THE BOUNDARY-LINE BETWEEN GEOLOGY AND HISTORY. 231 



the first or fourth groups occur. Tortoises, whose reiuains are found 

 there, are cospecific with the European swamp-tortoise, the shells of which 

 occur with human remains in Scandinavia, in peat in Hungary, and 

 which, according to Tschudi, is even found alive in the Keuss Valley, 

 Switzerlaud. Among vegetable remains numerous broken hazel-nut 

 shells are remarkable, not because they were necessarily an article of 

 food of the lacustrians, but because they belong to a plant, which was 

 formerly widely distributed and whose fruit is even found in the peat 

 of the Shetland Islands. Cereals have also been found. 



The articles of human manufacture from the palafittes also differ from 

 those of Abbeville and the Belgian caverns. They are not cleft but 

 ground. Sherds of pottery-ware are only found in the former, and every- 

 thing xioints to a higher civilization and to external circumstances, 

 which could not have been very different from those of the present day. 

 A pearl of amber found by M. Keller in the palafittes of Meilen, in Lake 

 Zurich, is perhaps another proof that the eastern coasts of Prussia were 

 the same then as now. 



If we are warranted, therefore, in assuming the prevalence of a 

 severe climate during the first division of the age of stone, because of 

 the simultaneous occurrence of the reindeer and weapons of flint, and 

 that the palafittes contain indications of conditions similar to the pres- 

 ent, it follows that the last great changes in the temperature and the 

 concomitant redistribution of land and water took place withiu the age 

 of stone of the archaeologists. And since the migration of organic beings, 

 like that of the lowland flora of those times, to the Alps and to Scandina- 

 via could only take place very slowly and under a very gradual change 

 of climate, we must assume that the age of stone included an extremely 

 long period of time. 



The first progress of tribes in civilization is always slow, and the 

 Hindoos do not show divine honors to Twachtri, who taught the prep- 

 aration of brass, without a cause. No one knows how long before Pan- 

 sanias the Sarmatian stuck to his arrows of bone-splinters, or how long 

 the African has hurled his boomerang. At the time of Diodorus, the 

 arn)s of the Libyan consisted of three light darts and a leather bag of 

 stones. To-day the traveler finds the same weajions in the hands of 

 the African. 



Combining what has been said, the following appears to be the result 

 of the most recent researches concerning the antiquity of man in Cen- 

 tral Europe. 



Even at a time when Central Europe was cold enough for the reindeer 

 to live in Northern France, when the mammoth and the rhinoceros in- 

 habited the swampy shores, and lions, hyenas, and bears the caves, 

 when Great Britain was probably connected with the continent, and 

 Scandinavia with Denmark, a race of men lived there who had prog- 

 nathous skulls, and possessed only weapons of flint and bone-splinters 

 to hunt food with and to protect themselves against these large beasts. 



