archtEology; 



THE LACUSTRIAN CITIES OF SWITZERLAND 



DISCOVERY OF A LOST POPULATION. 



lACUSTRIAN HABITATIONS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES, BY M. FRED- 

 ERIC TROYON: LAUSANNE, 1860. 



TRANSLATED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION FROM THE REVUE DES DEUX M0NDE8 : PARIS, 



FEBRUARY, 1862. 



Our historians have often regretted that they were reduced to 

 hypotheses respecting the ancient inhabitants of GauL Nineteen 

 centuries have already elapsed since the expeditions of Csesar, and 

 it is only to-day that a ray of light falls upon the tribes once scattered 

 over the territory which is now our country. The Roman conqueror 

 who boasts of having exterminated a million of our ancestors on the 

 field of battle is also the first writer who adequately describes the 

 manners, the religion, the political constitution of the different tribes 

 comprised under the name of Gauls; but to what origin are we to 

 refer all those tribes — Belgians, Celts, Iberians? History, in the 

 received sense, is almost silent in this respect, and it is to other 

 sciences that we must have recourse if we would trace through the 

 obscurity of centuries the migrations of our fathers and the shifting 

 boundaries of their possessions. Inductions derived from language 

 and from comparative anatomy assist the learned in these difficult re- 

 searches, but do not suffice to give the character of evidence to the 

 conclusions generally adopted. Conjectures are not yet transformed 

 into indubitable facts. 



If the ancient names of places disguised by long usage are of great 

 importance for the reconstruction of the history of the Gauls, the 

 remains of the monuments they raised are of much higher value. A 

 few ruins studied with sagacity teach us more respecting the manners, 

 the domestic life, and the true history of lost populations than whole 

 dictionaries of recovered words. Even nations which have left us 



■"' The article entitled "General Views on Avchasology," by A. Morlot, of Switzerland, of 

 Avhlch a translation was yiven in the last Smithsonian Report, has tended so much to 

 awaken a new interest in the study of the remains of the ancient inhabitants of this con- 

 tinent that we have been induced to insert a number of other articles on the same subject 

 in the present report. — Secuetary S. I. 



