Maglemosian culture is believed to have been introduced by the ancestors of the fair peoples of Northern Europe. It has been so named after the finds at Maglemose in the "Great Moor", near Mullerup, on the western coast of Zeeland. A lake existed at this place at a time when the Baltic was an inland water completely shut off from the North Sea. In a peat bog, formerly the bed of the lake, were found a large number of flint and bone artifacts. These included Tardenoisian microliths, barbed harpoons of bone, needles of bone, spears of bone, &c. Bone was more freely used than horn for implements and weapons. The animals hunted included the stag, roe-deer, moose, wild ox, and wild boar. Dogs were domesticated. It appears that the Maglemosians were lake-dwellers. Their houses, however, had not been erected on stilts, but apparently on a floating platform of logs, which was no doubt anchored or moored to the shore. There are traces of Magdalenian influence in Maglemosian culture. Although many decorative forms on bone implements and engravings on rocks are formal and symbolic, there are some fine and realistic representations of animals worthy of the Magdalenian cave artists. Traces of the Maglemosian racial drift have been obtained on both sides of the Baltic and in the Danish kitchen middens. Engravings on rocks at Lake Onega in Northern Russia closely resemble typical Maglemosian work. Apparently the northern fair peoples entered Europe from Western Siberia, and in time were influenced by Neolithic culture. But before the Europeans began to polish their stone implements and weapons, the blond hunters and fishermen settled not only in Denmark and Southern Sweden and Norway but also in Britain.
At the time when the Baltic was an inland fresh-water lake, the southern part of the North Sea was dry land, and trees grew on Dogger Bank, from which fishermen still occasionally lift in their trawls lumps of "moor-log" (peat) and the bones of animals, including those of the reindeer, the red deer, the horse, the wild ox, the bison, the Irish elk, the bear, the wolf, the beaver, the woolly rhinoceros, the mammoth, and the walrus. No doubt the Maglemosians found their way over this "land-bridge", crossing the rivers in rude boats, and on foot when the rivers were frozen. Evidence has been forthcoming that they also followed the present coast line towards Boulogne, near which a typical Maglemosian harpoon has been discovered.
A Notable Example of late Magdalenian Culture: engraving on bone of browsing reindeer. From Kesserloch, Switzerland. (After Heim.)
Traces of Maglemosian influence have been found as far north as Scotland on the Hebridean islands of Oronsay and Risga. The MacArthur cave at Oban reveals Azilian artifacts. In the Victoria cave near Settle in Yorkshire a late Magdalenian or proto-Azilian harpoon made of reindeer-horn is of special interest, displaying, as it does, a close connection between late Magdalenian and early Azilian. Barbed harpoons, found at the shelter of Druimvargie, near Oban, are Azilian, some displaying Maglemosian features. Barbed harpoons of bone, and especially those with barbs on one side only, are generally Maglemosian, while those of horn and double-barbed are typically Azilian.
Horn and Bone Implements
Harpoons: 1 and 2, from MacArthur Cave, Oban; 3, from Laugerie Basse rock-shelter, France; 4, from shell-heap, Oronsay, Hebrides; 5, from bed of River Dee near Kirkcudbright; 6, from Palude Brabbie, Italy—all of Azilian type. 8, Reindeer-horn harpoon of late Magdalenian, or proto-Azilian, type from Victoria Cave, near Settle, Yorks. 9, Maglemosian, or Azilian-Maglemosian, harpoon from rock-shelter, Druimvargie, Oban. 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, bone and deer-horn implements from MacArthur Cave, Oban.
Apparently the fair Northerners, the carriers of Maglemosian culture, and the dark Iberians, the carriers of Azilian culture, met and mingled in Scotland and England long before the Neolithic industry was introduced. There were also, it would appear, communities in Britain of Crô-Magnons, and perhaps of other racial types that existed on the Continent and in late Magdalenian times. The fair peoples of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland are not therefore all necessarily descendants of Celts, Angles, Saxons, and Vikings. The pioneer settlers in the British Isles, in all probability, included blue and grey-eyed and fair or reddish-haired peoples who in Scotland may have formed the basis of the later Caledonian type, compared by Tacitus to the Germans, but bearing an undoubted Celtic racial name, the military aristocrats being Celts.[41]