Ice Age and the Mesolithic Age

The reindeer hunters. 12.000 BC

Already more than 100-000 years ago, there was human activity in what is now called Denmark. The researchers know this from small archaeological finds, e.g. primitive hunting tools and rejections from flint stones. Those who inhabited the country at that time are in all probability unrelated to the present population.

For a long time, Scandinavia was covered by ice that came sliding from the North and on its way wiped out all living things, creating the landscape we see today, namely hills, valleys with lakes and fjords.

Today it is known that the ice slowly began to retreat, leaving a new almost barren landscape marked by white-yellow of calcareous clay with limited vegetation and only a few species of animals.

It is defined as Denmark, was geographically different and landlocked with England. During 12.000 BC. came the first large land animals to immigrants from the south, namely the wild horse and the reindeer, they followed the retreat of the ice.

With the large land animals came the hunters, and archaeologists have found their settlements first in northern Germany, then in Denmark.

The culture is often called the Hamburg culture, as this was where the first settlements were found during World War II.

They lived in primitive tents made of skins, and subsisted on reindeer and game birds. From the reindeer they got material for tents, tools and weapons.

There were not many, but it is estimated that there was only food for up to approx. 100 people.

The hunters 9.000 BC

The hunters. 9,000 BC (In Denmark named Brommekulturen, Magelmosekulturen) During a couple of millennia, Denmark changed, the climate changed from hot to cold and again from cold to hot.

New vegetation came in, namely hazel, birch and aspen and with the new large animal. The reindeer had difficulty coping with the new vegetation, and gradually the deer, elk, bear and aurochs came in as the dominant animals in the new landscape.

The traces of this culture are still weak, but a simple settlement has been found and become known, namely the settlement Bromme north of Sorø. At some point around 9000 BC. this settlement has been full of active people who have lived off the animals that were in the area. It is from this period that one knows small animal figures shaped in amber and have the first stylized human figures engraved on an aurochs bone.

The most important material for the manufacture of tools and weapons was flint, and a number of tools have been found, made from this material in very fine finishes.

Ertebølle 5.200 BC.

In the time from 7000 BC. the temperature rose again and this time it rose significantly.

Melting of ice in northern Scandinavia meant that the sea rose significantly and new sea areas were formed with associated belts.

The large forest animals migrated north to Norway and Sweden, due to new vegetation namely oak and linden. This meant that humans moved from the interior to the coasts, where there was plenty of food, but primarily based on fishing and hunting on the coast.

Therefore, it is from this period that one finds the large so-called kitchen-middens (køkken mødding also known in English)  , which is waste from the population's eating. The kitchen middens can be large, several meters long and wide, and in them have found lots of shells from sea animals but also from animals hunted in the forests.

Small boats have been found, created from hollowed out tree trunks, with which they have been able to sail out to their fishing rigs, which were quite advanced in their construction.

They have also had thoughts about life and death, as graves have been found with objects that reflect a relationship to these issues. This is also where you will find the first ceramic that in every way makes life easier and allows for food storage.

Read more in the following articles:
The Neanderthals 

Archaeological finds from the Ice Age 

The Neanderthals.

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard 

In in the city Århus the Museum Moesgaard useum is having a beautiful exhibition at the end of 2020 and well into 2021 about the Neanderthals.

Yet; do the Neanderthals belong in a Danish history at all? At least not in historical time!

In prehistoric then? Perhaps!

Have the Neanderthals been here in Denmark? If they, the Neanderthals, have been here in Denmark, it is certainly not during the last ice age, because during the ice age the whole country was covered by ice and at the end of the ice age the Neanderthals were extinct. If the Neanderthals were here, it must have been in the previous ice age or the last interglacial period. Nor is it impossible.

The Neanderthals have lived in Europe for from 300,000 years ago and until approx. 28,000 years ago. That is, they could have been here during the previous ice age (Saale ice age) and the subsequent last interglacial (Eem interglacial).

Right now, archaeologists are working on excavations that can answer the question of whether the Neanderthals have been or not been in Denmark. It happens at Hollerup in East Jutland and at Ejby Klint on Zealand. In at least this last place, in soil layers that are 120,000 years old (ie from the Eem-Middle Ages), tools have been found that are believed to have been made by the Neanderthals. So they've probably been here!

The first find of a Neanderthal. In a limestone quarry near Düsseldorf in 1856 a worker found a skeleton. He considered it waste and wanted to throw it away, but the owner of the quarry had seen it and wanted to keep it. He thought there was the skeleton of a cave bear! The skeleton consisted of the upper part of a skull, both arms with an old (avert?) Fracture of the left forearm, right collarbone, a bit of the right shoulder blade, as well as the left part of a pelvis, two femurs and parts of five ribs.

In contrast, the facial bones, jaw, lower legs and all the bones in the fingers and toes were gone.

