Scattered through these heaps were found indications of a grade
of civilization when man still used implements of stone, but
implements and weapons which, though still rude, showed a
progress from those of the drift and early cave period, some of
them being of polished stone.
With these were other evidences that civilization had
progressed. With implements rude enough to have survived from
early periods, other implements never known in the drift and
bone caves began to appear, and, though there were few if any
bones of other domestic animals, the remains of dogs were found;
everything showed that there had been a progress in civilization
between the former Stone epoch and this.
The second series of discoveries in Scandinavia was made in the
peat-beds: these were generally formed in hollows or bowls
varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, and a section of them,
like a section of the deposits in the bone caverns, showed a
gradual evolution of human culture. The lower strata in these
great bowls were found to be made up chiefly of mosses and
various plants matted together with the trunks of fallen trees,
sometimes of very large diameter; and the botanical examination
of the lowest layer of these trees and plants in the various
bowls revealed a most important fact: for this layer, the first
in point of time, was always of the Scotch fir--which now grows
nowhere in the Danish islands, and can not be made to grow
anywhere in them--and of plants which are now extinct in these
regions, but have retreated within the arctic circle.
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