Primitive Man

by Louis Figuier

These kitchen-middens form, in a general way, undulating mounds, which sink in a gentle incline from the centre to the circumference. The spot where they are thickest indicates the site of the habitations of man. Sometimes, we may notice one principal hillock, surrounded by smaller mounds; or else, in the middle of the heaps, there is a spot which must have been the site of the encampment.

These refuse deposits are almost entirely made up of shells of various kinds of molluscs; the principal species are the oyster, the cockle, the mussel, and the periwinkle. Others, such as whelks, helices (edible snails), nassa, and trigonella, are also found; but they are comparatively few in number.

Fishes' bones are discovered in great abundance in the kitchen-middens. They belong to the cod, herring, dab, and eel. From this we may infer that the primitive inhabitants of Denmark were not afraid of venturing out to brave the waves of the sea in their frail skiffs; for the herring and the cod cannot, in fact, be caught except at some little distance from the shore.

Mammalian bones are also plentifully distributed in the Danish kitchen-middens. Those most commonly met with are the remains of the stag, the roe, and the boar, which, according to M. Steenstrup's statement, make up ninety-seven hundredths of the whole mass. Others are the relics of the urus, the wolf, the dog, the fox, the wild-cat, the lynx, the marten, the otter, the porpoise, the seal, the water-rat, the beaver and the hedgehog.

The bison, the reindeer, the elk, the horse, and the domestic ox have not left behind them any trace which will permit us to assume that they existed in Denmark at the period when these deposits were formed.

Amongst other animals, we have mentioned the dog. By various indications, we are led to the belief that this intelligent creature had been at this time reduced to a state of domesticity. It has been remarked that a large number of the bones dispersed in these kitchen-middens are incomplete; exactly the same parts are almost always missing, and certain bones are entirely wanting. M. Steenstrup is of opinion that these deficiencies may be owing to the agency of dogs, which have made it their business to ransack the heaps of bones and other matters which were thrown aside by their masters. This hypothesis was confirmed, in his idea, when he became convinced, by experience, that the bones which were deficient in these deposits were precisely those which dogs are in the habit of devouring, and that the remaining portions of those which were found were not likely to have been subject to their attacks on account of their hardness and the small quantity of assimilable matter which was on or in them.

Although primitive man may have elevated the dog to the dignity of being his companion and friend, he was, nevertheless, sometimes in the habit of eating him. No doubt he did not fall back upon this last resort except in cases when all other means of subsistence failed him. Bones of the dog, broken by the hand of man, and still bearing the marks of having been cut with a knife, are amongst the remains found, and place the fact beyond any question.

We find, besides, the same taste existing here which we have seen manifested in other ages and different countries. All the long bones have been split in order to extract their marrow—the dainty so highly appreciated by man during the epochs of the reindeer and the mammoth.