5 o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE STONE AGE IN HEATHEN SWEDEN. 



By W. H. LAEEABEE. 



ONE of the peculiar features of modern historical study is that 

 it is to a very large extent dependent upon the examination 

 of the monuments which the people of the past have left and the 

 articles of use and ornament that are found among their ruins. 

 When the nations constituting objects of research were civilized 

 and had writing, as in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the information 

 afforded by these relics is extremely valuable, and furnishes rec- 

 ords of events and illustrations of the life of the peoples more 

 definite and accurate than can be obtained from books. The ac- 

 counts and pictures they bear were a part of the contemporary 

 life, and have such a relation to written history as in the eye of 

 law courts the evidence of the res gesta has to a minute made up 

 after the event. With peoples who had not writing and arts, the 

 relics give hardly any evidence respecting events, and only scanty 

 and incoherent testimony of the conditions of their life. The fur- 

 ther back we go in the investigation the less satisfactory does the 

 knowledge imparted by them become. But they are all that we 

 have by which to inform ourselves respecting the life of primi- 

 tive man. 



Relics of human life antedating all written monuments have 

 been found in nearly all countries where the search has been car- 

 ried on by excavation, and often occur superficially where they 

 can be seen without particular search. The investigation of such 

 relics has been made most systematically in the Scandinavian 

 countries, and it was there that the division of prehistoric times 

 into three periods was first made. Thus in Sweden the use of iron 

 was universal in the ninth century A. D., and had been so for a 

 long time. Investigation of the antiquities of the country has 

 shown that previous to the Iron age there was another long time 

 when iron was not known, and weapons and tools were made of 

 bronze ; and that before the beginning of the " Bronze age " the 

 country had been inhabited by people who had not the use of 

 metals, and were obliged to employ such materials as stone, horn, 

 bone, and wood. This was the " Stone age." We can conceive, 

 says the Rev. F. Woods, how incomplete is the evidence respect- 

 ing the primitive life afforded by these relics of stone and bronze, 

 by reflecting that while furniture, stuffs, and clothes made out 

 of such perishable materials as wood, bone, leather, cloth, etc., 

 formed incomparably the greater part of the belongings of the 

 heathen Northmen, it is " only by an exceptional conjunction of 

 specially favorable conditions" that such materials have been 

 able to survive. 



