18

ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS.

CHAP. II.

In rude and unsettled times, such insular sites afforded safe retreats, all communication with the main land being cut off, except by boats, or by such wooden bridges as could be easily removed.

The Swiss lake-dwellings seem first to have attracted attention during the dry winter of 1853-4, when the lakes and rivers sank lower than had ever been previously known, and when the inhabitants of Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, resolved to raise the level of some ground and turn it into land, by throwing mud upon it obtained by dredging in the adjoining shallow water. During these dredging operations they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven into the bed of the lake, and among them a great many hammers, axes, celts, and other instruments. All these belonged to the stone period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of thin brass wire, and a small bronze hatchet.

Fragments of rude pottery fashioned by the hand were abundant, also masses of charred wood, supposed to have formed parts of the platform on which the wooden cabins were built. Of this burnt timber, on this and other sites, subsequently explored, there was such an abundance as to lead to the conclusion that most of the settlements must have perished by fire. Herodotus has recorded that the Pæonians, above alluded to, preserved their independence during the Persian invasion, and defied the attacks of Xerxes by aid of the peculiar position of their dwellings. But their safety,' observes Mr. Wylie, was probably owing to their living in the middle of the lake, ἐν μέσῃ τῇ λίμνῃ, whereas the ancient Swiss settlers were compelled by the rapidly increasing depth of the water near the margins of their lakes to construct their habitations at a short distance from the shore, within easy bowshot of the land, and therefore not out of

* 6

* W. M. Wylie, M.A., Archæology, vol. xxxvii., 1859, a valuable paper on the Swiss and Irish lake-habitations.

CHAP. II.

ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS.

19

reach of fiery projectiles, against which thatched roofs and wooden walls could present but a poor defence.' To these circumstances we are probably indebted for the frequent preservation, in the mud around the site of the old settlements, of the most precious tools and works of art, such as would never have been thrown into the Danish shellmounds,' which have been aptly compared to a modern dusthole.

Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich has drawn up a series of most instructive memoirs, illustrated with well-executed plates, of the treasures in stone, bronze, and bone brought to light in these subaqueous repositories, and has given an ideal restoration of part of one of the old villages (see plate 1),* such as he conceives may have existed on the Lakes of Zurich and Bienne. In this view, however, he has not simply trusted to his imagination, but has availed himself of a sketch published by M. Dumont d'Urville, of similar habitations of the Papoos in New Guinea in the Bay of Dorei. It is also stated by Dr. Keller, that on the River Limmat, near Zurich, so late as the last century, there were several fishing-huts constructed on this same plan. It will be remarked, that one of the cabins is represented as circular. That such was the form of many in Switzerland is inferred from the shape of pieces of clay which lined the interior, and which owe their preservation apparently to their having been hardened by fire when the village was burnt. In the sketch, some fishing-nets are seen spread out to dry on the wooden platform. The Swiss archæologist has found abundant evidence of fishing-gear, consisting of pieces of cord, hooks, and stones used as weights. A canoe also is introduced, such as are occasionally met with. One of these, made of the trunk of a single tree, fifty feet long

* Keller, Pfahlbauten, Antiquarische Gesellschaft in Zürich, Bd. xii. xiii. 1858-1861. In the fifth number of the Natural History Review, January 9,

1862, Mr. Lubbock has published an excellent account of the works of the Swiss writers on their lake-habitations. Keller, ibid. Bd. ix. p. 81, note.

20

STONE AND BRONZE IMPLEMENTS.

CHAP. II.

and three and a half feet wide, was found capsized at the bottom of the Lake of Bienne. It appears to have been laden with stones, such as were used to raise the foundation of some of the artificial islands.

It is believed that as many as 300 wooden huts were sometimes comprised in one settlement, and that they may have contained about 1000 inhabitants. At Wangen, M. Lohle has calculated that 40,000 piles were used, probably not all planted at one time nor by one generation. Among the works of great merit devoted specially to a description of the Swiss lake-habitations is that of M. Troyon, published in 1860.* The number of sites which he and other authors have already enumerated in Switzerland is truly wonderful. They occur on the large lakes of Constance, Zurich, Geneva and Neufchatel, and on most of the smaller ones. Some are exclusively of the stone age, others of the bronze period. these last more than twenty are spoken of on the Lake of Geneva alone, twelve on that of Neufchatel, and ten on the small Lake of Bienne.

