(Kjökkenmöddinger), as they are called. They contain evident remains of hearths scattered potsherds and traces of charcoal and ashes, and consist of millions of shells of eaten oysters mussels and snails as well as countless bones of wild beasts-some of them split for the sake of the marrow-and all manner of rudely formed stone and bone implements, mostly of small size, with the refuse of their manufacture. But the oyster-catching fishing and hunting in Jutland alone would not long suffice for the support of the increasing population. Gradually they must have crossed the Belts, and by following the nearest coasts of the Cattegat reached the north of Fÿen. Thence they would cross to Seeland, where the coast was fringed by numerous islets, and the vast forests, not less than in Jutland, abounded in game. Huge heaps of shells in north Seeland show in like manner that the new settlers existed permanently in certain spots, where it was important for them to be near the oysterbeds in the fjords and on the coasts.

Of Fÿen and Seeland, according to the observations as yet made, Seeland with the isles around it is beyond comparison richest in remains of the first immigrants at the beginning of the Stone-Age in Denmark. But in course of time a growing population in Seeland would be unable to obtain sufficient support only on the short north coast bordering on the Cattegat, even with the help of the large oyster-beds which then existed there. They were soon therefore obliged to begin spreading themselves over the coasts and isles along the remaining borders of Seeland on the Sound the Great Belt and the Baltic. True, no oysters were

as little able then as But in other respects

as a rule to be found there. Indeed the brackish waters of the Baltic were just now to afford a fair livelihood. the conditions of nature were favourable as well in Seeland as on the other adjacent low isles, which are however as a rule of no great extent. Deep inlets of the sea and not a few river-courses opened a comparatively easy approach from the coasts and neighbouring isles, leading through the woods to freshwater lakes in the interior teeming with fish, and at the same time to new and by no means unimportant resources. On the other hand the necessity of gaining a livelihood does not appear to have driven the new settlers far from the coasts to the islands lying out in the more open sea. In Bornholm for instance no

memorials have been discovered to indicate the track of the primeval inhabitants. Strangely enough they never crossed the Sound in any great numbers from Seeland to Scania, where the conditions of nature on a fairly large scale were otherwise favourable to them. Only on the extreme coasts of the Scandinavian peninsula to the south and south-west as far as the southern point of Norway (Lister) have they left behind them meagre and scattered remains. And these too with their admixture of earlier or later objects point for the most part to the very close of the Early Age of Stone.

Every indication thus tends to bespeak a limited area of the present Danish lands as the chief seat of the earliest inhabitants who came to the Scandinavian north, coming from the west-namely Jutland Fyen and the adjacent isles. With the exception of occasional rare discoveries of mixed or transitional objects

the contents of the refuse-heaps or kitchen-middens and the contemporary objects found on islands coasts and fjords present a living picture of a hunting and fishing people clad in skins alone. For a long time without the slightest change development or least acquaintance with metal they continued to stand on the same low level as at their first arrival. In the struggle often doubtless hard enough to gain the bare requisites of life it is sufficiently certain that no internal activity of its own enabled this remote people to rise either to cattle-rearing agriculture or any independent radical improvement in their simple implements of stone and bone. They continued to reproduce the peculiar forms they had originally brought from western Europe. Rude stone objects identically similar in form and evidently from a corresponding stage of culture can also be shown in cave. field and coast finds from south Europe as well as in finds from the district of Thebes in Egypt, from Japan, and from the shell-heaps of America.1 Neither in the refuse-heaps of Denmark nor in the shell-heaps of Japan or America is there the least trace found of a fuller development and change in ornamental objects. Besides feathers and other trophies of the chase usually affected by savage races their ornaments appear to have been confined chiefly to strings of animals' teeth. And yet in the case of Denmark numerous coast-districts and especially the west coast of Jutland offered in amber a material elsewhere early used for all

1 "Kitchen-middens" have been found in Terra del Fuego and Brazil, in Japan near Omeri between Yokohama and Tokio, and in the Andaman Islands.

sorts of trinkets. The first inhabitants of Denmark, or of southmost Scandinavia, are therefore to be compared most closely with the long-vanished savage races, which formed corresponding refuse-heaps on the coasts of Japan and America—especially along the river-margins of the latter-or with the partly still-existing inferior peoples in South America, off the coasts of Japan, and in the South Seas, who support themselves in the same way on shell-fish fishing and hunting. Accordingly we need not be surprised that in Denmark no distinct graves from the older Age of Stone have as yet been disclosed. Certainly nowhere else have such rude. peoples as a rule been in the habit of rearing great permanent monuments to preserve for thousands of years the earthly remains of their dead in undisturbed repose.

Be that as it may, the first inhabitants of Denmark certainly were not wanting in religious ideas more than other savage peoples. In the refuse-heaps and on many of the smaller islands then regularly visited or permanently inhabited, mingled with charcoal animal bones and potsherds, lies so vast a quantity of useful but often evidently unused implements weapons and other articles of stone and bone, that it is impossible all can be regarded as lost by chance or simply cast away. It is well known that the Caribs Andaman Islanders and others both at high festivals and daily meals use certain portions of their provisions together with implements ornaments &c. as offerings to their gods. There is therefore nought to hinder the belief that a northern people on nearly the same level may have remembered their gods in a similar manner.

At

other places in Denmark on shoals or on certain frequently submerged isles in lakes and fjords, especially at the mouths of rivers flowing into the fjords on the east coast of Jutland, implements of stone and bone and pieces of cut bone and antlers have been gathered in patches of extraordinary numbers. As regards these singular discoveries, or at any rate a great part of them, there are very good grounds for assuming that they are the remains of offerings, which the primitive inhabitants dedicated to their gods, before they sallied out a-fishing or hunting, in the hope that the catch would thus be all the larger. Historical accounts of Lapps or Finns in the high North not less than corresponding discoveries in and near the fjords and islands testify that the very same customs, natural in themselves, were also prevalent at a much later date in the northernmost districts of the Scandinavian North.

During the early Stone-Age there can scarcely have been any intercourse to speak of between Finns and Lapps in the remote northern highlands of Scandinavia and the inhabitants of the more accessible lowlands to the south. Most probably the whole of the great Scandinavian peninsula, with the exception of the open districts on the coasts of the Baltic and Cattegat, was still entirely uninhabited. The antiquities of slate found sporadically in the more southern regions, especially to the south-east, which have perhaps a chance likeness to distinctly Finnish stone objects, cannot show that Lapps or Finns had already so early wandered westward from northern Asia over the north of Russia into the northernmost parts of Sweden and Norway. But even should this be maintained against all evidence