CHAPTER IV.Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, “Terremares,” Crannoges, Burghs, “Nurhags,” “Talayoti,” and “Truddhi.”

CHAPTER IV.Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, “Terremares,” Crannoges, Burghs, “Nurhags,” “Talayoti,” and “Truddhi.”The earliest races of men lived in a climate less rigorous than ours, on the shores of wide rivers, in the midst of fertile districts, where fishing and the chase easily supplied all their needs. These races were numerous and prolific, and we find traces of them all over Western Europe, from Norfolk to the middle of Spain. What were the homes of these men and their families? Did they crouch in dens, as Tacitus says the German tribes did in his day? In his “Ancient Wiltshire,” Sir R. Coalt Hoare says that the earliest human habitations were holes dug in the earth and covered over with the branches of trees. Near Joigny there still remain some circular holes in the ground, about fifty feet in diameter by sixteen to twenty deep, known in the country under the name ofbuvards. The trunk of a tree was fixed at the bottom and rose above the ground, and the branches plastered with clay formed the roof. The floor of thesebuvardsconsists of a greasy black earth mixed with bones, cinders, charcoal, and worked flints. Amongst the last named, polished hatchets predominate, which proves that these refuges were inhabited in Neolithic times, but there is nothing to prevent our supposing that they were also occupied in the Palæolithic period. Ameghino gives a still more striking example of an earth-dwelling. Near Mercedes, about twenty leagues from Buenos Ayres, he picked up numerous human bones, together with arrow-heads, chisels, flint knives, bone stilettos and polishers, and bones of animals scratched and cut by man. Later, Ameghino discovered the actual dwelling of this primeval man, and his strange home was beneath the carapace of a gigantic armadillo, the now extinct glyptodon seen inFig. 48.Figure 48.The glyptodon.“All around the carapace,” says Ameghino, “in the reddish agglomerate of the original soil lay charcoal cinders, burnt and split bones, and flints. Digging beneath this, a flint implement was found, with some long split llama and stag bones, which had evidently been handled by man, with some toxodon and mylodon teeth.”Fig. 49represents the now extinct mylodon. Some time afterwards, the discovery of another carapace under similar conditions added weight to Ameghino’s supposition.1In the midst of the pampas, those vast treeless plains, where no rock or accident of conformation affords shelter from heat or cold or a hiding-place from wild beasts, man was not at a loss; he hollowed out for himself a hole in the earth, roofing it over with the shell of a glyptodon, and securing a retreat where he could be safe at least for a time.Figure 49.Mylodon robustus.It was not until later, driven to do so by the cold, that man learnt to use the natural caves hollowed out in limestone rocks, either in geological convulsions or by the quieter action of water. The absence in the caves which have been excavated in America of implements of the Chelléen type, the most ancient known as yet, would point to this conclusion, though it is impossible to fix the earliest date of their occupation. This date, moreover, varies very much in different localities. The earth was but gradually peopled, and our ancestors penetrated into different countries in successive migrations. Some caves have recently been discovered in Wales, in the midst of Glacial deposits.2The Boulder Clay and marine drift on neighboring heights are incontrovertible proofs of the submergence of this region, when Great Britain was almost completely covered with ice. Excavations made in 1886 have brought to light a series of deposits, one above the other, the gravel and red earth containing Quaternary bones and worked flints, whilst the stalagmite and ooze are evidently of more recent origin. This is the usual state of things in all the English eaves; but in those of the Clyde, the bone beds had been disturbed and mixed with striated pebbles and Glacial drift. From this Hicks, who superintended the excavations, concluded that man and the Quaternary animals had lived in those caves before the Glacial epoch, and before the great submergence, which in some places was no less than some 1,300 feet below the present level of the sea. If this were so, it would be one of the most ancient proofs not only of the presence of man, but also of the kind of habitation he first dwelt in. These conclusions have, however, been hotly disputed. M. Arcelin3remarks that there are in England two exceptional geological landmarks, the Forest Bed representing the last Pliocene formations, and the River Gravels, which are the most ancient Quaternary deposits. Between the two, we find the Boulder Clay of Glacial origin. Now the fauna of the caves of the Clyde, far from resembling that of the Forest Bed, appears to be more recent than that of the ancient deposits of the River Gravels. Amongst this fauna we find neither theElephas antiquusnor theRhinoceros Merckii; the worked flints are not like those known as belonging to the River-Gravel type, but the relics more nearly resemble those of the Reindeer period of France. It is therefore impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to assert that man lived in the southwest of England in the Glacial epoch, to the phenomena of which, if he witnessed them, he must eventually have fallen a victim.Our ancestors must constantly have disputed the possession of their caves of refuge with animals, but there is often a certain distinction between those chiefly occupied by man and the mere dens of wild beasts. The latter are generally more difficult of access, and are only to be entered by long, low, narrow, dark passages. Those permanently inhabited by man are wide, not very deep, and they are well lighted. That at Montgaudier, for instance, has an arched entrance some forty-five feet wide by eighteen high. The cave-men had already learnt to appreciate the advantages of air and light.The caves are often of considerable height; that of Massat is some 560 feet high, that of Lherm is 655, that of Bouicheta nearly 755, that of Loubens 820, and that of Santhenay is, as much as 1,344 feet high. Those of Eyziès, Moustier, and Aurignac are also very lofty. As the valleys were hollowed out by the rushing torrents of the Quaternary floods, men sought a home near the waters which were indispensable to their existence, and came to dwell on the shores of rivers. The most ancient of the inhabited caves, therefore, are those on the highest levels, but the difference in the nature of the country and the varying force of geological action have led to so many exceptions, that all we can say with any certainty is that the caves were inhabited at different epochs. That of Montgaudier, for instance, was filled with an accumulation of ooze about forty feet thick. Weapons and tools lay one above the other from the bottom to the top, and it is