Talk:Prehistoric Sweden
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[edit] Stone Age stuff
This stuff about flint economy, which was edited out with the new (and no doubt better and more detailed) account of the Stone Age needs to be fitted in again somewhere:
- During the Stone Age, Sweden was very sparsely inhabited by hunter-gatherers except for the southernmost parts, where a large population was established, probably much due to the abundance of flint stone. Öresund, Great Belt, Little Belt and Kattegatt are the only places in the nordic countries with large amounts of flint suited for tools and weapons. For this reason that region is believed to have been the economic and political center of the first Stone Age cultures in Sweden and Denmark: good finds of flint embedded in limestone was mined in rectangular shafts of 1/2 - 3 meters depth (which have been found for example east of Malmö), processed into tools and weapons, and exported.
- The dominance of this flint-based culture does not end until large amounts of metal is imported, and stone tools are used even during the Nordic Bronze Age, the use of flint as a raw material does not end until locally mined iron can be used with the advent of the Pre-Roman Iron Age.
This part is older (not written by me) but should be incorporated into some Stone Age religion section, possibly at the main article on the Nordic Stone Age rather than here:
- Sweden, as well as the adjacent country Norway, has a high concentration of petroglyphs (ristningar or hällristningar in Swedish) throughout the country, with the highest concentration in the province of Bohuslän. The earliest images can however be found in the northern province of Jämtland, dated from 9000 BC they depict wild animals such as moose, reindeer, bears and seals. The most common interpretation is that these early petroglyphs depict religious elements of a hunter-gatherer culture.
[edit] Battle Axe a macho symbol?
Is calling the Battle Axe "macho" really good writing... is it not more of a status symbol?