62 Primitive Man. 



represented by the Etruscans of the early Roman period, with 

 an admixture of blood from the Arabs, the Moors of Spain 

 and the Berber tribes of Northern Africa. 



Whencesoever their origin, the earliest lake dwellers 

 lived indisputably in the earlier stages of the new stone 

 age. Their implements are highly polished, and frequently 

 ingeniously decorated and ornamented. Many tools and 

 utensils approaching the variety in modern use are not 

 infrequently found ; flint saws with wooden handles ; 

 harpoons and hooks ; arrows ; straight and curved needles, 



some of the latter sharpened at both ends, with the eye in 

 the centre ; and all manufactured of bone and horn. Bone 

 hairpins ; beads of amber ; horn drinking-cups ; pottery ; 

 the shuttle, spindle, and loom ; various woven stuffs ; cords 

 of tree-libre ; thread of flax ; willow baskets ; cereals, seeds, 

 and various fruit in considerable abundance ; wooden bowls 

 and platters ; combs, maces, battle-axes, spoons, bone forks ; 



all indicating that with the lake dwellers modern civili- 

 zation had at last dawned upon Europe. They had, more- 

 over, domesticated nearly all of our present valuable 

 domestic animals, including the horse. Their carpentering 

 was ingenious. Possibly they had commerce by barter 

 with the Mediterranean and the Baltic, and they con- 

 structed boats of great size and strength. They clothed 

 themselves not only in skins, but with hempen and sewn 

 stuffs. Their dead were buried in excavations, inclosed in 

 large stone slabs, suggesting an approach to the dolmens, 

 or niegalithic stones. 



Lake dwellings were not peculiar to the ancient Hel- 

 vetians. We read of them in Herodotus as existing among 

 the ancient Paonians. In modern times we tind them 

 among the Cossacks, among the Papuans of New Guinea, 

 in Borneo, the Celebes, and in Cochin China. Similar also 

 Avere the constructions of the Aztecs of North America, 

 and the so-called floating-islands of the Assyrians and 

 ancient Chinese. 



The dolmens, or megalithic stones, are rudely constructed, 

 of colossal size, consisting, in the case of dolmens proper, 

 of huge stones i)laced horizontally upon other immense 

 upright blocks, the whole either covered with earth, or left 

 exposed. Of the latter kind, Stonehenge is a Avell known 

 instance. Those covered with earth take the name also of 

 "barrows," and "passage graves." These exjwsed dolmens. 



