Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ix. (191 5), No. 1. 17 



rise to the suspicion or, at any rate, the possibility that 

 the terraces were of ancient origin, and that the same 

 cultural influence was at work in this region as in other 

 places. This suspicion was further strengthened when it 

 appeared that other signs of Egyptian influence were 

 present. That the inhabitants of the lake-dwellings 

 should have used cereals which undoubtedly were of 

 Egyptian origin, and that they were, on the other hand, 

 ignorant of rye., is surely a fact of the utmost significance. 

 The food of a people is an item of fundamental 

 importance ; the transition from hunting to agriculture 

 is not made spontaneously, as we have been told, but 

 some definite cause, generally cultural, must be assigned 

 for such a change. 



Even those settlements in Switzerland where no 

 traces of metal have been found, show signs of contact 

 with relatively advanced cultures. 24 Later on in the 

 same volume the relationship of the pile-dwelling culture 

 to that of the Eastern Mediterranean is again discussed, 

 and words are used which I quote as expressing exactly 

 my present position. " When we speak of Egypt, as we 

 again and again have had occasion to do, we naturally 

 are not thinking of a direct intercourse between the lake 

 colonists and this country, but we simply mean to state 

 that it was the home of that civilisation which spread so 

 widely amongst the regions of antiquity, and which had 

 probably extended over the shores of the Mediterranean 

 further inland from their colonies, so that from these 

 original centres of the civilisation of that age, some 

 scattered rays may have reached even to our lake 

 dwellings."- 5 



The almost complete absence of megalithic structures 



24 Keller, pp. 88-9. 469 et stq. 

 ,Ji Ibid. p. 526. 



