329 



land, and particularly articles formed of flint, in the northern 

 counties ; but in Denmark there occurs a greater number and 

 variety of implements of flint, probably because that stone is ex- 

 ceedingly common in that country. Most of these implements 

 of stone seem to belong to a time before all history — to an 

 aboriginal people, who lived by fishing and hunting upon the 

 sea-coasts and along the large rivers of Europe. The tombs 

 of these people give the best information on this point. There 

 are in Ireland and England a number of stone structures 

 called Crojnlechs, Druidical altars^ &c., which are generally 

 regarded as religious monuments belonging to a historical 

 time ; but excavations in Ireland (in the Phoenix Park), in 

 Jersey, Guernsey, and several other places, have shewn that 

 they were tombs, containing skeletons, implements of stone or 

 bone, vases of clay, and rude ornaments of amber and bone. 

 Exactly similar monuments in Denmark and France contain, 

 without i'exception, the same objects, and, like the Irish 

 and English cromlechs, they differ from all other tombs. 

 They are only found on the coasts of the Baltic and the 

 German ocean, in Holland, France, Portugal, and on the 

 coasts of the Mediterranean, but never in the interior parts of 

 Germany, Austria, or Hungary. There is every reason to 

 believe that those remarkable monuments were raised by a 

 people who had no metal, and therefore were unable to pe- 

 netrate into the interior of Europe, which was then covered 

 with forests and morasses of an immense extent. It is only 

 through a careful examination and comparison of the skeletons 

 and^skuUs found in the tumuli just mentioned, that we can 

 get information concerning the races to which this aboriginal 

 people belonged. This discovery of a stone period, in the 

 history of Europe, was the first important result arrived at 

 by the study of antiquities alone. 



§ 2. The Bronze Period. 

 Mr. Worsaae remarked further, that, in looking over 



