Note 27 — Chapter VIII · Tombs.

It is probable that early man also turned to account the trees he saw growing around him, using them as coffins for his dead. But the rapid decay of this fragile case led to its total disappearance. A few exceptions must, however, be mentioned. In 1840 some dredgers took from the bed of the Saône, at Apremont, from beneath a bed of gravel five feet thick, the trunk of a tree which still contained the bones that had been placed in it. Similar discoveries were made in the Cher, and in the celebrated cemetery of Hallstadt, near Salzburg. The cairns of Scania covered over split trunks of oak and birch trees, which had been hollowed out to receive the dead. At Gristhorpe, near Scarborough, in England, a coffin was found made of scarcely squared planks roughly put together; and another very like it was discovered at Hove, in Sussex, the latter containing a splendid amber cup, evidence of the wealth of the man who had been buried in this primitive coffin.27