Remains of cod and herring show that the fishermen who lived on or near these harbors ventured out to sea in dugouts or on rafts, and that they must have made lines for fishing in fairly deep water. Remains of other fish occur. Bones of birds are often very abundant, especially swamp, shore, and swimming species; wild geese and ducks, swans and gulls, the Alca impennis or wingless auk, now extinct. The blackcock, or “spruce (pine) partridge,” was then common, but has now disappeared from Denmark with the pine whose buds formed a large part of its food.
Bones of stag, deer, and wild boar form, according to Steenstrup, 97 per cent of all those of mammals found at Havelse.[31] Bones of seal, otter, wolf, fox, bear, beaver, and wildcat also occur. There are no traces of reindeer or musk-ox. These animals had already migrated or died out. Steenstrup noticed that the long bones of birds are about twenty times as numerous as others of their skeletons, and that the heads or ends of the long bones of mammals are generally missing. These were exactly the parts which are gnawed by dogs, whose remains also occur. Hence he drew the inference, now universally accepted, that the dog was domesticated in Denmark at this time. It was a small species, apparently akin to the jackal and of southeastern origin. No remains of other domesticated animals have been found, nor of cultivated plants, except a few casts of grains of wheat in the pottery of the upper layers of some of the heaps.
Daggers, awls, and needles were made of bone; also combs apparently used for stretching sinews into long threads. The flint implements are rudely chipped, never polished. We find long flakes used as knives, and numerous scrapers and borers.[32] The axe, if we may call it so, was of peculiar form, approaching the triangular and looking as if made out of a circular disk of flint by breaking away two sides of the periphery, leaving a somewhat flaring cutting edge. The middle was thick, the edge tapered somewhat rapidly, making a rough but quite durable instrument. Longer implements in the form of chisels or picks were also roughly flaked with skilfully retouched edges, often with one end narrowed or bluntly pointed. In all cases the work is very rude compared with the best specimens of Paleolithic time. Arrow-heads are common, usually with a broad edge instead of a point, well suited to killing birds and small mammals. The bone harpoon seems to have gone out of use.
The pottery is thick, heavy, crude, with practically no ornament, except finger-prints around the upper edge. The jars are sometimes of large size; often the base is pointed instead of flat or rounded. Hearths of calcined stones are abundant. Sometimes these are surrounded by circular depressions in the heaps, which may mark the form and position of huts or shelters; or these may have been placed under the lee of the near-by forests. No graves or human remains of this period have been found.
Shell-heaps quite similar to those of Denmark were discovered at Mugem, in Portugal, in the valley of the Tagus, twenty-five to thirty metres above sea-level, and thirty to forty miles from the mouth of the river. The shells are of marine origin, and indicate a considerable elevation of land since their accumulation. The stone implements are very primitive and of Azilian-Tardenoisian type. Large flat stones, perhaps for grinding, perhaps for dressing skins, occur. Pottery occurs only in the upper layers, where the bones of mammals increase in number. There are no polished implements, no traces of domesticated animals, not even of the tame dog. Graves were found here and there; and while the skulls were badly contorted, they seemed to show that the inhabitants were partly long-headed, partly broad-heads. Remains, apparently of the same age, have been found in Great Britain.
Even the Danish shell-heaps are not all of the same age. According to Forrer, Havno is ancient; Ertebolle is also old, but was long inhabited, and some of its uppermost layers may be full Neolithic; Aalborg and others are younger. Mugem strikes us as more ancient than the similar Danish remains. Other remains near the Baltic suggest very strongly quite marked differences in age or in the culture of their inhabitants, or in both these respects. We can notice only two of these.
Maglemose lies on the west coast of Zealand near the harbor of Mullerup. Here a peat-bog has encroached upon a fresh-water lake and has covered a mud bottom strewn with shells of pond-snails and mussels. Pines had grown in the swamp, and their stumps still protrude into or above the moss. The implements were found a little above the old lake bottom between seventy centimetres and one metre below the surface of the peat. The remains of the settlement were distributed over an area about one hundred feet long and broad. The charred or burned wood was very largely (eighty per cent) pine, ten per cent hazel, a little elm and poplar. No oak was found here, but oak-pollen grains were found in the same level as the settlement, or slightly higher and later. Flint cracked by heat and charred fragments of wood were found, but no definite hearths. Bones of fresh-water fish and of swamp turtles occur. The shore could not have been very distant even if it stood considerably higher, but no bones of marine fish have been found. Many birds were hunted. The mammals include boar, deer, stag, and urus. The dog is the only domesticated animal.
Flint chips are abundant at Maglemose; long knife-flakes and axes are rare. Scrapers and nuclei are numerous. The arrow-heads are long and pointed instead of broad and edged, as in the usual Danish shell-heap. Many of these so-called arrow-heads may have been nothing more than microliths used for a great variety of purposes. No flint implements or fragments show any trace of polishing. Bone implements are numerous. We find rude harpoons of a very late Magdalenian type. Also, some of the bone implements are ornamented with various patterns of incised lines, and even one or two rude drawings of animals occur. The culture evidently differs quite markedly from that of the ordinary shell-heaps. It is worthy of notice that the mud of the lake bottom and the overlying peat were continuous over and around the whole area of the settlement; there is no sign of any island at this point and the settlement was some 350 metres from the original shore of the lake. There are abundant traces of fire but no hearths. No traces of piles have been discovered. All this seems to corroborate Sarauw’s view that the people lived on a raft all the year round. Sarauw considers the remains as of the same age as the oldest shell-heaps. But there is a wide-spread tendency to consider Maglemose as considerably older, belonging probably to the close of the Ancylus Epoch.
Virchow has described a heap composed of mussel-shells on the outlet of Burtnecker Lake, east of Riga, called Rinnekalns.[33] Its most interesting feature is its pottery made of clay mixed with powdered mussel-shells, giving it a peculiar glitter. It is ornamented with lines arranged in an angular geometrical pattern encircling the vessel. Similar pottery can be followed far southward into Russia and westward as far as East Prussia, but not farther into Germany. Bored teeth used for ornaments occur. Bone implements are numerous, often ornamented with fine lines in zigzag or network. We find harpoons also. The flint industry was poorly and sparingly developed. Graves were discovered, but their contents proved that they belonged to a much later period.