Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/27

Rh In those which have remained intact skeletons are often found, together with objects of use or decoration. The dolmen type is generally considered the older; the jattestue, or chambers with passage, are later; the rectangular stone coffins, or cists, with no approach are still more recent. The later stone-age man in Denmark cared well for his dead. He apparently believed in a future life, else why should he so carefully bury with his dead such beautiful and valuable objects? In some cases a tumulus might be erected for a single dead man; very commonly, however, several dead were buried in one mound; occasionally scores were thus companions in a common grave.

The man of the later stone age in Denmark was not ill equipped. Implements and tools and ornaments of stone, bone, horn, wood, etc., were his. His list of weapons and tools included beautiful celts or hatchets of flint finely polished, war clubs, lances, arrows, poniards of flint chipped to the most graceful forms, axes, chisels, saws, knives, scrapers, hammers (Figs. 8-13). This is but a part: wonderful samples of chipping, of polishing, of drilling; beautiful in form and finish. Nor were they useless objects. The weapons were perfectly adapted to their purpose. As for the tools, we may be sure that they were serviceable. In the little town of Broholm, in Fünen, is a small wooden house containing a fine collection of stone implements. These were found on the estate of a nobleman, who, after gathering the series, ordered carpenters to build for him a house for their display, stipulating that they should only use the old stone tools in its construction. A book has been written giving the full details of the work, and we can see that a carpenter of our day might be in a worse plight than to be supplied only with a neolithic kit of tools.

That neolithic man in Denmark was an artist is shown by these wonderful stone objects; it is also shown by the beautiful