[A, B, and C make up the Old Stone Age, before the use of metals.]
D. Neolithic Period. Some stone implements polished. No metal except that copper is introduced toward the end of the period. Agriculture with domestic plants and animals. Pottery but no potter’s wheel. Dawn of Civilization.
E. Bronze Period. Bronze implements or utensils. Dawn of History. Begins about 2500 B. C. in northern Europe.
F. Iron Period. Iron introduced. Historic Times. Begins about 1000 B. C. in northern Europe.
CHAPTER II
THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION. SHELL-HEAPS
DURING the last great advance of the ice in the earlier Magdalenian epoch the Scandinavian peninsula had been buried beneath a great mass of ice, and resembled the central portion of Greenland to-day. A great glacier extended southward, obliterating the Baltic Sea and crowding into northern Germany. As the glaciers withdrew, North Germany became a vast tundra, across which we may imagine the reindeer and other Arctic and subarctic mammals retreating northeastward before the milder forest and meadow conditions already prevailing in France and Russia.[27] The low temperature of the water of the emerging Baltic is shown by the presence of an arctic bivalve, Yoldia arctica, which has given its name to the epoch. A few scattered bone implements show the presence of reindeer hunters in Germany at this time.