576 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



Strabo described the round huts of the Gaulic Celts made in the 

 form of cupolas of boards and wickerwork with high roofs; however, 

 in their towns they had only quadrangular buildings which, at 

 Bibracte, had no exact rectangular outline. The poor Germans of 

 the towns at the time of Tacitus built rectangular houses of posts, 

 the walls being formed of intertwinings filled out with painted clay; 

 each house was surrounded by a wide, free space, " ut f ons, ut campus, 

 ut nemus placuit" (where a spring, a meadow, a grove pleased 

 them). But alongside they also had subterranean rooms, probably 

 round ones, covered with dung, which served as caves, as retreats, 

 and during the severe colds as winter dwellings, and were difficult of 

 discovery in case of a hostile attack. Proofs of the existence of these 

 circular structures are legion; they have even continued in Europe 

 to the present. But the quadrangular structure made its appearance 

 so early that it can not be given a specified origin, for instance, a 

 southern, as some claim (O. Montelius, S. Miiller).^ 



On the other hand, certain archeologists have the contrary tendency, 

 namely, to derive from the north of our continent for the south of 

 Europe a specified form of quadrangular house, the " Megaron type," 

 so termed from the poems of Homer as well as after the ruins of 

 Troy, Tirynth, and Mycenae. We shall confine ourselves to a brief 

 discussion of this question only, for it is impossible to treat in an 

 essay like the present, even rapidly and in a sketchy manner, such a 

 vast subject as the oldest forms of building in all its aspects. But it 

 may be worth while to show by an interesting example how at present 

 an effort is made from various sides to put forth and consider as 

 proofs certain affinities in the history of art and civilization, due to 

 certain analogies and coincidences (in which the anthropologist would 

 at a glance discern the results of convergent adaptations), ascribing 

 them to ethnic or at least racial characteristics, while most frequently 

 these hypotheses are the offspring of the deep wish of their authors. 



The Homeric and Mycenaean " Megaron " was a rectangailar structure, 

 originally consisting of one room, with a door on one of the narrow 



1 Grossgartach : A. Schliz, Das stelnzeitliche Dorf, Stuttgart, 1901. Exclusively quad- 

 rangular huts on piles : L. Schumacher, Untersuchung von Pfahlbauten des Bodensees, 

 published in Veroeffentlichungen Badischer Sammlungen, II, 1889. Round huts of the 

 bronze age at Heilbrunn : Schliz, Wiirttembergische Vierteljahi-schrift fiir Landes- 

 geschichte, W. F. XVII, 1908, p. 438. The quadrangular houses of the Halstatt period 

 in the same region : Ibid, p. 439, and Mitteilungeu dcr Anthropologischen Gesellschaft of 

 Vienna, XXXIII, 1903, p. 311 (compare also Schliz, Fundbauten aus Schwaben, IX, 

 1901, p. 21 seq., and XIII, 1905, pp. 30-57), also Soldan, Annalen des Vereins fiir 

 Altertumkunde von Nassau, XXXI, 1900. p. 145 seq. ; XXXII, 1902, B., pp. 35 and 59. 

 Gerichtstetten Schumacher, Veroffentlichungen Badischer Sammlungen, II, 1899, pp. 

 75-84. Round huts of the Gauls, Strabo, IV, 4, 3 (Cajsar mentions roofs of straw, 

 CECsar, Gallic War, V, 43, 6; of wood and straw, Vitruvius, II, 1, 3) ; of the Germans; 

 Tacitus, Germania, chapter 16. Quadrangular structures of the so-called European 

 origin : 0. Montelius, Archiv fiir Anthropologic, 1895, p. 548 ; S. Miiller, Urgeschichte 

 Europas, p. 99. All these forms and the problems connected with them are more fully 

 discussed in my Natur- und Urgeschichte des Menschen, Vienna. 190D, II, pp. 27-132. 