An earlier race? The owner of the limestone quarry handed it over to a nature-interested schoolteacher, who had no doubt the skeleton was from a human. He passed it on to a professor of anatomy who believed the skeleton originated from a human race that had previously lived in northern Europe. It was a few years before Charles Darwin's book on the origin of species was published in 1859. There had probably been several theories of an evolutionary theory before, but several had been published more or less anonymously, for such thoughts were then completely immoral and unacceptable. Man was created as it is written in the Bible!

To us, it sounds incredible, one would then - less than 200 years ago - know how old the globe or humanity was, one looked up in the Bible! It was also the reason why reputable people were very reserved towards thoughts of a developmental history and especially earlier human races. There were many imaginative interpretations of the find from the Neanderthals, such as. that it was the skeleton of a Russian (Yes! Russian) soldier from the Napoleonic Wars. The still very well known and respected German anatomist and pathologist. Rudolf Virchow, believed, the skeleton originated from a man who as a child had had English disease (D-vit. Deficiency) and later severe arthritis.

The doctrine of development; for or against. Virchow, like many others at the time, stuck to his contemporaries and the Old Testament doctrine that God created Adam and Eve and the rest of the world as it stands now. Only when he retired did he, Virchow, change his mind! There was a huge backlash against development ideas!

The Catholic Church vehemently protested against the doctrine of evolution at that time. Even the Pope has now accepted that man is the result of evolution. God's creation of man now comes in where man gets an immortal soul.

Later finds and their interpretation Since 1856, approx. 270 skeletons of Neanderthals in Europe and Siberia, so you have some idea of ​​what the Neanderthals looked like and what they were like.

The physique of the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals were not quite as tall as us, averaging 165cm and men and women were equally tall. In comparison, Danish men today are 182.4 cm tall and Danish women 167.2.

Only 100 years ago, the corresponding figures for Danes were 170.0 cm and 167.0 cm. We Danes have thus moved further away from the height of the Neanderthals in just 100 years. We, ie Homo Sapiens, show a much greater variation in height than the Neanderthals. Our height depends on both our genetic heritage and the environment and age we are growing up in. The height of the Neanderthals seems to be independent of time, place and environment. They were strikingly similar everywhere. It is still believed that three variants (eastern, western and those in the middle) can be distinguished, but the differences are small.

The appearance of the Neanderthal The Neanderthals had clear protruding arches over the eyes (greatest during ice age-protected eyes from sunlight and reflections) and a receding chin. Their heads were slightly larger than ours and especially their eyes were larger than ours. The part of their brain that was supposed to process visual impressions was larger than ours. In modern parlance: Their eyes had many more pixels than ours! They especially saw small things better than us, such as cracks in the flint, tracks in the grass, etc .. Their vision was also better in the dark. DNA has later shown that their language center in the brain was roughly similar to ours, so they have had a language.

The Neanderthals were significantly heavier than us and especially had a large, muscular chest, (largest during the ice ages) Their bones were stronger and more massive than ours and the places where the muscles were attached to the bones were markedly clearer than ours. They have been booming!

The huge muscles have probably not been the Neanderthals suitable for fast movements like ours. They have had difficulty throwing things like spears or stones. The big muscles have required a lot of calories. Keeping warm also cost calories. One must assume that they have been able to cover the body with skin or the like. l. Otherwise, they have had to eat very high-calorie foods almost all the time.

Neanderthal women's DNA has shown that women became somewhat later fertile than homo sapiens and that men became earlier fertile. The fertile women were probably always either pregnant or breastfeeding. Breastfeeding in such primitive societies prevents pregnancy (NB; but not in a society like ours!). Breastfeeding could also be used to keep adults alive during periods of starvation! Think, for example. on Venus from Wilendorf, a small approx. 30,000 year old statuette of a hugely fat woman. The obese woman at the time was probably also used as a giant calorie depot that could supply calories by breastfeeding adults in times of hunger as well.

War injuries and broken bones. None of the Neanderthal skeletons we know have broken bones. On the other hand, several skeletons have injuries to the head in the chest and on the arms, i.a. the first Neanderthal skeleton found in 1856 has a partially healed (avert) fracture of the left forearm. This has led to suspicions that Neanderthals who broke a leg were left to fend for themselves on the spot out in the wilderness. They were apparently not brought home to the cave and cared for. In this connection, it should just be mentioned that cannibalism was common among the Neanderthals.

Fight for the women? Another explanation says that the injuries that the Neanderthals had quite frequently, ie injuries to the head, arms and chest, could be the war lesions of the time. Perhaps the Neanderthals were hunted - by homo sapiens or their own species mates. Or did they fight over their women?

In times of famine, women, if not like the figure of Venus, were enormously obese, probably more prone to succumb than men. The group then risked, when better times finally came, to be completely without women. If you wanted sex and children and a future and secured your possible old age, you had to get new women from a neighboring clan who also needed women.

It is my presumption that strife of this kind accelerated the disappearance of the Neanderthals and is the explanation for their "war lessons".

