EARLIEST HUMAN HABITATIONS HOEENES. 575 



lived the whole year round, probably also the shamans and their 

 pupils, where the art of drawing was carried on and where also the 

 dead were often interred. 



" Circular structures " do not appear to be represented. They cer- 

 tainly constitute a very ancient, and in later historic times, an 

 archaic form of construction. But when they are met with among 

 people W'ho are exclusively hunters it may be assumed that they have 

 been borrowed from other spheres of civilization. Such are the 

 foliage huts of the pigmy races of the virgin forests of equatorial 

 Africa, described by Stanley and Stuhlmann; perhaps also the wood, 

 stone, and snow huts of the Eskimos ; in the West these Arctic peoples 

 also inhabit quadrangular houses of boards, covered with earth. 

 The circular form of construction has been considered as the oldest 

 and much inferior to the quadrangular: this assumption, however, 

 as has been seen, seems not to be absolutely correct. The circular 

 form appeared spontaneously when a single vertical pole was used 

 as a supj)ort, from the top of which the roof radiated out at equal 

 distances, as in the conical skin tents of the prairie tribes of North 

 America. It also finds ready use in semisubterranean structures, as 

 in ancient Europe, North America, etc. As the primitive subter- 

 ranean habitations are usually round, the walls, made of posts, 

 foliage, and clay, are likewise circular, and the roof of straw, reeds, 

 or similar materials, is conical. Such are those in ancient Europe, 

 while in other parts of the world they are sometimes different, though 

 still similar. This round hut, which in reality is merely a covered 

 hearth, has an incredible power of persistence. Its history, in a 

 word, is that of the oldest civilization, and yet it seems to have begun 

 only with a rise in culture, and even then its superiority was early 

 contested by the quadrangular form of construction. The huts or 

 houses of the neolithic village of Grossgartach in Wurttemberg were 

 quadrangular and these are obviously not the only ones, for all the 

 houses of the lake dwellings of the neolithic and bronze ages on the 

 lakes of the Alpine European countries were also of similar shape. 



Of the Hallstatt and la Tene periods there are extant in western 

 and central Europe numerous remains of quadrangular structures; 

 but by the side of these the circular building is never absent. In the 

 region of Heilbrunn the quadrangular houses of Grossgartach were 

 succeeded by the round huts of the bronze age, and these were again 

 followed by quadrangular houses. Most of the dwellings of the pre- 

 Roman period still show circular foundations of varied depth. In 

 the trench of Gerichstetten, near Baden, which dates from la Tene 

 period (second or first century B. C), by the side of a deep well in 

 the form of a funnel were found two quadrangular houses, one of 

 which was made of posts and intertwined wickerwork, while the 

 other rested on limestone sockets a meter high. 



