364 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



ern Europe, and fished with single and double pointed 

 barbed hooks in the cool streams of Scandinavia. That he 

 dwelt in caves we know. These were Nature's provision 

 for the houseless. But there is no reason for supposing 

 that he did not soon devise more comfortable dwellings. 

 He seems to have resided at times upon the banks of riv- 

 ers and by the ocean's shore. Whole villages, it would 

 seem, must have cast into one common pile the refuse of 

 their tables. These accumulations are sometimes several 

 hundred yards in length, and from three to nine feet in 

 height. The flint folk, whose household ware is mingled 

 with the kitchen rubbish, must have dwelt in huts above 

 the ground. At a somewhat later epoch we know that 

 they drove piles in the lakes of Central Europe, and con- 

 structed platforms on which their dwellings were built. 

 From these habitations they cast into the lake the refuse 

 of their houses. By dredging, we recover stores of broken 

 pottery, and implements of stone for cutting and for skin- 

 ning, together with the bones of quadrupeds known to in- 

 habit Europe in the Age of Stone. The dolmens of the 

 same epoch prove also that primeval man understood the 

 art of rough masonry. 



There is no decisive proof that the earliest flint folk en- 

 gaged in the cultivation of the soil or the domestication of 

 the wild beasts. It is true that we find associated with 

 human relics the remains of the hog, the dog, the ox, the 

 horse, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the reindeer, the ele- 

 phant, all of which have been domesticated in subsequent 

 ages ; and we certainly are not precluded from the pre- 

 sumption that some of these animals began to yield willing 

 obedience to man even in this twilight epoch. We must 

 cheerfully admit that these primitive people may have ac- 

 complished — undoubtedly did accomplish — many achieve- 

 ments of skill and intelligence of which it is now impossi- 



