Of Western Europe. 1 3 



were found coins of Gaul, of Marseilles, and some Ro- 

 man coins, one as late as Claudius. This, the latest 

 village, must therefore have lasted till about the Chris- 

 tian era. No rye has been found. Their grains were the 

 small-grained, primitive wheat, and the six-rowed bar- 

 ley. The six-row barley is found upon Italian coin 

 struck about five or six hundred years before Christ. 

 Bronze, wheat, and barley are the distinctive marks of 

 Greece in the times of Hesiod and Homer. As civiliza- 

 tion traveled westward, the period of bronze, wheat, and 

 barley must have been later in Switzerland than in 

 Greece. At the settlement of Wauvvl, which belongs 

 to the stone period, and is regarded as one of the old- 

 est, were found glass beads, such as were made in Phoe- 

 nicia and Egypt, and must have come by means of 

 Phoenician commerce. This settlement must therefore 

 have been in existence as late as fifteen hundred years 

 before Christ. By this calculation, these villages would 

 not extend back more than two thousand years before 

 our era, and this is the limit fixed by Keller, the most 

 careful student of the whole subject. 



The nationality of the lake dwellers has been much 

 discussed. The French appear to have settled in the 

 statement or assumption that the inhabitants of the 

 stone age were a primitive race; that the Celts, an Arian 

 race, acquainted with bronze, surging from the East, 

 and filling Western Europe, exterminated the original 

 settlers, took possession of their habitations, and drop- 

 ped into their mode of life. But, if this were true, the 

 lakes should have some traces of the struggle, and yield 

 human skeletons in attestation of it. Yet, in all the 

 lakes, only five human skulls and few other human 



