History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

With these were other evidences that civilization had progressed. With implements rude enough to have survived from early periods, other implements never known in the drift and bone caves began to appear, and, though there were few if any bones of other domestic animals, the remains of dogs were found; everything showed that there had been a progress in civilization between the former Stone epoch and this.

The second series of discoveries in Scandinavia was made in the peat-beds: these were generally formed in hollows or bowls varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, and a section of them, like a section of the deposits in the bone caverns, showed a gradual evolution of human culture. The lower strata in these great bowls were found to be made up chiefly of mosses and various plants matted together with the trunks of fallen trees, sometimes of very large diameter; and the botanical examination of the lowest layer of these trees and plants in the various bowls revealed a most important fact: for this layer, the first in point of time, was always of the Scotch fir—which now grows nowhere in the Danish islands, and can not be made to grow anywhere in them—and of plants which are now extinct in these regions, but have retreated within the arctic circle. Coming up from the bottom of these great bowls there was found above the first layer a second, in which were matted together masses of oak trees of different varieties; these, too, were relics of a bygone epoch, since the oak has almost entirely disappeared from Denmark. Above these came a third stratum made up of fallen beech trees; and the beech is now, and has been since the beginning of recorded history, the most common tree of the Danish Peninsula.

Now came a second fact of the utmost importance as connected with the first. Scattered, as a rule, through the lower of these deposits, that of the extinct fir trees and plants, were found implements and weapons of smooth stone; in the layer of oak trees were found implements of bronze; and among the layer of beeches were found implements and weapons of iron.

The general result of these investigations in these two sources, the shell mounds and the peat deposits, was the same: the first civilization evidenced in them was marked by the use of stone implements more or less smooth, showing a progress from the earlier rude Stone period made known by the bone caves; then came a later progress to a higher civilization, marked by the use of bronze implements; and, finally, a still higher development when iron began to be used.

The labours of the Danish archaeologists have resulted in the formation of a great museum at Copenhagen, and on the specimens they have found, coupled with those of the drift and bone caves, is based the classification between the main periods or divisions in the evolution of the human race above referred to.

It was not merely in Scandinavian lands that these results were reached; substantially the same discoveries were made in Ireland and France, in Sardinia and Portugal, in Japan and in Brazil, in Cuba and in the United States; in fact, as a rule, in nearly every part of the world which was thoroughly examined.(192)

(192) For the general subject, see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, p. 498,
et passim. For examples of the rude stone implements, improving as we go
from earlier to later layers in the bone caves, see Boyd Hawkins, Early
Man in Britain, chap. vii, p. 186; also Quatrefages, Human Species, New
York, 1879, pp. 305 et seq. An interesting gleam of light is thrown on
the subject in De Baye, Grottes Prehistoriques de la Marne, pp. 31 et
seq.; also Evans, as cited in the previous chapter. For the more recent
investigations in the Danish shell-heaps, see Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in
Britain, pp. 303, 304. For these evidences of advanced civilization in
the shell-heaps, see Mortillet, p. 498. He, like Nilsson, says that only
the bones of the dog were found; but compare Dawkins, p. 305. For the
very full list of these discoveries, with their bearing on each other,
see Mortillet, p. 499. As to those in Scandanavian countries, see
Nilsson, The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, third edition, with
Introduction by Lubbock, London, 1868; also the Pre-History of the
North, by Worsaae, English translation, London, 1886. For shell-mounds
and their contents in the Spanish Peninsula, see Cartailhac's greater
work already cited. For summary of such discoveries throughout the
world, see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, pp. 497 et seq.

But from another quarter came a yet more striking indication of this same evolution. As far back as the year 1829 there were discovered, in the Lake of Zurich, piles and other antiquities indicating a former existence of human dwellings, standing in the water at some distance from the shore; but the usual mixture of thoughtlessness and dread of new ideas seems to have prevailed, and nothing was done until about 1853, when new discoveries of the same kind were followed up vigorously, and Rutimeyer, Keller, Troyon, and others showed not only in the Lake of Zurich, but in many other lakes in Switzerland, remains of former habitations, and, in the midst of these, great numbers of relics, exhibiting the grade of civilization which those lake-dwellers had attained.

Here, too, were accumulated proofs of the upward tendency of the human race. Implements of polished stone, bone, leather, pottery of various grades, woven cloth, bones of several kinds of domestic animals, various sorts of grain, bread which had been preserved by charring, and a multitude of evidences of progress never found among the earlier, ruder relics of civilization, showed yet more strongly that man had arrived here at a still higher stage than his predecessor of the drift, cave, and shell-heap periods, and had gone on from better to better.

Very striking evidences of this upward tendency were found in each class of implements. As by comparing the chipped flint implements of the lower and earlier strata in the cave period with those of the later and upper strata we saw progress, so, in each of the periods of polished stone, bronze, and iron, we see, by similar comparisons, a steady progress from rude to perfected implements; and especially is this true in the remains of the various lake-dwellings, for among these can be traced out constant increase in the variety of animals domesticated, and gradual improvements in means of subsistence and in ways of living.