THE BRONZE AND STONE AGES. 25 



but we get a completer idea of the condition of Man at 

 this period from the Swiss lake- villages, first made 

 known to us by Keller, and subsequently studied by 

 Morlot, Troyon, Desor, Riitimeyer, Heer, and other 

 Swiss archaeologists. Along the shallow edges of the 

 Swiss lakes there flourished, once upon a time, many 

 populous villages or towns, built on platforms supported 

 by piles, exactly as many Malayan villages are now. 

 Under these circumstances innumerable objects were 

 one by one dropped into the water ; sometimes whole 

 villages were burnt, and their contents submerged ; and 

 thus we have been able to recover, from the waters of 

 oblivion in which they had rested for more than 2,000 

 years, not only the arms and tools of this ancient 

 people, the bones of their animals, their pottery and 

 ornaments, but the stuffs they wore, the grain they 

 had stored up for future use, even fruits and cakes of 

 bread. 



But this bronze-using people were not the earliest 

 occupants of Europe. The contents of ancient tombs 

 give evidence of a time when metal was unknown. 

 This also was confirmed by the evidence then un- 

 expectedly received from the Swiss lakes. By the side 

 of the bronze-age villages were others, not less exten- 

 sive, in which, while implements of stone and bone 

 were discovered literally by thousands, not a trace of 

 metal was met with. The shell-mounds or refuse-heaps 

 accumulated by the ancient fishermen along the shores 

 of Denmark, and carefully examined by Steenstrup, 

 Worsaae, and other Danish naturalists, fully confirmed 

 the existence of a * Stone Age.' 



We have still much to learn, I need hardly say, 



