Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Antiquity of Man by Sir Charles Lyell
page 50 of 604 (08%)
the bones of many carnivora, such as the lynx, fox, and wolf, but
no signs of any domesticated animals except the dog. The long bones
of the larger mammalia have been all broken as if by some
instrument, in such a manner as to allow of the extraction of the
marrow, and the gristly parts have been gnawed off, as if by dogs,
to whose agency is also attributed the almost entire absence of the
bones of young birds and of the smaller bones and softer parts of
the skeletons of birds in general, even of those of large size. In
reference to the latter, it has been proved experimentally by
Professor Steenstrup, that if the same species of birds are now
given to dogs, they will devour those parts of the skeleton which
are missing, and leave just those which are preserved in the old
"kitchen-middens."

The dogs of the mounds, the only domesticated animals, are of a
smaller race than those of the bronze period, as shown by the
peat-mosses, and the dogs of the bronze age are inferior in size
and strength to those of the iron age. The domestic ox, horse, and
sheep, which are wanting in the mounds, are confined to that part
of the Danish peat which was formed in the ages of bronze and iron.

Among the bones of birds, scarcely any are more frequent in the
mounds than those of the auk (Alca impennis), now extinct. The
Capercailzie (Tetrao urogallus) is also met with, and may, it is
suggested, have fed on the buds of the Scotch fir in times when
that tree flourished around the peat-bogs. The different stages of
growth of the roedeer's horns, and the presence of the wild swan,
now only a winter visitor, have been appealed to as proving that
the aborigines resided in the same settlements all the year round.
That they also ventured out to sea in canoes such as are now found
DigitalOcean Referral Badge