402 STUDY OF HIPH ANTIQUITY IN EUROPE. 
implements atid weapons of bronze alone, without any iron, are found in certain 
graves, differing from those of the preceding period, both by their structure 
and also by their dead having been burned. Hence he deduces a second period, 
which he ealls the bronze age. Next comes the tron age, distinguished also by 
a new system of burial and by the first appearance of silver, which was wanting 
in the bronze age, though the latter already worked gold. Thus, what iron is 
now, and has long been, for industry and civilization in general, bronze was 
formerly, and stone was still earlier. Mr.'Thomsen also points out, in his Guide, 
that no traces of alphabetical inscriptions occur before the appearance of iron, 
and that each of the three periods is distinguished by its peculiar style of orna- 
ment. 
While these labors were being prosecuted in Denmark, others not less import- 
ant were undertaken in Sweden. Wm. S. Nilsson, professor of zoology at the 
flourishing University of Lund, began the publication of a great work on the 
fauna of Scandinavia. Considering his subject from a comprehensive point 
of view, Professor Nilsson included in it man himself and his origin. This 
called his attention to the flint implements, and he formed a collection of 
them, constituting now the chief ornament of the museum of Lund. He 
published his archeological researches first as a chapter on the history of 
the chase and fishery in the Seandinavian North, inserted in the first volume 
of his Fauna, (Lund, 1835,) and later, with more ample details, in a separate 
quarto volume, entitled “The Aborigines of the Scandinavian North, a 
treatise of Comparative Ethnography and a contribution towards the History 
of the Development of Humanity.” ‘This work, comprising 280 figures, 
appeared at Lund, in four parts, from 1838 to 1843. The author handles his 
subject with all the superiority of real genius, expressing thought, deep and 
rich, in a style characterized by noble simplicity, often verging on the sublime. 
The illustrious Swede begins by showing that the comparative method of the 
naturalist must be applied to the study of the prehistoric ages, just as has been 
done, when the geologist compared the extinct creations with our present organic 
world. He then applies that method, not in a general manner, as had been done 
before, but entering into all the details required by serious scientific research. 
He compares, one by one, the flint implements of the North with those of the 
savages. He also points out the striking analogy between the most ancient 
graves in Sweden and the modern huts of the Greenlanders, with a view to 
prove that the abodes of the dead were imitated from the dwellings of the living, 
the primitive type of which seems to have been preserved to this day in Green- 
land. Remarking, that an ancient race cannot be determined by the shape of 
its weapons and tools, nor even by the style of its graves, but only by its osteo- 
logical characteristics, Professor Nilsson takes a review of the skulls, and he 
shows that the type of the aborigines is still reproduced by the Laplanders, 
whose ancestors seem to have once held the whole North. He finally confirms 
this by a very curious inquiry into the traditions and myths of the North, apply- 
ing here, also, the principle of comparison, and showing, for example, how the 
arrival of the first Europeans had given rise, among the Esquimaux, to similar 
tales. 
The work in question, as its title proclaims, treats only of the primitive period, 
marked by the total absence of all metal, and it contains only a few passing 
allusions to the later periods. 
In 1844 Professor Nilsson published at Lund a paper “On the successive 
periods of human development in Scandinavia, during the prehistorical ages.” 
In this treatise, which is quite as remarkable as the first, although of much less 
extent, the three ages—of the stone, the bronze, and the iron—are at once 
recognized as established, and the author enters, respecting each of them, into a 
series of details, which constitute the main body of the archzological principles, 
since then current in the North. Thus, when speaking of the bronze age, the 
