6 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



\vas known in Sweden a region far removed from the 

 then civilized countries agriculture had at length been 

 introduced. Among the remains of that epoch was 

 found a carving of a cart drawn by two oxen and driven 

 by a man. 1 



The ancient inhabitants of Eastern Switzerland, at a 

 time when they possessed instruments of polished stone 

 and no metals, cultivated several plants, of which some 

 were of Asiatic origin. Heer 2 has shown, in his admirable 

 work on the lake-dwellings, that the inhabitants had 

 intercourse with the countries south of the Alps. They 

 may also have received plants cultivated by the Iberians, 

 who occupied Gaul before the Kelts. At the period 

 when the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Savoy pos- 

 sessed bronze, their agriculture was more varied. It 

 seems that the lake-dwellers of Italy, when in possession 

 of this metal, cultivated fewer species than those of 

 Savoy, 3 and this may be due either to a greater antiquity 

 or to local circumstances. The remains of the lake- 

 dwellers of Laybach and of the Mondsee in Austria 

 prove likewise a completely primitive agriculture ; no 

 cereals have been found at Laybach, and but a single 

 grain of wheat at the Mondsee. 4 The backward condition 

 of agriculture in this eastern part of Europe is contrary 

 to the hypothesis, based on a few words used by ancient 

 historians, that the Aryans sojourned first in the region 

 of the Danube, and that Thrace was civilized before 

 Greece. In spite of this example, agriculture appears 

 in general to have been more ancient in the temperate 

 parts of Europe than we should be inclined to believe 

 from the Greeks, who were disposed, like certain modern 



1 M. Montelins, from Cartailhac, Revue, 1875, p. 237. 



2 Heer, Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, in 4to, Zurich, 1865. See the 

 article on " Flax." 



3 Perrin, Etude Preliistorique de la Savoie, in 4to, 1870 ; Castelfranco, 

 Notizie intorno alia Stazione lacustre di Lagozza ; and Sordelli, Sulle 

 piante della torbiera delta Lagozza, in the Actes de la Soc. Ital. des Scien. 

 Nat., 1880. 



4 Much, Mittheil d. Anthropol. Ges. in Wien, vol. vi. ; Sacken, Sitzber. 

 Akad. Wien., vol. vi. Letter of Heer on these worVs and analysis of 

 them in Naidaillac, i. p. 247. 



