AECH^OLOGY. 353 



tive tribes, whom we should have been tempted at first to consider 

 but little developed, their religion — that is to say, the highest ex- 

 pression of their genius — bore also a good testimony in their favor. 

 Like the Celts, the lacustrians seemed to have adored the Divinity 

 in open nature, on the summit of hills, under the mysterious shades 

 of the wood, on the bosom of the waves, or more especially at the 

 foot oi the erratic blocks, which they doubtless regarded as stones 

 fallen from heaven. Most archaeologists do not hesitate to attribute 

 to them the erection of a great number of menhirs and other stones, 

 improperly designated under the general term of druidical. The 

 most considerable of the tumuli of Switzerland equally pertain to the 

 first age, for they never enclose any relics but those of the primitive 

 industry, without a trace of meta.l. The remarkable elevation of 

 these tumuli, which often rise from 10 to 20 and even 30 metres in 

 height, seems to prove that the men of the age of stone cherished a 

 profound respect for their dead. These were deposited in the sepul- 

 chral cavity, with the arms folded across one another on the breast, 

 and the knees drawn up beneath the chin, as if to testify by this 

 attitude— which is that of the infant before birth— that man in dying 

 enters into the w^omb of the universal mother. Even recently some 

 communities of the Alpine valleys observed an affecting ceremony in 

 their funeral rites. When the* tomb was just closed, the mothers 

 drew near to shed a drop of their milk on the freshly-stirred earth. 

 It is perhaps to the age of stone that we should attribute the origin 

 of this custom. In no instance has there been found any vestige in 

 the tumuli of this era which would authorize us to suppose that the 

 aborigines of Switzerland had ever sacrificed human victims to the 

 manes of their dead. Those ferocious rites, which the Helvetians of 

 the age of iron celebrated at a later period, were completely un- 

 known to the lacustrians. 



To what periods of history must we refer that age of stone re- 

 vealed to us in the deposit of archaeological remains in the lakes of 

 Switzerland? In this we have one of the first questions which pre- 

 sents itself to the mind. M. Troyon sought at first to resolve it by 

 studying the formation of the turf on the sites of difl'erent lacustriau 

 villages. By an ingenious process, which recalls that of the botanist 

 computing the age of a tree from the number of its concentric rings, 

 he endeavored to establish the age of the accumulations of imple- 

 ments and utensils at the bottom of the lakes by determining how 

 many centuries have been required for the deposit of the superposed 

 layers of turi"; but, unfortunately, the production of the turf is efiected 

 with more or less slowness, according to laws not yet known, and M. 

 Trovon has been obliged to recur to another mode of determination, 

 which was furnished by the lacustrian villages of western Switzer- 

 land. 



Under the alluvial strata deposited by the torrents which discharge 

 themselves into the lakes of Geneva and Neuchatel there have been 

 discovered numerous groups of piles dating evidently from the age 

 of stone. An ancient lacustrian site of this epoch is found near Yil- 

 leneuve, at more than 450 metres from the present shore of Lake 

 23 



