THE BRONZE PERIOD. 265 



of fishing, and no doubt also for getting rid of their 

 rubbish (Fig. 53). 



There must have been a large settlement on the Lake 

 of Geneva, for the piles extend 1,200 feet along the shore, 

 and 150 feet into the lake. Many other colonies must have 

 been of considerable size, for thousands of piles are found 

 still firmly fixed in the mud, and at Wangen, on Lake 

 Constance, more than 1,300 articles of stone, bone, and 

 pottery have been recovered. 



The huts were made of twigs, woven together and 

 plastered inside with clay, and the inhabitants had not only 

 abundance of fishes, but the flesh of stags, goats, wild boars, 

 and foxes, which last they seem to have eaten in great 

 quantities, to judge from the number of bones. 



The earliest lake-dwellers had none but stone imple- 

 ments, and were contemporary with the elephant and 

 rhinoceros. Somewhat later we find that deer, wild boars, 

 and wild oxen, were still abundant; and later still, a generation 

 rose up which had learnt the use of metal, for their tools 

 and implements were made of bronze, which is a mixture of 

 copper and tin. As tin was from the very earliest times 

 brought chiefly from Cornwall, we must conclude that the 

 people of the Bronze Period had some indirect dealings with 

 the inhabitants of Great Britain, and, therefore, knew some- 

 thing of trade. Their pottery is much finer in texture and 

 more elegant in shape than that of their predecessors, and 

 they had made other advances towards civilisation, having 

 learnt to keep domestic animals, to eat beef, pork, and 

 goat's flesh, to cultivate wheat and barley, and to weave 

 cloth of flax and straw. They even wore necklaces, brace- 



