GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHAEOLOGY. 



311 



vaults, carefully constructed of large undressed blocks of stone, and it 

 has been easy to collect a great many skulls, whose type could be de- 

 cided on. They are small heads, remarkably rounded in every direc- 

 tion, but with a facial angle tolerably large, and a forehead which 

 bears the stamp of an intellect not a little developed. This type 

 reminds us of that of the Laplander, without our being able to affirm 

 precisely that it is identical with it. We have } r et to pursue the study 

 of the Laplander, in order to know him better, and to see whether he 

 may not have somewhat changed in the course of ages. Nevertheless, 

 it cannot be denied that the aggregate of what is known tends to induce 

 us consider the Laplanders as the last remnant, the descendants of the 

 primitive population of Denmark, and probably of all the rest of 

 Europe, for antique skulls of the same type have been discovered in 

 France, in Ireland, and in Scotland. 1 On the other hand, the Lap- 

 lander is considered, as it were, an extreme branch of the Mongol race; 

 to which, therefore, the primitive population of the age of stone in 

 Europe is likely to have belonged. 



Fig. 7. (J) 



Type of the age of stone, 

 Denmark. 



Fig. 8. (i) 



A skull of the earliest times of the 

 age of iron, Denmark. 



If materials are not wanting to establish the type of the skull of the 

 age of stone in Denmark, there is a great deficiency of them for the 

 age of bronze, for the people of the age of bronze in the north usually 

 burned their dead. But, as with the age of bronze we notice the ap- 

 parition in Denmark of the domestic animals, the horse, the ox, the 

 sheep, the goat, and the hog, we are thereby quite naturally led to 

 believe in the irruption of a new flood of population, in the immigra- 

 tion of a new race, coming from the East. 



With the introduction of iron, inhumation reappears in the north, 

 but we are only beginning to collect the skulls of this epoch. Figure 

 8 represents one found at Sanderumgaard, in the island of Fyen. Here 

 we are in presence of quite a different shape. The skull is remarka- 

 bly elongated fore and aft, and the forehead is somewhat retreating. 

 It is the form, though less decided, which predominates nowadays 

 in Europe. It is also, according to Retzius, the long oval form, 

 which is the so called Celtic type. 



The human race of the age of stone, or in fewer words, the race of 



1 Retzius. Academy of Stockholm, 1847, No. 1. 



