v.] PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY. 159 



Age has yet been found, but in Europe they are not 

 met with. 



4. Many of the Swiss lake-villages belong to this 

 period. The Table B (very kindly drawn up, at my 

 request, by Dr. Keller) places this beyond a doubt, and 

 gives a good idea of the objects in use during the Bronze 

 Age, and the state of civilisation during that period. 



5. The absence of metal, though the principal, is by 

 no means the only point which distinguishes the Stone 

 Age villages from those of the Bronze period. If we 

 compare Nidau, as a type of the last, with Moosseedorf, 

 as the best representative of the former, we shall find 

 that, while bones of wild animals preponderate in the 

 one, those of tame ones are most numerous in the latter. 

 The vegetable remains point also to the same conclusion. 

 Even if we knew nothing about the want of metal in 

 the older lake-villages, we should still, says Professor 

 Heer, be compelled from botanical considerations to 

 admit their greater antiquity. 



Moreover, so far as they have been examined, the piles 

 themselves tell the same tale. Those of the Bronze Age 

 settlements were evidently cut with metal ; those of the 

 earlier villages with stone, or at any rate with rude and 

 blunt instruments. 



6. The pottery was much better than that of the 

 earlier period. A great deal of it was still hand-made, 

 but some is said to show marks of the potter's wheel. 



7. Gold, amber, and glass, were used for ornamental 

 purposes. 



8. Silver, zinc, and lead, on the contrary, were appa- 

 rently unknown. 



9. The same appears to have been the case with iron. 



