PREHISTORIC MAN.
The early history of man in every country is shrouded in considerable mystery and uncertainty. Of our own history, we have fairly full and accurate knowledge as far back as the days of the Saxon kings; but beyond that period, the light of history gradually fades into tradition. In seeking to follow the earlier history, even the light of tradition soon fails us, and we are left in complete darkness. The history of some other countries reaches further into the gloom of the past. But even Greece and Egypt have their dim dawn of history, beyond which the voice of massive ancient Sphinx and temple-ruins of the one are silent, and the beautiful myths of the other have no further record. When, however, tradition fails us, we have not by any means reached the farthest point in the history of the race. At that point, geology comes to our assistance with revelations of men of the rudest stage of life living in prehistoric ages under circumstances of great interest. It is to this early age of which geology speaks, that we here turn attention.
The peat-mosses of Denmark supply important data for the early history of man in that country. In these peats are imbedded many relics of a people who dwelt in that region long before the present race had migrated thither. These relics consist chiefly of curiously formed implements and weapons in stone and bronze—hammer, arrow, and spear heads, hatchets and knives, &c. Now, peat is formed slowly. It is the result of the annual growth and decay of numerous marsh-plants—each year’s mass of dead rushes, reeds, and grasses being overgrown by the vegetation of the succeeding year. The formation takes place in marshy hollows; and in process of time, consolidates and sinks into the soft soil on which it rests. The growth of each year, however, adds only a very thin stratum to the formation, and when this is pressed by the strata of subsequent years, it sinks into still smaller compass. The Danish peats attain a thickness of about thirty feet, and they must therefore have been a very considerable time under formation. Imbedded in peat are often found the trunks of trees; indeed, in some instances part of a forest growing in the hollow in which peat was being formed, has been choked by the rank growth of marsh-plants, and the soil becoming too moist for the favourable growth of the trees, they, robbed of their strength from these two causes, have fallen a prey to storms, and become overgrown with peat. Thus single trees or clusters of trees, or even whole forests, may be part of a peat-moss.
In these Danish peats occur, at different depths, the remains of three kinds of trees. At or near the surface, the remains are of beech-trees; farther down we find remnants of oaks; and still lower and near the bottom of the moss, are discovered remains of the Scotch fir. This gives us a provisional chronology. At the present time, firs and oaks are not found in the country; but beeches attain a perfect growth in very large numbers. During the time of the Roman empire, Denmark was famous for its growth of beeches; in all probability, all through the historic period the characteristic tree-growth of this locality has been beeches. It is certain that oaks have never been predominant in Denmark during any period of the historic epoch. The prehistoric period of man’s life upon the globe is divided into three divisions—the Stone age, the Bronze age, and the Iron age. These distinctions are based upon the character of the tools and weapons that he used. Lucretius hit on what was in reality these divisions when he said:
Man’s earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails,
And stones, and fragments from the branching woods;
Then copper next; and last, as later traced,
The tyrant iron.
Now the implements of the prehistoric age found in the upper portion of the Danish peats, and associated with the remains of beeches, are made of iron. Those that occur farther from the surface in conjunction with remains of oaks are of bronze; while those that lie nearer the bottom of the peat by the side of the ancient firs, are made of stone. Here is evidence of an early race of men existing in three stages of antique civilisation. In the first instance, when the plains of Denmark were clothed with the graceful forms of the Pinus silvestris, came men into the country, who were in a rude state of what can be called by no other name than barbarism. They had no notion of obtaining or working the metals, but were content to make their implements of the rough flints that lay at their feet. They may have been driven westward by stronger and more powerful tribes, or may have wandered hither and settled by the mere accident of a gipsy-like life.
As time moved on, and the events in the public and private life of that antique colony came and went, a change gradually came over the land and people. The Scotch firs, from some cause or other, passed away, and in their place grew stalwart oaks. The people developed in many ways, so that they were now able to carry on rude mining operations, and, by alloying tin with copper, produce bronze, of which henceforth they made their implements. All the relics associated in the peats with oaks are of bronze. It is interesting to remember that the ‘more modern’ ancients procured their tin chiefly from the mines of Cornwall, and it may have been that the people of this Bronze age found their way in their rude canoes to the coasts of Cornwall, or, at anyrate, obtained their tin from other tribes who had done business with the earliest of the Cornish miners.