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Updated: June 24, 2025
The kitchen-middings, or heaps of kitchen refuse such was the name given to these shell-mounds could not have been the natural deposits left by the waves after storms, for in that case they would have been mixed with quantities of sand and pebbles. The conclusion is inevitable, that man alone could have piled up these accumulations, which were the refuse flung away day by day after his meals.
In the kitchen-middings of Florida Wyman found human bones, which had been intentionally broken, mixed with those of deer and beavers. The marrow had been taken from all of them and eaten by man. Yet more recent discoveries of a similar kind have been made in New England. We must, however, add that many of these facts are contested.
In the lowest layers he made out ancient hearths, and found numerous fragments of pottery which are the most ancient examples of keramic ware found in New England, and were covered with incised ornamentation of considerable refinement. The kitchen-middings of Florida and Alabama are even more remarkable.
M. Hamy, in a book published a few years ago, only mentions twelve finds of human bones, which could, without any doubt, be dated from Palaeolithic times. True, this number has been added to by recent discoveries, but it is still quite insignificant. It is the same thing with the kitchen-middings and the Lake settlements.
It consists principally of shells of adult species, with which are mixed fragments of coarse black pottery and numerous goat and sheep bones, the latter bearing witness to a more recent date than that of the kitchen-middings of Scandinavia or of Germany. Throughout Europe similar facts are coming to light. Evans mentions heaps of shells on the coasts of England.
Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, "Terremares," Crannoges, Burghs, "Nurhags," "Talayoti," and "Truddhi." The earliest races of men lived in a climate less rigorous than ours, on the shores of wide rivers, in the midst of fertile districts, where fishing and the chase easily supplied all their needs.
Are these remarkable coincidences the result of chance, or must we not rather suppose that people of the same origin occupied at the same epoch both sides of the Atlantic? The man of the kitchen-middings evidently had a fixed abode. Long since, the tent, the temporary shelter of the nomad, had given place to the but.
Amongst the bones collected from the kitchen-middings, those of the stag, the kid, and the boar are much the most numerous. The bear, the urns, the wild cat, the otter, the porpoise, the seal, and the small mammals, the marten, the water-rat and the mouse, have also been found.
This is however a delicate question, on which in the present state of our knowledge it is difficult to hazard a serious opinion. It is easier to come to a conclusion on other points: the close resemblance, for instance, between the kitchen-middings of America and those of Europe.
It is the same with the kitchen-middings and the caves occupied in Neolithic times. The disappearance of the horse, so numerous in earlier epochs, is general, and this would be inexplicable if history did not solve the mystery.
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