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The kitchen-middens, or shell-mounds, of Denmark belong exclusively to the Neolithic period. Where the transition was made from the Stone Age to the Age of Bronze, it apparently occurred in some cases by degrees, and peacefully; but sometimes by the incoming of an invading people more advanced.
I saw there the first section of kitchen-middens that is, the refuse of oyster shells, fish-bones, and other stuff thrown out by the ancient inhabitants of the country after their meals; together with accumulations of rude stone implements, kelts, arrow-heads, and such like.
As to the "kitchen-middens," they correspond in date to the older portion of the peaty record, or to the earliest part of the age of stone as known in Denmark.
There is every reason to presume that originally there were stations along the coast of the North Sea as well as that of the Baltic, but by the gradual undermining of the cliffs they have all been swept away. Another striking proof, perhaps the most conclusive of all, that the "kitchen-middens" are very old, is derived from the character of their embedded shells.
It is still a question whether any of these subaqueous repositories of ancient relics in Switzerland go back so far in time as the kitchen-middens of Denmark, for in these last there are no domesticated animals except the dog, and no signs of the cultivation of wheat or barley; whereas we have seen that, in one of the oldest of the Swiss settlements, at Wangen, no less than three cereals make their appearance, with four kinds of domestic animals.
I have mentioned the great extent of the heaps of oyster and other shells left by the American Indians on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Some of the Danish kitchen-middens, which closely resemble them, are a thousand feet long, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred wide, and from six to ten high.
Sometimes, again, especially in Denmark, these savages have left behind upon the shore mounds of dirt, which are called there "kjokken-moddings" "kitchen-middens" as they would say in Scotland, "kitchen-dirtheaps" as we should say here down South and a very good name for them that is; for they are made up of the shells of oysters, cockles, mussels, and periwinkles, and other shore-shells besides, on which those poor creatures fed; and mingled with them are broken bones of beasts, and fishes, and birds, and flint knives, and axes, and sling stones; and here and there hearths, on which they have cooked their meals in some rough way.
We have seen in the account of the Danish kitchen-middens of the Recent period that even at the comparatively late period of their origin the waters of the Baltic had been rendered more salt than they are now. The Upsala erratics may belong to nearly the same era as these.
Could such as these have migrated from the Asiatic plateaus? The kitchen-middens tell the early story with greater accuracy than could any writer who ever lifted pen. Here the creek-loving, ape-like creatures ranged up and down and quelled their appetites.
Thus, on the ocean side of certain islands, the old refuse-heaps, or "kitchen-middens," were destroyed by the waves, the cliffs having wasted away, while on the side of the Baltic, where the sea was making no encroachment or where the land was sometimes gaining on the sea, such mounds remained uninjured.
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