The " Kjohken-Moddinger" of Elginshire. 85 



civilisation, if it can be so reckoned, in which men knew 

 not the use of metals, and consequently had to form all the 

 implements they employed out of flint or bone. The dust- 

 heaps of Northern Europe are assigned to this most distant 

 era from the presence in and around them of implements 

 formed from such materials, and from the entire absence of 

 anything forged of bronze, or worked out of iron — metals 

 that characterise and give name to the two succeeding 

 periods of antiquity. Mr Lubbock says of the Stone period, 

 that, in Denmark at least, " men seem to have been exclu- 

 sively hunters and fishermen. With the Bronze Age we 

 find evidences of a pastoral and agricultural life. It is pro- 

 bable that the men of the Stone period were conquered, and 

 partly replaced, by a more civilised race coming from the 

 East. It is not only the introduction of bronze and do- 

 mestic animals which point to such a conclusion. The new 

 people burned their dead, and collected the bones in funeral 

 urns." In the earlier or Stone period, the bodies of the dead 

 seem not to have been so consumed, " for the tombs of this 

 (the Stone) period are chambers formed by enormous blocks 

 of stone, that it is difficult to imagine how they can have 

 been brought into position. The bodies were placed in a 

 sitting posture, with their backs resting against the stones, 

 and their knees brought up under their chins." This most 

 ancient known period of human life in Northern Europe 

 has been subdivided into two portions of time — the first 

 indicated by the comparative rudeness or roughness of the 

 stone implements ; the second, by the fine polish superin- 

 duced on them as art advanced. The Kjokken-Moddinger 

 are referred to the second. The remoteness of that period 

 can now only be guessed at, 



A very singular clue or illustration has been discovered, 

 and is thus described by the authors referred to. In 

 digging down through the mosses, or peat bogs, of Denmark, 

 four distinct and successive layers have been passed. The 

 lowest, or that lying on the surface of the earth, consists of 

 peaty matter only, and contains nothing showing any trace 

 of art, or of the hand of man. The second ascending layer 

 is full of grown pines (Scots firs), which have flourished 



