DWELLINGS 335 



to twist together overhanging branches or brushwood into a roof, 

 as, according to Tacitus, did the Finnish hunter-tribes, and as 

 is the custom of the Hottentots and Bushmen to-day. 



^schylus makes the Titan Prometheus boast that it was he 

 who first taught men to construct brick and wooden buildings, 

 before which they had dwelt like ants beneath the earth. There 

 are clear indications that man dwelt in such wretched and 

 bestial habitations buried in the earth, at any rate in prehistoric 

 times. In Armenia, Xenophon found a race of men who in- 

 habited underground dwellings, having narrow entrances like a 

 well, though spacious underneath. Tacitus says the Germans, 

 besides their mud huts, dug pits for dwelling in, covering the 

 openings with manure ; they used them also as a refuge in 

 winter, and as a storehouse for fruits. Virgil, too, sings of the 

 Northern Europeans, " the Scythians live quiet lives deep in the 

 earth in hollow pits". 



The description which Vitruvius gives of a similar dwelling 

 in Phrygia shows that these pits, which were partly or entirely 

 beneath the soil, and had more or less complete earthen walls, 

 also possessed a roof. He states that over the entrance was a 

 rounded dome made of stakes tied together, and covered with 

 straw or rushes upon which earth was thrown. Similar, almost 

 circular, pit-dwellings dating from the earlier Stone Age have 

 been found in mid- and North Europe in considerable numbers ; 

 inside them have been discovered numerous fire-places, crockery, 

 and stone and bone tools. 



In addition to these roofed pit-dwellings, mud-walled huts 

 were built, even in the early Stone Age. They were square with 

 four upright corner posts, and horizontal beams between them. 

 The roof was pointed, and the walls double, consisting of basket- 

 work coated inside and out with mud, the space between being 

 filled with a mixture of mud and straw. Schlitz has discovered 

 an entire village of the Stone Age at Grossgartach, consisting of 

 about ninety similar houses, with stables attached, together with 

 a whole catalogue of household utensils. Representations of 

 similar houses, some round and some square, from the Bronze, 

 Hallstatt and La Tene periods, have been preserved for us in 

 the baked clay house-urns (Fig. 162). Similar houses belong- 

 ing to the German races are to be seen on the triumphal 



