New inventions were brought into use. Among them was a comb which, according to shape, might be compared to the dung-fork of the American stables. Ornaments for the body, made of various materials were fashioned. Pottery was still in a rough state, though gradually improving. The loom was invented, and various kinds of cloth were manufactured. Also out of the fibrous plants cordage was made, which again was fashioned into nets for fishing. Many canoes at various places have been found, showing that they were not only used for fishing but also for carrying cargoes. Workshops were established, and there the stone implements were made and polished; one of these shops was at Pressigny.
Fig. 16.
Danish Axe-Hammer, Drilled for Handle.
Some idea may be had of the vast number of stone implements which occur, when it is considered that in the Museum of Copenhagen there are about twelve thousand, consisting of flint axes, wedges, broad, narrow, and hollow chisels; poniards, lance-heads, arrow-heads, flint flakes, and half-moon-shaped implements. In other collections in Denmark there are twenty thousand implements. The museum at Stockholm contains about sixteen thousand, and the Royal Irish Academy owns seven hundred flint-flakes, five hundred and twelve celts, more than four hundred arrow-heads, fifty spear-heads, seventy-five scrapers, and numerous other objects of stone, such as sling-stones, hammers, whetstones, grain-crushers, etc.[75] Some of these implements, however, may belong to other epochs.
War must have been carried on to a considerable extent, as fortified camps have been discovered in Belgium, at Furfooz, and other places. Their weapons were the axe, the arrow, the spear, and possibly the knife. These were wrought with great care.
Agriculture.—Man commenced to till the ground in this age, and thus laid the true foundation of civilization. He probably was forced to do it. The beasts of the forest were gradually decreasing. They had nourished him in the infancy of his mind, and now he should begin to look to the soil, and by the cultivation of its products he must sustain his life. His principal implement of agriculture must have been the sharpened stick, pointed with deer-horn. He cultivated the cereals, made his corn-mill, and stored the grain for winter use.
Burial.—How the colonists of the lake-dwellings disposed of their dead is unknown. In Denmark, and many other places, the dead were buried in dolmens or tumuli. A dolmen is a monument consisting of several perpendicular stones covered with a great block or slab. When it is surrounded by circles of stone it takes the name cromlech. The dolmens occur also in Scandinavia, France, and Brittany. They were formerly considered to have been Druidical sacrificial altars. They were usually covered over with earth, and in them were buried from one to twenty persons, accompanied with their implements. When a person died, the tomb was reopened to receive the new occupant. At such a time fire was used for the purpose of purifying the atmosphere of the tomb. In Brittany, in the vicinity of the tombs, there were set up in the ground enormous blocks of stone, that have received the name of menhirs, the most noted of which is that at Carnac. When these dolmens remain in the state in which they were left, still covered with earth, they take the name of tumuli. Comparatively few of the tumuli belong to the neolithic. In these, large numbers of bodies have been found, and none of them in a natural position, but cramped up and their heads resting between the knees.
Judging from the calcined bones, which are frequently met with at the tomb, it may be inferred that victims were offered during the funeral ceremonies, perchance a slave, or the widow. Lubbock is of opinion that when a woman died in giving birth to a child, or even while still suckling it, the child was interred alive with her.[76]
This hypothesis is substantiated by the great number of cases in which the skeleton of a woman and child have been found together. In the ceremonies at the tomb, some read the belief in a future state of existence. The evidence, however, is no clearer than that in the previous epochs. Man undoubtedly had such a belief, but science does not reveal it.