PILE-WORK ANTIQUITIES OF OLMUTZ. 365 



bles one discovered in Mecklenburg, likewise another pertaining to a skeleton 

 found at Wiesbaden with thirteen bronze rings, and also a very ancient head from 

 a quarry in the government of Moscow, it follows that in the bronze age, or at 

 least at a certain period thereof, one and the same race of men inhabited the wide 

 tract from Denmark to Moravia, and from the Rhine to the banks of the Volga. 



A more detailed and complete account of these discoveries in northern Moravia 

 is reserved for another occasion, but, from what has been here said, the import- 

 ance of the explorations at Olmutz will scarcely be contested. As little will it 

 be denied that the first proofs of the existence in eastern Europe of antiquities 

 ascending to the. times of its primitive inhabitants, under conditions similar to 

 those of the Swiss lakes, emanated from the banks of the March.* 



There can be no doubt that signal acquisitions might have been made in ad- 

 dition to those already realized, and which we owe wholly to the judicious en- 

 couragement afforded by a single individual from his own modest salary, had 

 money been appropriated by authority for comprehensive excavations. Dr. 

 Keller has expressed his conviction that it would well repay the trouble to ex- 

 plore carefully those points at which the antiquities appear to offer themselves 

 in greatest abundance. The Academy of Sciences of Vienna might, it would 

 seem, have promoted, in no slight degree, the knowledge of the primitive condi- 

 tion of our empire by the appropriation of means for such further explorations. 

 This, however, it has not done, but in the interests of science it has sought to 

 improve the discoveries at Olmutz after a different manner. More than ten 

 years from the first detection of pile structures in the lake of Zurich by Dr. 

 Keller, and after rapidly recurring reports of antiquarian societies since 1853, 

 respecting the annually widening discoveries in the Swiss lakes and in Italy, 

 when, finally, the researches of Desor had, in 1 864, extended these discoveries 

 into Bavaria, the Academy of Vienna contented itself with appropriating 1,200 

 florins to four persons for preliminary studies on the pile-work districts of the 

 empire. Although several of the most distinguished members have taken the 

 warmest interest in the discoveries made at Olmutz and their author, the Acad- 

 emy has pronounced against the expediency of prosecuting further researches 

 on the March. The learned world, however, will assuredly not forget that the 

 first inquiry respecting the existence of this interesting class of antiquities in 

 Eastern Europe proceeded from Olmutz. 



* Properly this occurred in the year 1858, at Troppau, through the discoverer of the an- 

 tiquities of Ohuutz. (See Year-book of the Imperial Geological Institution, XIII Band. ) At 

 Troppau were found, among other things, artificially detached horns of the Bos priscus and 

 the Bos pmnigenius, under circumstances which seemed to point to a condition of human life 

 in remote antiquity similar to that which existed in the pile-colonies of Switzerland, So we 

 are told by the geologist, M. H. Wolf. 



