EPOCH OF' EARLY LAKE-DWELLINGS.
DL'coz'ery of Lacustrine Remains.—In the winter of 1853-54 a dis covery was made in the Lake of Zurich, Switzerland, which opened a new and rich field to archmological investigation. The waters of the lake being unusually low, some of the residents of the banks began excavating the rich mould from the bottom. They soon came upon numerous remains of broken pottery, stone implements, dressed horns, and especially the broken remnants of trunks of trees which had been driven into the bottom to serve as piles. The discovery was reported to Dr. Ferdinand Keller, president of the Antiquarian Society Zurich, who immediately repaired to the spot and began a series of careful inves tigations. The results were as unexpected as they were interesting. It was ascertained that the remains discovered marked the site of an ancient village, the houses of which had been built upon piles supporting a large platform in the lake at a distance from the shore, with which it had been connected by a bridge which could be removed at pleasure. The purpose of this arrangement was to secure protection from the wild beasts which then roamed the forests, or from yet more redoubtable human. enemies.
all the instruments found there were none of metal, hence the age of this construction was clearly assignable to the Neolithic Period. This was also true of another and much larger con struction which was exhumed a few years later not far from the same spot, on the borders of the little lake Pfiiffikon, Canton Zurich, close to the village of Robenhausen. This has yielded such an abundance of typical specimens of the older forms of these lake-dwellings that by some antiquaries the division of the Stone Age to which it is assigned is called "The Epoch of Robenhansen." Other similar discoveries rapidly followed the one first named. It was found that not only in the Lake of Zurich, but in almost all the Swiss lakes, there were hidden many such sites of ancient lake-villages. By the year 1879 one hundred and sixty-one such localities had been mapped and described, and since then every year has added to their number. Observers beyond the limits of Switzerland were stimu
lated to prosecute researches in localities offering the probability of such finds. The results were surprisingly successful. Italian explorers disin terred the remains of many such in the valley of the river Vibrata in the Abruzzi and in the fertile alluvial plain on either bank of the Po; while similar sites have been discovered in the lakes of Lombardy, in various portions of Bavaria and Southern Germany, on the rivers of Central France, in Savoy, and as far south as the foot of the Pyrenees.
Age of the those first discovered belonged distinctly to the Neolithic Period, the investigations which followed proved that all the remains could not be attributed to that date. At some stations there are abundant evidences that the villagers were well acquainted with the use of bronze, and preferred it to stone for the manu facture of tools and weapons. Even some specimens of prehistoric iron utensils have been reported. Moreover, the general character of the remains of different villages when compared indicated a progressive development of the arts of life, proving that the lake-dwellings were constructed by many generations, extending in time from the early Neo lithic Period down to the dawn of history. They come even within the ken of history, for Herodotus mentions a tribe in Thrace, the Pxonians, who in his day lived upon Lake Prasias in dwellings erected on plat forms which were supported by piles and connected with the land by a narrow bridge. He adds that there was a hut for each family, and that the small children were tethered by a rope lest they should fall into the water. Just such a mode of life must have been that of the ancient Helvetians. That even this laborious method of construction did not always protect them from their enemies is apparent from the manifest evidence in many instances that these villages came to a violent end by fire, not allowing the inhabitants time to remove their most valued effects, though of course such wooden constructions were liable to this catastrophe by accident as well as from assault.