DANISH SHELL MOUNDS. 
147 
geological age is determined by the fact tbat^ not only the 
contemporaiieoos fresh-water and land shells, but all the 
quadrupeds, found in the peat, agree specifically with those 
now inhabiting the same districts, or which are known to 
have been indigenous in Denmark within the memory of 
man. In the lower beds of peat (a deposit varying from 20 
to 30 feet in thickness), weapons of stone accompany^ trunks 
of the Scotch fir, Plmis sylvestris. This peat may be refer¬ 
red to that part of the stone period for which Sir John Lub¬ 
bock proposed the name of Neolithic in contradistinction 
to a still older era, termed by him “ Paleolithic,” and which 
will be described in the sequel. In the higher portions of 
the same Danish bogs, bronze implements are associated 
with trunks and acorns of the common oak. It appears that 
the pine has never been a native of Denmark in historical 
times, and it seems to have given place to the oak about the 
time when articles and instruments of bronze superseded 
those of stone. It also appears that, at a still later period, 
the oak itself became scarce, and was nearly supplanted by 
the beach, a tree which now flourishes luxuriantly in Den¬ 
mark. Again, at the still later epoch when the beech-tree 
abounded, tools of iron were introduced, and were gradually 
substituted for those of bronze. 
On the coasts of the Danish islands in the Baltic, certain 
mounds, called in those countries “ Kjokken-modding,” or 
“ kitchen-middens,” occur, consisting chiefly of the castaway 
shells of the oyster, cockle, periwinkle, and other eatable 
kinds of mollusks. The mounds are from three to ten feet 
high, and from 100 to 1000 feet in their longest diameter. 
They greatly resemble heaps of shells formed by the Red 
Indians of North America along the eastern shores of the 
United States. In the old refuse-heaps, recently studied by 
the Danish antiquaries and naturalists with great skill and 
diligence, no implements of metal have ever been detected. 
All the knives, hatchets, and other tools, are of stone, horn, 
bone, or wood. With them are often intermixed fragments 
of rude pottery, charcoal and cinders, and the bones of 
quadrupeds on which the rude people fed. These bones be¬ 
long to wild species still living in Europe, though some of 
them, like the beaver, have long been extirpated in Den¬ 
mark. The only animal which they seem to have domesti¬ 
cated was the dog. 
As there is an entire absence of metallic tools, these refuse- 
heaps are referred to the Neolithic division of the age of 
stone, which immediately preceded in Denmark the age of 
* Sir John Lubbock, Pre-historic Times, p. 3. 1865. 
