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| a scull of the age of stone, denmark (14 natural size). |
a scull of the earliest times of the age of iron, denmark (14 natural size). |
with them the arts and implements of civilized life. They raised crops of grain, as is proved by the bronze sickles found in different parts of Europe.
It is not even certain that their explorations did not reach to Iceland. Says Humboldt,
"When the Northmen first landed in Iceland (A.D. 875), although the country was uninhabited, they found there Irish books, mass-bells, and other objects which had been left behind by earlier visitors, called Papar; these papæ (fathers) were the clerici of Dicuil. If, then, as we may suppose from the testimony here referred to, these objects belonged to Irish monks (papar), who had come from the Faroe Islands, why should they have been termed in the native sagas 'West men' (Vestmen), 'who had come over the sea from the westward' (kommer til vestan um haf)?" (Humboldt's "Cosmos," vol. ii., p. 238.)
If they came "from the West" they could not have come from Ireland; and the Scandinavians may easily have mistaken Atlantean books and bells for Irish books and mass-bells. They do not say that there were any evidences that these relics belonged to a people who had recently visited the island; and, as they found the island uninhabited, it would be impossible for them to tell how many years or centuries had elapsed since the books and bells were left there.
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