Parr V. Sect. ii. § 2.] RECENT OR HUMAN PERIOD. 909 
with the reindeer and other animals either wholly extinct or no longer 
indigenous. So numerous in particular are the reindeer remains, and 
so intimate the association of traces of man with them, that the term 
_ “ Reindeer period” has been proposed for the section of prehistoric time 
to which these interesting relics belong. The art displayed in the 
implements found in the caverns has been supposed to indicate a con- 
siderable advance on that of the chipped flints of the Somme. Some 
_of the pictures of reindeer and mammoths, incised on bones of these 
animals, are singularly spirited (Fig. 428). 
Switzerland.—The lakes of Switzerland, as well as those of most 
other countries in Europe, have yielded in considerable numbers the 
relics of Neolithic man. Dwellings constructed of piles were built in the 
water out of arrow-shot from the shore. Partly from destruction by fire, 
partly from successive reconstructions, the bottom of the water at these 
places is strewn with a thick accumulation of debris, from which vast num- 
bers of relics of the old population have been recovered, revealing much of 
their mode of life.t_ Some of these settlements probably date far back be- 
yond the beginning of the historic period. Others belong to the Bronze, 
and tothe Iron Age. But the same site would no doubt be used for many 
generations, so that successive layers of relics of progressively later age 
would be deposited on the lake-bottom. It is believed that in some cases 
the lacustrine dwellings were still used in the first century of our era. 
Denmark.—The shell-mounds (Kjékken-médding), from three to ten 
feet high, and sometimes 1000 feet long, heaped up on various parts of 
the Danish coast-line, mark settlements of the Neolithic age. They are 
made up of refuse, chiefly shells of mussels, cockles, oysters, and peri- 
winkles, mingled with bones of the herring, cod, eel, flounder, great auk, 
wild duck, goose, wild swan,, capercailzie, stag, roe, wild boar, urus, lynx, 
wolf, wild cat, bear, seal, porpoise, dog, &c., with human tools of stone, 
bone, loam, or wood, fragments of rude pottery, charcoal, and cinders. 
The Danish peat-mosses have hkewise furnished relics of the early 
human races in that region. They are from 20 to 30 feet thick, the 
lower portion containing remains of Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris) and 
Neolithic implements. This tree has never been indigenous in the 
country within the historic period. A higher layer of the peat contains 
remains of the common oak with bronze implements, while at the top 
come the beech tree and weapons of iron. 
North America.—Prehistoric deposits are essentially the same on 
both sides of the Atlantic. In North America, as in Europe, no very 
definite lines can be drawn within which they should be confined. 
They cannot be sharply separated from the Champlain series on the 
one hand, nor from modern accumulations on the other. Besides the 
marshes, peat-bogs, and other organic deposits which belong to an early 
period in the human occupation of America, some of the younger alluvia 
of the river-valleys and lakes can no doubt claim a high antiquity, though 
they have not supplied the same copious evidence of early man which 
ives so much interest to the corresponding European formations. Heaps 
of shells of edible species, like those of Denmark, occur on the coasts of 
Nova Scotia, Maine, &c. The large mounds of artificial origin in the 
Mississippi valley have excited much attention. 'The early archeology 
of these regions has still to be explored. 
' Keller’s Lake Dwellings of Switzerland. 
