ABSTRACT
The less the human intellect is cultivated the lower the stage of development on which it stands, and the narrower are the ideas about the size of the “World,” about the space man occupies and about the duration of his existence. Many geologists estimate the duration of the different epochs. In Scandinavia and Denmark no traces of Diluvial man have been found; the oldest vestiges of human culture there, dating from Neolithic times, are contained in the kitchen-middens and peat-bogs. These peat-bogs are important, as they furnish us with a kind of prehistoric calendar. A general opinion as brought forward by Kant teaches that the culture epochs become increasingly shorter, or that the periods in which equal progress has been made follow each other with increasing rapidity. All the other parts of Europe were covered with the primeval forests in Neolithic times, and this no doubt induced men to make their homes in the pile dwellings on the lakes.
