CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



curious symbols carved on their rocky sides. But 

 what is still more suggestive, is the fact, that the 

 refuse-heaps in them are indistinguishable in their 

 character and contents from those of other caves 

 assumed to belong entirely to prehistoric times. 



COAST-STATIONS OR KITCHEN-MIDDENS 

 DENMARK. 



In early times, before men had permanently 

 settled themselves in circumscribed localities, to 

 prosecute the cultivation of the soil, there were 

 certain stations or camping-grounds which they 

 frequented, with a view to their convenient access 

 to natural supplies of food. In Denmark, espe- 

 cially, this was the case with the early population, 

 who frequented stations on the sea-shore, where 

 they lived on the produce of both sea and land. 

 No vestiges of their dwellings remain. Their huts 

 seem to have been of the frailest description ; but 

 the refuse-heaps which have been accumulated 

 around them are often of vast extent. These 

 refuse-heaps, or kitchen-middens, as they have 

 been termed by the Danish antiquaries, are similar 

 to those of the caves, in so far as they are accumu- 

 lations of the refuse of the daily food of the people, 

 mingled with their broken tools and the waste 

 refuse of their manufacture. But they contain no 

 bones of the extinct animals, and the group of 

 tools and implements is altogether of different 

 types from those of the caves. 



The characteristic implement of the Danish 

 kitchen-middens is a rudely chipped and wedge- 

 shaped flint axe, with a thick and often square- 

 ended butt. They are usually flatter on one side 

 than the other, and the cutting edge is formed by 

 a plane meeting the flat side at a considerable 

 angle. In this respect, they are more adze-like 

 than axe-like ; but no indication of the way in 

 which they have been hafted has been discovered. 

 Flakes of large size, sometimes six or eight 

 inches in length, are abundant, and scrapers and 

 boring-tools are common. Only one or two frag- 

 ments of polished implements have been found. 



The animal remains of the Danish kitchen- 

 middens indicate the existence of the stag, the roe- 

 deer, and the wild boar, the great wild ox or urus, 

 the bear, the wolf, the fox, the marten, the beaver 

 and otter, the lynx and wild cat, and shew that 

 the people used the flesh, the skin, and other pro- 

 ducts of all these creatures. They had also 

 domesticated the dog, using it, probably, to assist 

 them in the chase ; but there is no indication of 

 any other domestic animal, and no sign of a know- 

 ledge of agriculture. 



Their grade of civilisation and social condition 

 seems to have resembled that of the Fuegians, 

 who frequent particular stations on the sea-shore, 

 subsisting entirely on shell-fish and the products 

 of their hunting and fishing, having no knowledge 

 of agriculture, and no domestic animal except 

 the dog, constructing their huts of branches, 

 and their weapons of stone or bone, while their 

 scanty clothing is made from the skins of the 

 animals they kill. 



Antiquity. With regard to the antiquity of 

 the shell-mounds of Denmark, it is agreed that 

 they are the sites of the most ancient habitations 

 known in that country ; but opinions differ as to 

 their place in relation to its other antiquities. 

 Professor Steenstrup sees no good reason to regard 



them as necessarily older than the polished stone 

 weapons of the dolmens or great stone sepulchres. 

 As the people who accumulated these mounds were 

 able to hunt and kill the bear, the seal, and the urus, 

 1 they must have been possessed of better weapons 

 than those found in their refuse-heaps, which 

 may have been implements for other purposes 

 ' than those of the chase or of war. In the dol- 

 '. mens, we have the tombs of chiefs, and the relics 

 ' of the richest and greatest of the time ; while in 

 the kitchen-middens we have only the refuse of 

 i the domestic life of the poor. We do not expect 

 to meet with the most precious of a man's personal 

 possessions among the casual refuse of his daily 

 domestic life ; but we know that it was the cus- 

 tom to bury with him his most costly belongings, 

 and chief among these have always been his 

 weapons of war. We do not know how, or where, 

 the people of the shell-mounds buried their dead ; 

 and though the rude axes of these mounds are 

 not found in the dolmens, nor the polished 

 weapons of the dolmens in the shell-mounds, 

 there is nothing to forbid the supposition that 

 they may have been contemporary. 



These coast-stations of early times, marked by 

 great accumulations of food-refuse, are not con- 

 fined to Denmark ; they occur also on the coasts 

 of Norway, France, and Britain. In Scotland, 

 they are found at the mouth of the Ythan, in 

 Aberdeenshire, and in several places along the 

 coast of Morayshire and Caithness. Rude pottery, 

 pins and needles of bone and bronze, and relics 

 indicating occupation in comparatively recent 

 times, are found in them. In point of fact, the 

 kitchen-midden is a thing of all ages, and these 

 refuse heaps must be judged like the caves each 

 on its own internal evidence of antiquity. 



Shell-mounds, as well as caves, have had 

 their ecclesiastical connections. On the west 

 coast of Galway, there is a large shell-mound 

 which is yet in process of formation, and is yearly 

 being added to by the pilgrims to St Columb- 

 kille's Well Similar mounds are found in con- 

 nection with early ecclesiastical sites in the north 

 of Scotland, of which that at Keiss, in Caithness, 

 is a noteworthy example. It extends for twenty 

 ! or thirty yards, and is over six feet in depth, con- 

 sisting principally of periwinkle and limpet shells, 

 ' largely mixed with splintered bones of the domes- 

 ! tic animals, bone pins, and fragments of coarse 

 pottery, resembling the ' crogans,' or hand-made 

 I jars of the Hebrides a species of domestic pottery 

 which has not yet gone altogether out of use in 

 Scotland. 



PILE-DWELLINGSSWITZERLAND. 



It is difficult for us to realise the conditions of 

 life under which communities of men have been 

 induced to forsake the land, and rear the labori- 

 ously constructed pile-dwellings which are the 

 peculiar features of the Swiss lakes. \Yhatever 

 may have been the reason of this preference of 

 the water to the land, it seems that the habit, 

 when once formed, was not easily eradicated 

 Notwithstanding that many of the Swiss pile- 

 settlements seem to have been destroyed over and 

 over again, they were as often rebuilt ; and the 

 system of semi-aquatic residence was continued 

 through the ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron down 

 to the Roman period in Switzerland, and prob.ibly 



