HO LAKE-DWELLINGS OF SWITZERLAND. [Oh. X 



As there is an entire absence of metallic tools, these refuse-heaps are 

 referred to what is called the age of stone, which immediately preceded 

 m Denmark the age of bronze — a race more advanced in civilization, 

 armed with weapons of that mixed metal, having apparently invaded 

 Scandinavia, and ousted the aborigines.* 



Lacustrine habitations of Switzerland. — In Switzerland a different 

 class of monuments, illustrating the successive ages of stone, bronze, 

 and iron, has been of- late years investigated with great success, and 

 especially since 1854, in which year Dr. F. Keller explored near the 

 shore at Meilen, in the bottom of the lake of Zurich, the ruins of an old 

 village, originally built on numerous wooden piles, driven, at some 

 unknown period, into the muddy bed of the lake. Since then a great 

 many other localities, more than a hundred and fifty in all, have been 

 detected of similar pile-dwellings, situated near the borders of the 

 Swiss lakes, at points were the depth of water does not exceed 15 

 feet.f The superficial mud in such cases is filled with various articles, 

 many hundreds of them being often dredged up from a very limited 

 area. Thousands of piles, decayed at their upper extremities, are often 

 met with still firmly fixed in the mud. 



Herodotus relates that in the time of Darius (about 520 b.c.) there 

 existed a similar settlement in the middle of Lake Prasias (probably 

 now Lake Takinos), in Poeonia, or in the modern Turkish province of 

 Roumelia. " The houses," he says, " were built on a platform of wood 

 supported by wooden stakes, and a narrow bridge, which could be 

 withdrawn at pleasure, communicated with the shore." J "When 

 man," says Morlot,§ " thus stationed his dwellings on piles, all the 

 refuse of his industry and of his food were naturally thrown into the 

 lake, and were often well preserved in the mud at the bottom. If 

 occasionally such establishments were burnt, whether intentionally by 

 the enemy, or by accident, a vast quantity and variety of articles, in- 

 cluding some of great value, would sink to the botton of the waters. 

 Such aquatic sites were probably selected as places of safety, since, 

 when the bridge was removed, they could only be approached by boats, 

 and the water would serve for protection alike against, wild animals and 

 human foes." 



As the ages of stone, bronze, and iron merely indicate successive 

 stages of civilization, they may all have coexisted at once in different 

 parts of the globe, and even in contiguous regions, among nations 

 having little intercourse with each other. To make out, therefore, a 

 distinct chronological series of monuments is only possible when our 



* See the works of Nilsson, Thomsen, Warsaae, Steenstrup aud others. 



f See the works of MM. Troyon and Keller, and M. Morlot's ■ sketch of these 

 researches. Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat., t. vi., Lausanne, 1860 ; 

 and Antiquity of Man, by the Author, ch. ii. 



% Herod., v. 16. 



§ General Views of Archaeology, by Morlot, Memoirs of Smithsonian Institution, 

 1861. 



