374 PREHISTORIC E UROPE. 



sheep, goat, and probably some of the oxen, are descended not 

 from indigenous European but from Asiatic species, renders it 

 in the highest degree probable that the Neolithic inhabitants of 

 Switzerland came originally from the east, bringing with them 

 their cereals and domestic animals. 



According to Dr. Keller, the passage from Neolithic times to 

 the Age of Bronze was effected peacefully and gradually. There 

 is no evidence to show that a bronze-using people suddenly in- 

 vaded Switzerland and overwhelmed their Neolithic predecessors. 

 All the facts would seem to point to a gradual introduction of 

 metal. At first, owing probably to its actual scarceness and the 

 want of metallurgic knowledge on the part of the lake-dwellers, 

 it was very little used. Perhaps the earliest implements of 

 bronze were obtained by barter and imported. By and by, how- 

 ever, the ores themselves would be introduced, and the people 

 would little by little acquire more dexterity in the manufacture 

 of such implements and weapons as they were in need of. But 

 stone certainly continued to be employed contemporaneously 

 with bronze. The pottery of the Bronze Age shows some ad- 

 vance upon that of Neolithic times, but the potter's wheel had 

 not yet apparently come into use. The remains of the domes- 

 ticated animals occur more numerously in the settlements per- 

 taining to the Bronze Age, from which it has been inferred that 

 flocks and herds were more abundant then than in the preceding 

 Age of Stone. The conditions of life, however, would appear 

 not to have differed in any essential degree. The possession of 

 metal implements would no doubt be of great service to the 

 people, but they still continued to be a race of agriculturists, 

 fishers, and hunters. Of the people themselves we know but 

 little, human remains being very rarely met with in the lake- 

 dwellings. It is most probable, however, that they were of the 

 same types as those whose remains occur in the numerous 

 tumuli or burial-mounds and cromlechs which are distributed 

 over so wide an area in Europe. We are equally ignorant of 

 their religion, and there is nothing to indicate what kind of 

 government and social order they had. Amongst the relics per- 