Of

One of the sites first studied by the Swiss antiquaries was the small lake of Moosseedorf, near Berne, where implements of stone, horn, and bone, but none of metal, were obtained. Although the flint here employed must have come from a distance (probably from the South of France), the chippings of the material are in such profusion as to imply that there was a manufactory of implements on the spot. Here also, as in several other settlements, hatchets and wedges of jade have been observed of a kind said not to occur in Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Europe, and which some mineralogists would fain derive from the East; amber also, which, it is supposed, was imported from the shores of the Baltic.

At Wangen near Stein, on the Lake of Constance, another

*Sur les Habitations lacustres,

CHAP. II.

FOSSIL CEREALS AND OTHER PLANTS.

21

of the most ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpentine and greenstone, and arrow-heads of quartz, have been met with. Here also remains of a kind of cloth, supposed to be of flax, not woven but plaited, have been detected. Professor Heer has recognised lumps of carbonized wheat, Triticum vulgare, and grains of another kind, T. dicoccum, and barley, Hordeum distichon, and flat round cakes of bread, showing clearly that in the stone period the lake-dwellers cultivated all these cereals, besides having domesticated the dog, the ox, the sheep, and the goat.

Carbonized apples and pears of small size, such as still grow in the Swiss forests, stones of the wild plum, seeds of the raspberry and blackberry, and beech-nuts, also occur in the mud, and hazel-nuts in great plenty.

Near Morges, on the Lake of Geneva, a settlement of the bronze period, no less than forty hatchets of that metal have been dredged up, and in many other localities the number and variety of weapons and utensils discovered, in a fine state of preservation, is truly astonishing.

It is remarkable that as yet all the settlements of the bronze period are confined to Western and Central Switzerland. In the more eastern lakes those of the stone period alone have as yet been discovered.

The tools, ornaments, and pottery of the bronze period in Switzerland bear a close resemblance to those of corresponding age in Denmark, attesting the wide spread of a uniform. civilization over Central Europe at that era. In some few of the aquatic stations, as well as in tumuli and battlefields in Switzerland, a mixture of bronze and iron implements and works of art have been observed, including coins and medals. of bronze and silver, struck at Marseilles, and of Greek manufacture, belonging to the first and pre-Roman division of the age of iron.

In the settlements of the bronze era the wooden piles are

22 REMAINS OF MAMMALIA, WILD AND DOMESTICATED, CHAP. II.

not so much decayed as are those of the stone period; the latter having wasted down quite to the level of the mud, whereas the piles of the bronze age (as in the Lake of Bienne, for example) still project above it.

Professor Rütimeyer of Basle, well known to paleontologists as the author of several important memoirs on fossil vertebrata, has recently published a scientific description of great interest of the animal remains dredged up at various stations where they had been embedded for ages in the mud into which the piles were driven.*

These bones bear the same relation to the primitive inhabitants of Switzerland and some of their immediate successors as do the contents of the Danish 'refuse-heaps' to the ancient fishing and hunting tribes who lived on the shores of the Baltic.

The list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent treatise contains no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of several domesticated ones: besides which there are eighteen species of birds, the wild swan, goose, and two species of ducks being among them; also three reptiles, including the eatable frog and fresh-water tortoise; and lastly, nine species of freshwater fish. All these (amounting to fifty-four species) are with one exception still living in Europe. The exception is the wild bull (Bos primigenius), which, as before stated, survived in historical times. The following are the mammalia alluded to: The bear (Ursus Arctos), the badger, the common marten, the polecat, the ermine, the weasel, the otter, wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse (Mus sylvaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus Elaphus), the roe-deer, the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (Capra Ibex), the chamois, the Lithuanian bison, and the wild bull. The

Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz. Basel, 1861.