106 FOSSIL MEN. 



main similar to that of the Swiss lake- villages. The 

 remarkable edifices of stone, no doubt of the nature 

 of communistic homes, or pueblos, found by the United 

 States surveyors of the Western Territories,* hung 

 like swallows' nests on the sides of almost inaccessible 

 cliffs and ravines, though different in detail, belong to 

 a condition of society akin to that of the lake-dwellers 

 of Europe, and dependant on the efforts of a weak or 

 peaceful people to escape the attacks of enemies, and 

 possibly also to secure more salubrious abodes. Habi- 

 tations built on piles existed in the time of Herodotus 

 on Lake Prasias, in Thrace, and it is believed that 

 some still exist there. f The same mode of building 

 was practised in ancient times in Ireland, Scotland, 

 and Italy, and it still exists in Borneo and elsewhere 

 in the Austral Islands. 



On the one hand, it would scarcely be reasonable to 

 credit a practice of this kind to an instinct like that 

 of the beaver. On the other, it can scarcely have been 

 an invention communicated by one tribe to another. 

 It is more likely to have been a modification of the 

 primitive village communism suggested to the ingenuity 

 of man by special local wants or dangers, and carried 

 out in the same way by peoples widely separated geo- 

 graphically. 



The facts above detailed may aid in the explanation 

 of what seems to be a village site in Europe of far 



* " Bulletins of United States Geological Survey of the 

 Western Territories." 



f Lubbock, "Prehistoric Times." 



