 worship of fire, of the sun, and of the moon, was prevalent in remote 

 antiquity — at least during the Bronze-age, perhaps also' during the 

 Stone-age. 



The preceding pages present a sketch, certainly very rough and 

 imperfect, of the developments of civilization. They establish, how- 

 ever, in a very striking manner, the fact of a progress, slow, but un- 

 interrupted and immense, when the starting point is considered. The 

 physical constitution of man has naturally benefitted by it. The de- 

 tails contained in the treatise of which the present paper forms the 

 introduction prove that the human race has been gradually gaining in 

 vigor and strength since the remotest antiquity. 1 The domestic animals 

 also — the dog first, then the horse, the ox, and the sheep have shared 

 in this physical development. Even the vegetable soil has been gradu- 

 ally improving since the Stone-age — at least in Denmark. And yet 

 there are persons who deny all general progress, seeing everywhere 

 nothing but decay and ruin, like that worthy specimen of a northern 

 pessimist who exclaimed, ''See how man has degenerated; he has 

 even lost his likeness to the monkey!" 



I. KJOEKKENMOEDDING. 



General View. — On certain points of the Danish shore there are 

 found heaps, some times enormous, of marine shells, which were at 

 first taken to be natural deposits, indicating an ancitmfc level of the 

 sea higher than at present, or, to speak more correctly, a level of the 

 dry land lower than the present one. 



But in the natural deposits along the coast we observe an assem- 

 blage of individuals of all ages, young and old, belonging to the 

 littoral mollusk fauna, whilst here the younger are wanting, and we 

 discover merely adult individuals belonging to a small number of 

 species, which have not all even the same habitat, as the oyster and 

 the littorine, and could not therefore be met naturally in each other's 

 company. Neither is the arrangement of the mat^ials conformable 

 to what is observed in natural deposits, where there is always more or 

 less stratification and sorting, according to the volume and weight. 



Qn*.examining more closely these heaps of shells, it was not long 

 before there were discovered in them broken bones of various wild 



1 This agrees perfectly with the testimony of statistics. (See " GLuetelet sur l'homme et 

 le development de ses facultes." Paris, '1835, vol. ii, p. 271. This work of first-rate 

 merit is very near akin to Archaeology. M. duetelet has just published a new work, which 

 will certainly be. even more remarkable than the first, and which the author of the present 

 paper regrets not to have had within his reach. 



