probable. It is much more likely that the trees have fallen down from time to time in the bog, and that the different changes are but the result of the ordinary progressions of nature. With peculiar kinds of wood peculiar plants and animals must have been associated. At a period when the country was covered with forests of oak, in all probability there lived animals that are now extinct, such as the reindeer, the elk and the aurochs, the horns and bones of all which are frequently found. It is not improbable that these animals existed to a much later period in these forests, and that they were only exterminated by the slings, the weapons, and the traps of the inhabitants[1].
If we now enquire, whether Denmark was inhabited by men in any one of the four periods which preceded the present beech vegetation, the answer we obtain is very indefinite. The most ancient historical accounts which testify that Denmark was entirely overgrown with forests, nowhere mention that these forests consisted of any other trees than the beech. If we consider that the beech has existed here from two to three thousand years, and that each of the four other classes of trees may have required the same time for their growth and disappearance, it will unquestionably appear somewhat hazardous to refer the peopling of Denmark either to the period of the alder, or that of the oak, each of which periods dates from some thousands of years. We must, however, observe that we are here discussing the question of a period respecting which we have no certain information. It is therefore very possible that Denmark may have been inhabited prior to the vegetation of the beech.
Thus much, however, appears under all circumstances to be certain, that when the first inhabitants came to Denmark, which may have been at least three thousand years ago, they found a country covered with a continued range of enormous forests. In the interior these were almost impassable; but their density and thickness diminished as they approached the
- ↑ According to J. Steenstrup.
