PREHISTORIC TIMES. 



107 



they wanting in Africa, where the Pyramids themselves exhibit the 

 most magnificent development of the same idea ; indeed, the whole 

 world is studded with the burial-places of the dead. Tumuli or bar- 

 rows are much more numerous and more widely distributed than stone 

 circles. No doubt the great majority of them are burial-mounds, bat 

 some also were erected as memorials, like the " heap of witness " 



Danish Dolmen. 



erected by Laban and Jacob, or the mound heaped up by the ten 

 thousand in their celebrated retreat, when they obtained their first 

 view of the sea. 



One of the most curious habits of the prehistoric European was 

 that of constructing his dwellings upon piles above the surface of the 



Sepulchral Stone Circle. 



water. The vestiges of many Swiss buildings of this sort are not un- 

 like those of the Pseonians, described by Herodotus. 



" Their dwellings," he says, " are contrived after this manner 

 planks fitted on lofty piles are placed in the middle of the lake, with a 

 narrow entrance from the main-land by a single bridge. These piles, 

 that support the planks, all the citizens anciently placed there at the 

 public charge ; but afterward they established a law to the following 

 effect : whenever a man marries, for each wife he sinks three piles, 

 bringing wood from a mountain called Orbelus : but every man has 



