B40 GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHAEOLOGY. 



of the facts lead us, on the contrary, to consider all the portions of 

 Europe as having most probably passed, very nearly simultaneously 

 through, first the age of stone, then the age of bronze, and lastly 

 the first age of iron. This is natural enough, for in a part of the 

 world at once so small and so interspersed with seas, and conse- 

 quently so easy of access, the great industrial and social revolutions, 

 prepared beforehand in the East, must have been introduced and spread 

 rapidly. 



Absolute Chronology. — If nothing is known respecting the absolute 

 date of the age of stone and the age of bronze, it is at least evident 

 from the large accumulation of their remains, that they have each 

 lasted a very long while. In Denmark the tombs of the age of stone 

 are found in prodigious numbers, and they are often truly gigantic 

 works. The lacustrine establishment of Moosseedorf must clearly 

 have lasted a very long time, judging from the quantity of bog which 

 has been formed in the interval, and which has engulfed the remains 

 of the industry of the age of stone. As to the numerous and often 

 extensive lacustrine cities of the age of bronze, which have existed in 

 the Lake of Bienne and in that of Geneva, they were scarcely con- 

 structed to be immediately abandoned. 



The Danish savans estimate that the age of stone goes back at least 

 4,000 years, perhaps very much further. In fact, the appearance of 

 man at an early date in the pine layer of the Skovmose invests him 

 with a very high antiquity in Denmark, as we have already seen. 



But such estimates cannot end in positive results. To arrive at dates 

 in archaeology it will be necessary to call in the aid of geology, just as 

 no absolute chronological data in geology can be obtained without the 

 assistance of archaeology, starting from a sufficiently thorough knowl- 

 edge of what has happened since the appearance of man on the earth. 

 The two sciences are thus called upon reciprocally to complete each 

 other. 



The following is an observation of this geologico-archaeological char- 

 acter, which has just been made in Switzerland. 



Cone of the Tiniere. — The cone of torrential dejection (SchuttJcegel, 

 in German) of the Tiniere, 1 at the point where the material is cast into 

 Lake Leman at Villeneuve, is cut transversely by the railway excava- 

 tion. The excavation thus made has laid open the interior of the cone 

 for a length of about 500 feet and to a depth of nearly 23 feet. There 

 was found here at four feet depth under the surface of the ground, 

 quite regularly parallel to this latter and that over a great extent, 

 both in length and width, an ancient stratum of from four to six inches 

 in thickness, with angular fragments of Roman tiles, and w it'll Roman 

 coins somewhat defaced, but apparently anterior to the lower empire 

 At ten feet in depth under the modern surface of the ground, and 



1 For information respecting this kind of formations see Ji. Swell. Essays on the torrents 

 of the Higher Alps. Paris, 1841, in quarto. It is a very good work, only the exlincl cones 

 of the author belong to the diluvium, and net to modern formations. 



