28 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



been the Scythians, although the matter is incapable of proof. Pres- 

 sure from this direction set both culture and population in motion 

 toward the west, in much the same way that the fall of Constantinople 

 in the fifteenth century induced the Renaissance in Italy. 



IV. The remarkable prehistoric civilization of Italy is due to 

 the union of two cultures: one from the Hallstatt region having 

 entered Europe by way of the Danube, the other coming from the 

 southeast by sea being distinctly Mediterranean. From these evolved 

 the Umbrian and the Etruscan civilizations, followed in the his- 

 toric period by the early Latin. 



The earliest culture in Italy worthy the name is found in the 

 palafitte or pile dwellings, in the northern lakes, and in the so-called 

 terramare settlements in the valley of the Po. The former are not 

 distinguishable from similar structures in the Swiss lake dwellings, 

 but the terramare are entirely peculiar to Italy. Their like is not 

 found anywhere else in Europe. Briefly described, they are villages 

 built upon raised platforms of earth, encircled by a moat, and gener- 

 ally having a ditch or small pond in the middle, in which an altar 

 is erected. These complicated structures are built upon the low, 

 marshy, alluvial plains along the Po, but show many points of simi- 

 larity with the true pile dwellings. The people of this early period 

 were in the pure stone age, with few arts save that of making the 

 coarser kinds of pottery. From their osseous remains, they seem to 

 have been of a long-headed type, quite like their predecessors, who 

 were cave dwellers. After a time, without any modification of the 

 modes of construction of their settlements, new elements appear 

 among these terramare people, bringing bronze and introducing cre- 

 mation. At about the same period, as we have said, the Alpine broad- 

 headed race began its submergence of the primitive Ligurian type, 

 leading to the formation of the north Italian population as we see it 

 to-day. This type surely invaded Italy from the north and northeast. 



From the foregoing considerations it will appear that there were 

 two constituent streams of culture and also of men here uniting in 

 the valley of the Po and on the northern slopes of the Apennines. 

 Possibly, as Chantre affirms, these two streams were from a common 

 Oriental source, here being reunited after long and independent mi- 

 grations. At all events, a remarkable advance in culture speedily en- 

 sued, superior to either of those from which its elements were derived. 

 For the civilization unearthed at Yillanova, in the Certosa at Bo- 

 logna, at Este, and elsewhere, while in much of its bronze work 

 similar to the Hallstatt types, contained a number of added features, 

 obviously either indigenous or brought directly from the south. The 

 Hallstatt affinities are especially revealed in the situlce to which we 

 have already called attention. That of Arnoaldi, discovered at Bo- 



