336 



THE HUMAN SPECIES 



column of Marcus Aurelius ; it must be remembered, however, 

 that these probably represent rough, temporary dwellings, as 

 the Germans of that time understood how to construct log 

 houses. 



The use of posts, basket-work and mud for constructing 

 substantial walls to dwelling-houses is a discovery which was 

 known to prehistoric men of all eras ; but there is also an 

 animal, namely, the beaver, which had learnt how to build in 

 this manner long before him. 



This animal, which combines the work of a carpenter and a 

 mason, can not only build strong dams with the logs and 

 boughs which it has bitten off, mixed with mud which it col- 

 lects and smears over them, 

 but can erect its oven-like 

 forts to which it betakes itself 

 at high water to consume in 

 peace the provisions which it 

 has stored there. 



Man, too, so early as the 

 Stone Age, found it con- 

 venient in certain localities 

 in Europe to take up his 

 abode on the water. Thus 

 in 1854 the first pile-built 



FIG. 162. House-urn from Alba Longa. village was discovered in the 

 Hallstatt period. (Homes.) 



Lake of Zurich, and since 



then numerous other examples have been found in the neigh- 

 bouring lakes. 



The strangest hypotheses have been brought forward as to 

 the motives which induced man to choose such a site for his 

 dwellings. The most natural and reasonable view is that man 

 was compelled to make his dwelling-place in the water to 

 secure himself against the attacks of animals or of other men. 

 This is the object of the pile-built houses of North-West and 

 South America, the Indian Archipelago, Melanesia and Africa. 

 It must be supposed that the dwellers in the pile-built lake 

 houses had formerly constructed similar buildings on land. 

 The driving of the upright piles of oak, beech, birch and pine 

 into the lake bottom was, however, a much more difficult 



