bear, the hairy elephant, and the like, were the rudest
implements then, in strata above these, sealed in the stalagmite of the
cavern floors, lying with the bones of animals extinct but more recent,
stone implements were found, still rude, but, as a rule, of an improved
type; and, finally, in a still higher stratum, associated with bones
of animals like the reindeer and bison, which, though not extinct, have
departed to other climates, were rude stone implements, on the whole
of a still better workmanship. Such was the foreshadowing, even at that
early rude Stone period, of the proofs that the tendency of man has
been from his earliest epoch and in all parts of the world, as a rule,
upward.

But this rule was to be much further exemplified. About 1850, while the
French and English geologists were working more especially among the
relics of the drift and cave periods, noted archaeologists of the
North--Forchammer, Steenstrup, and Worsaae--were devoting themselves to
the investigation of certain remains upon the Danish Peninsula. These
remains were of two kinds: first, there were vast shell-heaps or
accumulations of shells and other refuse cast aside by rude tribes
which at some unknown age in the past lived on the shores of the Baltic,
principally on shellfish. That these shell-heaps were very ancient
was evident: the shells of oysters and the like found in them were far
larger than any now found on those coasts; their size, so far from being
like that of the corresponding varieties which now exist in the brackish
waters of the Baltic, was in every case like that of those varieties
which only thrive in the waters of the open salt sea. Here was a clear
indication that at the time when man formed these shell-heaps those
coasts were in far more direct communication with the salt sea than at
present, and that sufficient time must have elapsed since that period to
have wrought enormous changes in sea and land throughout those regions.

Scattered through these heaps were found indications of a grade of
civilization when man still used implements of stone, but implements and
weapons which, though still rude, showed a progress from those of the
drift and early cave period, some of them being of polished stone.

With these were other evidences that civilization had progressed.
With implements rude enough to have survived from early periods, other
implements never known in the drift and bone caves began to appear,
and, though