DAVIS: THE LAKE-DWELLINGS IX EAST YORKSHIRE. 113 j 
characterized by tlie use of bronze, and to the earlier stages of iron. ! 
Dr. Keller considers that the Swiss lake-dwellers were a branch of ] 
the great Celtic family which occupied Central Europe prior to the 
incursions of the Romans, and it is also the opinion of Dr. Monro 
and others that all the pile dwellings in this country were erected by 
the Celts, or Brit- Welsh as they have been styled, who occupied the 
country in pre-historic times. If such be the fact, the relative age 
of the structures in Holderness as compared with those of Scotland 
and Ireland would be the natural result of the migration of that i 
people westwards. Their first access to the country was gained on ' 
the east coast, and the pile-dwellings found in the eastern counties 
and in Yorkshire were probably the first erected. As the Celts were 
driven westward and northward by the incursions of succeeding | 
nationalities they crossed over to Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, and ^ 
erected pile-dwellings or Crannoges in those countries. It is probable \ 
that the Holderness dwellings were in a state of disuetude before the i 
historic period ; they contain no traces of any objects of Roman or j 
other civilized manufacture. On the other hand those of Ireland and | 
Scotland are known to have been used as places of habitation and for j 
defensible retreats, as recently as the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. 1 
The pile-dwelling found near the old walls of London is also compara- j 
tively modern as compared with those of Holderness, and is replete \ 
with objects bearing the impress of the Roman occupation. It indi- I 
cates a period when that part of the city was neither more or less j 
than a great bog extending from the banks of the Thames. j 
It appears that the people in those old days adapted themselves ■■. 
to the circumstances of their environment very much as the savage 
nations of the present day do in New Guinea, in parts of Africa, and 
in other places. Where the country is full of lakes and of a wet and 
boggy character the inhabitants have found it necessary to provide a - 
dwelling place raised above the water, and this has been done by ' 
driving piles into the soft ground and building on the top of them. 
At the same time their neighbours, of the same tribe, under more | 
favourable circumstances, have erected their huts on the adjacent | 
dry land. 
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