in the Danish refuse-heaps, where worked flints are a thousand times more plentiful than in the St. Acheul gravel, human bones are of the greatest rarity. In this case, as in the Drift age, mankind lived by hunting and fishing, and could not therefore be very numerous. In the era however of the Swiss lake habitations, the case was different. M. Troyon estimates the population of the "Pfahlbauten" during the Stone age as about 32,000; in the Bronze era, 42,000. On these calculations, indeed, even their ingenious author would not probably place much reliance: still, the number of the Lake villages already known is very considerable; in four of the Swiss lakes only, more than 70 have been discovered, and some of them were of great extent: Wangen, for instance, being, according to M. Lohle, supported on more than 40,000 piles. Yet, if we exclude a few bones of children, only five skeletons have been obtained from all these settlements taken together. The number of flint implements obtained hitherto from the drift of the Somme valley, is not estimated at more than 3000; the settlement at Concise alone (Lake of Neufchatel) has supplied about 24,000, and yet has not produced a single human skeleton. (Rapport a la Commission des Musées, October 1861, p. 16). Probably this absence of bones is almost entirely attributable to the habit of burying; the instinct of man has long been in most cases to bury his dead out of his sight; still, so far as the drift of St. Acheul is concerned, the difficulty will altogether disappear if we remember that no trace has ever yet been found of any animal as small as a man. The larger and more solid bones of the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, ox and stag[1] remain, but every vestige of the smaller bones has perished. Till we find the remains of the dog, boar, roedeer, badger, and other animals which existed dining the drift period, we cannot much wonder at the entire absence of human skeletons.
In all the other places where flint implements have occurred they have been very rare (except perhaps at Hoxne), and though the ascertained mammalian fauna is not everywhere quite so restricted as at St. Acheul, still very few small animals have as yet occurred.
It is useless to speculate as to the use made of these venerable weapons. Almost as well might we ask to what would they not be applied. Infinite as are our instruments, who would attempt even at present to say what was the use of a knife. But the primitive
- ↑ The bones of the stag owe their preservation perhaps to another cause. Prof Rütimeyer tells us that among the bones from the Pfahlbauten none are in better condition than those of the stag; this is the consequence, he says, "ihrem dichten Gefüge, ihrer Härte and Sprödigkeit, so wie der grossen Fettlosigkeit," peculiarities which recommended them so strongly to the men of the stone age, that they used them in preference to all others, nay almost exclusively, in the manufacture of those instruments which could be made of bone—(Fauna der Pfahlbauten, p. 12). How common the bones of the stag are in quaternary strata, geologists know, and we have here perhaps an explanation of the fact. The antler of this animal is also preferred at the present day by the Esquimaux in the manufacture of their stone weapons. (Sir E. Belcher, l.c. p. 154.)
