346 Sir H. H. Hoivorth—The Baltic— The Ancylus Sea. 



the surface of the sea. The turf under this ridge is so compressed 

 that when dry it is almost as hard as brown coal pressed together, 

 and when a fir chip is broken it is found to be black and shining in 

 the cross sections, all the results of great pressure and of age. The 

 turf has been, as in the submarine peat bogs which lie outside 

 Falsterbo already mentioned, formed in fresh water. The bottom of 

 it, when the turf was formed, lay above the surface of the sea, 

 inasmuch as in it were found the same species of plants as those that 

 are found in the other Scanian peat bogs situated farther in the 

 interior of the country. At the bottom of this peat bog, on the pure 

 blue clay itself, there have frequently during the cutting of the turf 

 been found arrows, knives, etc., of flint, which he urges proves that 

 human beings already existed in these districts at the time when the 

 bog was an open water and peat began to grow in it. Consequently 

 there were people here even before the great phenomenon which 

 raised the ridge in question, and caused a wide opening between the 

 South of Scandinavia and the North of Germany. 



Bones of the cave bear have been found in the turf under the 

 Jara wall, and also at the bottom of other peat bogs, with bones of 

 the reindeer — for instance, in the peat bog in Kullaberg, in which 

 flint flakes have also been found in great numbers. We may 

 therefore suppose that these peat bogs are coeval with the one 

 under the Jiira wall, and, consequently, they also are more ancient 

 than this remarkable ridge. In these ancient peat bogs there has 

 never been found a trace of metal, and therefore we can likewise 

 conclude that the above-mentioned cataclysm took place during the 

 Stone period, and during an early part of the Stone period, since not 

 a single stone axe or any other ground stone was found there, but 

 only flint flakes, arrows, and knives. No human skeletons have 

 occurred in these beds, but inasmuch as round skulls have been 

 found in the old peat bogs of Scania the flint flakes, etc., were 

 probably made by a round-headed race. 



In a paper on the Jara wall, etc., Torell, in the Comptes Kendus 

 of the Int. Cong, of Arch, at Stockholm, pp. 867-868, calls attention 

 to the fact that Nilsson had subsequently found a chambered tomb 

 of the Stone age containing amber, on the Jiira wall itself, and this 

 goes to show that the famous rampart in question was formed 

 between the time when the rough flint chips were used, i.e. the 

 so-called kitchen midden time and that of the later Stone age. 



The facts that Nathorst has since found marine shells of the 

 Liiorina time underlying the Jiira wall, while Munthe, in vol. ii of 

 the Transactions of the Upsala Institute, p. 363, reports the finding 

 of a bone implement in Ancylus clay at Norsholm in Ostro-Gothland, 

 show respectively that man was living in Sweden in the Ancylus 

 time, and therefore before the Baltic breach ; and, secondly, that 

 the Jiira wall was distinctly a product of the succeeding period, 

 namely, of the Liiorina age. 



In 1856 Forchhammer contributed a paper to the Nordisk 

 Universitets Tidskrift, in which he enlarged considerably on 

 Nilsson's and Erdmann's conclusions. He pointed out how at 



