54 THE GEOLOGIST. 
The fine arts also reveal, with the introduction of iron in Europe, 
a new and important element indicating a striking advance already 
in the stone-age, but more so in the bronze-age ; the natural taste for 
ai*t reveals itself in the ornaments bestowed upon pottery and 
metallic objects. These ornaments consist of dots, circles, and zig- 
zag, spiral, and S-shaped lines, the style bearing a geometrical cha- 
racter, but showing pure taste and real beauty of its kind, although 
devoid of all delineations of animated objects, either in the shape of 
plants or animals. It is only with the Iron-age that art, taking a 
higher range, rose to the representation of plants, animals, and even 
of the human frame. No wonder, then, if idols of the Bronze-age 
as well as of the Stone-age are wanting in Europe. It is to be pre- 
sumed that the worship of fire, of the sun, and of the moon, was 
prevalent in remote antiquity — at least during the Bronze-age, per- 
haps also during the Stone-age. 
The preceeding pages constitute a sketch, certainly very rough and 
imperfect, of the developments of civilization. They estabhsh, how- 
ever, in a very striking manner the fact of a progress, slow, but 
iminterrupted and immense, when the starting point is considered. 
The physical constitution of man has naturally benefitted by it. The 
details contained in the treatise of which the present paper forms the 
introduction prove that the human race has been gradually gaining 
in vigour and strength since the remotest antiquity.* The domestic 
races also — the dog first, then the horse, the ox, and the sheep have 
shared in this physical development. Even the vegetable soil has 
been gradually improving since the Stone-age — at least in Denmark. 
And yet there are persons who deny all general progress, seeing 
everywhere nothing but decay and ruin, hke that worthy specimen 
of a Northern pessimist, who exclaimed — " See how man has 
degenerated ; he has even lost his likeness to the monkey !" 
* This agrees perfectly with the testimony of statistics. See " Quetelet sur 
rhomme et le developement de ses facultes." Paris, 1835, vol. ii., p. 271. This 
work of first-rate merit is very near akLa to archaeology. M. Quetelet has just 
published a new work, which vrill certainly be even more remarkable than the 
first, and which the author of the present paper regrets not to have had withia 
his reach. 