Unfortunately, the Neanderthal researchers say to this theory that there was so much between the clans that the individual Neanderthal man may have encountered alien species only once in his life and perhaps not at all! The expert estimated that during the last ice age, a total of 15,000 Neanderthals lived throughout Europe and Asia. So the war lesions must have been inflicted by their own clan / extended family.

Live dangerously, die young!

The Neanderthals lived by hunting larger animals such as horses, aurochs, mammoths and woolly rhinos. Traps such as slopes and holes in the ground may have been used. But they killed the prey with spears that were not thrown, but stabbed directly into the animal. Spears have been found that are just barked and tapered sticks. Spears with stone heads have also been found - or rather: stone tips inside killed animals have been found. The wood is just not preserved - or were the stone tips hand-held ?!

It was an effective but very risky form of hunting and the men did not live long either. So it was appropriate, they became fertile early. The Neanderthals also hunted birds and small rodents. Remains of grapes, fungi, plant roots, grass seeds, moss, fungi and in hot periods (Heinrich periods) figs have been found in the tartar of dead Neanderthals.

DNA Following the isolation and examination of both mitochondrial and cellular DNA from Neanderthal skeletons, several new features have emerged. The DNA of the Neanderthals is strikingly similar from Siberia to Western Europe and over millennia-long periods of time. It suggests they lived in smaller and isolated communities. They all had the same skin color, slightly pale white. Their eyes were blue. The hair was either colorless white or redhead.

Rapid upbringing The Neanderthals lived in large families of 10 -40 members. It was necessary because they lived life dangerously. The larger the family / clan, the more chances one had to survive. A dental anthropologist examined the teeth of the Neanderthal children and discovered that their teeth grew much faster than our children's teeth and it turned out that so did the Neanderthal children. The children had thus grown up perhaps already at the age of ten. It was also necessary because at that age most of them would be without biological parents.

The natives of Australia (who are homo sapiens) have and probably also had an arrangement 80,000 years ago that a man who experienced something special became the father of the next child born in the group, while the biological father only was a little father. In this way, a child had both a mother and two fathers with associated obligations. Perhaps the Neanderthals had similar arrangements. The children were precious because they were the condition for the group to survive. Dead children were carefully buried with flowers and the like.

Hybrids Crosses between homo sapiens and Neanderthals have also been found. Genetically, there is nothing to prevent homo sapiens from having children with the Neanderthals and vice versa, but in practice there is.

The heads of the Neanderthals are somewhat larger than ours. It is also the fetus, although the brain of the newborn in both parties weighs approx. 400g. It has been difficult for the Neanderthal women to give birth to the Neanderthal children. Homo sapiens heads are smaller, so Neanderthal women have no trouble giving birth to a hybrid. The homo sapiens women, on the other hand, have it! It has been almost impossible for a homo sapiens woman to give birth to a Neanderthal baby. There have also been speculations that the Neanderthal pregnancy lasted over 10 months. Why did the Neanderthals become extinct?

The well-known geo-geneticist, Eske Willerslev, explains it like this: A couple of people of every kind have a child, a hybrid. The hybrid genes are now ½ neanderthal genes. The hybrid has children with a homo sapiens. Most of them are there. The second hybrid has 1/4 of the Neanderthal genes. The next hybrid will have a child with a homo, which now has 1/8 of the Neanderthal genes, which for each new generation is reduced by half. Finally, we have a population that constantly has 2-4% Neanderthal genes!

The Neanderthals' DNA surprises It was a surprise when DNA showed that the Neanderthals had also had tuberculosis, typhoid and brucellosis (Calf Fever). Until now, it had been assumed that these diseases had been transmitted from domestic animals to humans after agriculture had arrived. The Neanderthals even had genes for resistance to the tick-borne encephalitis transmitted by ticks, which is now widespread in southern and central Sweden and which is recently thought to have been found in the local forest, Pipstorn, on southern Funen. New DNA findings suggest the Neanderthals have also charged us with a predisposition to depression - in addition to the one we already had.

Common ancestors The DAN surveys now indicate that we, homo sapiens, and the Neanderthals, have had a common ancestor for approx. 660,000 years ago (+/- 120,000 years). One of the sidelines of this common ancestor was the Heidelberg man, who again became the ancestor of the Neanderthals. Another side branch was Homo Antecessor, which is the ancestor of Homo Sapiens. He is between 1,200,000 and 800,000 years old and found in i.a. Spain. He probably originated from homo erectus.

Epilogue The author of this article went back years and collected surface finds on newly plowed fields on South Funen. Somewhere, a spring comes up from the ground. Here I found a rather special tip of formed flint. Several years later, a Neanderthal expert from Moesgaard showed me a very similar tip, which was approx. 1½ time greater than min.

The flint tip of the expert was stone-safe produced by the Neanderthals !. Mine could be a natural formation, but the sides of it were made serrated so people have grabbed it. Have you tried cutting with flint tools, you know they do not cut like a metal knife they saw.

Is my find (the picture) really a Neanderthal tip?

It is formed with great certainty and with a pressure on the stone by one with enormous powers.