Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric PeoplesNadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
History
Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
Nadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
Archaeology; Prehistoric peoples
Scandinavia does not appear to have been occupied in the Paleolithic
period, and the most ancient facts concerning it only date from the
expeditions of the Romans against the Teutons, and our knowledge even
of them is very incomplete.6 We are still ignorant of much which may
have been known to the Carthaginians and the Phœnicians. It is possible
that in the remote days under notice the Scandinavians were ignorant of
the art of tilling the ground, for so far no cereal or agricultural
product of any kind has been discovered, nor the bones of any domestic
animal, except indeed those of the dog, which may, however, have been
still in a wild state. Amongst the bones collected from the
kitchen-middings, those of the stag, the kid, and the boar are much the
most numerous. The bear, the urns, the wild cat, the otter, the
porpoise, the seal, and the small mammals, the marten, the water-rat
and the mouse, have also been found. At Havelse were collected more
than 3,500 mammal bones, amongst which do not occur those of the
musk-ox, the reindeer, the elk, or the marmot; their absence bearing
witness to a more temperate climate than that of the present day in the
regions under notice. The stag antlers found belong to every season of
the year, from which we may conclude that the people of these
districts, like the cave-men of the Pyrenees, had given up a nomad life
and remained at home all the year round, living in the dwellings they
had built upon the shores of the sea.
Amongst the birds found, we may mention the large penguin, now extinct,
the moor-fowl, which fed entirely on pine buds, and several species of
clucks and geese; whilst amongst the fish were the herring, the cod,
the dab, and the eel. The numerous relics of chelonia prove the
existence of numbers of the turtle tribe in the North Sea.
A great variety of objects, most of them of a coarse type, have been
found beneath the kitchen-middings; metals are however completely
absent, and it is probable that they were quite unknown to the
Scandinavians for several centuries after their arrival in the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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