i8 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



BONE CABVING. Thayngen. (After Bertrand, 1891.) 



ings of Switzerland, as also in Scandinavia, a knowledge of agricul- 

 ture, pottery, and the domestication of animals is evinced, likewise 



as a native discov- 

 ery. From other 

 quarters of the con- 

 tinent in the stone 

 age comes similar 

 testimony to a 

 marked advance of 

 man culturally. 

 The justly cele- 

 brated carving of 

 a reindeer from 

 Thayngen, almost 

 worthy of a modern 

 craftsman, betrays 

 no mean artistic 

 ability. The man 

 who drew it was far 

 from being a savage, even if he knew no metals, and buried his dead 

 instead of cremating them. The evidence as to early domestication 

 of animals is perhaps the most startling. Carved horses' heads, with 

 halters and rude bridles, have been surely identified by Piette and 

 others. 



A system of writing seems also to have been invented in western 

 Europe as far back as the stone age.* Letourneau and Bordier have 

 advanced good evidence to this effect, although it is not yet incontest- 

 ably proved. The Phosnicians were perhaps antedated in their noted 

 invention by the dolmen builders, by the lake dwellers of the earliest 

 times, and, according to Sergi, also by the people of the Villanova pre- 

 Etruscan culture in Italy. In an earlier time still in the Po Valley, 

 as far back as the stone-age Terramare period, pottery was made, and 

 that, too, of a very decent sort. And all this time there is not the 

 slightest evidence of contact with or knowledge of the East. As 

 Reinach says, in no dolmen, no lake station, no excavation of the 

 stone age is there any trace of an Assyrian or Babylonian cylinder, 

 or even an Egyptian amulet. Even the jade and nephrite found in 

 western Europe from Switzerland to Norway, which has so long been 

 regarded as evidence of early commerce with the East, he denies as 

 proof of such contact. The case thus put may perhaps be over-strenu- 

 ously stated, yet one can not but realize from it that western Europe 

 has too long been libeled in respect of its native aptitude for civiliza- 

 tion. This is not constituted of bronze alone, nor is its trade-mark 



* Reinach, 1893 a, pp. 543-548. G. de Mortillet, 1897, denies the claim. 



