Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/573

 buried in barrows or cairns; numerous broken implements were laid beside them; and, from the quantities of calcined bones found in some of these graves, it is believed that, in the case of a chief, human sacrifices may have been offered. From the number of these tombs and the plentiful remains of Neolithic dwellings scattered over Britain, we are led to the conclusion that our country, in common with Europe, had in those days a somewhat large and tolerably civilized population, who had flocks and herds, who practiced agriculture, and who were hunters and fishermen.

In the pile or lake dwellings of Switzerland, which are assigned to this era, many interesting discoveries have been made. Three kinds of wheat—one an Egyptian variety—have been found; also two kinds of barley, two kinds of millet, the remains of fruit such as apples and pears, peas, flax, and weeds. For their cattle and swine the lake-dwellers seem to have laid up winter fodder in the shape of acorns and beechnuts. They made cloth of their flax, and could even weave it into an ornamental pattern. From an examination of the human remains found in these curious lake-dwellings and in the sepulchral caves, the most eminent geologists are of opinion that our Neolithic ancestors were of the same race as the Basque-speaking peoples who are still to be found in the north of Spain and in the south of France.

However acquired, the possession of bronze marks an era of advancement. The dwellings of the people who used it were better, and their circumstances more comfortable, than those of the Neolithic tribes they succeeded. They had axes and sickles of bronze, gouges, chisels, hammers, and knives; and, as a natural consequence, all the products of their labor were superior and better finished. They could weave well a tough and strong fabric, and their clothes were formed of several pieces sewed together. Their cloth is almost invariably of linen—no woolen cloth belonging to this period having been found either in France or Switzerland; but in a wooden coffin discovered in 1861 at Ribe, in Jutland, the remains of a body were found inclosed in a cloak of coarse woolen cloth; a woolen cap covered the head, the lower limbs having been wrapped in woolen leggings. Under the cloak was a woolen shirt, girt round the waist by a long woolen band. A bronze dagger in a wooden sheath had been laid beside the dead hand; and in a small box were a few necessary articles for the long journey toward the spirit-land, consisting of another woolen cap, a comb, and a knife—the whole inclosed in a bull's hide. Another coffin contained the paraphernalia of an ancient belle, a brooch, a knife, a double-pointed awl, and a pair of tweezers—all of bronze, two studs, one of bronze and one of tin, and a javelin head of flint; while a third coffin, that of a baby, contained a small bronze bracelet and a bead of amber. Sir John Lubbock considers that these bodies belonged to the close of the bronze period. Bodies wrapped in woolen cloth have also been found in Britain, as at Scale House barrow near Rylston in