easy to distinguish the succession of hearths by the blackened earth, cinders, charcoal, and crushed bones lying about them.In the Placard Cave eight different deposits bear witness to the presence of man; and these are separated by others bare of traces of human occupation. The lowest deposit, which is some twenty-five feet below the present level of the soil, contains worked flints of the Moustérien type, above which, but separated by an accumulation ofdébriswhich has fallen from the roof, comes a layer in which was found a number of arrow-heads of the shape of laurel leaves. The fauna of both these levels includes the reindeer, the horse, and the aurochs. As we go up we find, above another layer ofdébris, the Solutréen type of tools and weapons represented by bone implements and numerous arrow-heads, this time stalked and notched. The four following levels correspond with those belonging to what is known as the Madeleine type, and the arrow-heads are decorated with geometrical designs. The traces of human occupation at different times, doubtless separated by long intervals, are therefore very clearly defined. The Fontabert Cave, in Dauphiné, contained, at a depth of about six feet, traces of fire and roughly worked flints, and about three feet below the surface lay the skeleton of a man, who had perhaps been overtaken by a fall of earth, still holding in his hand a polished dipper of fine workmanship. Yet a third and evidently more recent period is characterized by a jade crescent. We might easily multiply instances of a similar kind, but that we wish to avoid so much repetition.We soon begin to find evidence of the progress made by man, and though in Neolithic times he still continued to occupy caves he learned to adapt them better to his needs. The rock shelters of the Petit-Morin valley, so well explored by M. de Baye, are the best examples we can give.These caves are hollowed out of a very thick belt of cretaceous limestone. They date from different epochs, and each presents special characteristics which can easily be recognized. Some were used as burial-places, others as habitations. In the former the entrance is of irregular shape, the walls are roughly cut, and the work is of the most elementary description. The sepulchral eaves were simply closed by a large stone rolled into place and covered with rubbish, the better to hide the entrance. The shelters used to live in show much more careful work, and are divided into two unequal parts by a wall cut in the living rock. To get into the second partition one has to go down steps, cut in the limestone, and these steps are worn with long usage. The entrance was cut out of a massive piece of rock, left thick on purpose, and on either side of the opening the edges still show the rabbet which was to receive the door. Two small holes on the right and left were probably used to fix a bar across the front to strengthen the entrance. A good many of these eaves are provided with an opening for ventilation, and some skilful contrivances were resorted to for keeping out water. Inside we find different floors, shelves, and crockets cut in the chalk, and on the floors M. de Baye picked up shells, ornaments, and flints, which were lying just where their owners had left them. Very different is all this from the Vezère caves, and everything proves an undeniable improvement in the conditions of life.The most interesting of all the objects found in these caves are, however, the carvings; but few date from Neolithic times, and some archæologists have argued from their absence in favor of the displacement everywhere of old races by the incursion of new-corners. Some of these carvings represent hafted hatchets, the flint being painted black to make the raised design stand out better. Others represent human figures. In the Coizard Cave, for instance, was found a roughly outlined representation of a woman with a prominent nose, eyes indicated by black dots, highly developed breasts, but no lower limbs. A necklace adorns her throat, and a pendant hanging from this necklace is colored yellow. On the passage leading to the door is engraved another figure which was originally more accurately drawn than the others, but is not in such good preservation. In the Courjonnet Cave we see a woman with a bird’s bead; she was probably one of thelares penates, the protectors of the domestic hearth. We meet with this same goddess at Santorin, and at Troy, and on the shores of the Vistula, which is a very interesting ethnological fact.The objects found in the sepulchral caves are important, and included a number of arrow-heads with transverse cutting edges. There is no doubt about their use; they have been picked up in black earth, in contact with human bones, the decomposition of the soft parts of which caused them to fall out of the mortal wound they had inflicted. With these arrow-heads were found flint knives, large sloped scrapers, polishers, and bone stilettos, the femora of a ruminant with a pig’s tooth fixed on to each end, hoes made of stag horn, beads and pendants made of bone, shell, schist, quartz, and aragonite, with the teeth of bears, boars, wolves, and foxes, all pierced with holes. Some of the shell anti schist beads were spread upon the surface of the skull, and perhaps formed a net orrésille, such as that already referred to as found at Baoussé-Roussé.For centuries this occupation of caves continued, offering as they did a shelter that was dry and warm in winter, and cool in summer. Homer tells us that the Cyclops lived on the heights of the mountains and in the depths of the caves,4and Prometheus says that, like the feeble ant, men dwelt in deep subterranean caves, where the sun never penetrated.5Whilst the men of the Petit-Morin valley hollowed out caves, or enlarged those made by nature, others took refuge in buts made of dried clay and interlaced branches, or in tents of the skins of the animals they had slain, and, though these fragile dwellings have disappeared, leaving no trace, there yet remain indelible evidences of the presence of many successive generations. Everywhere throughout the world we find heaps of rubbish, consisting chiefly of the shells of mollusca and crustacea, broken bones, flakes of flint, and fragments of stone and bone implements, covering vast areas and often rising to a considerable height.Not until our own day did these rubbish heaps attract attention, and it was reserved to our own generation, so interested in all that relates to the past, to recognize their true significance. Steenstrup noticed, in the north of Europe, that these mounds consisted nearly entirely of the shells of edible species, such as the oyster, mussel, andlittorina littorea; that they were all those of adult specimens, but not all subject to similar conditions of existence or native to the same waters. The kitchen-middings, or heaps of kitchen refuse—such was the name given to these shell-mounds—could not have been the natural deposits left by the waves after storms, for in that case they would have been mixed with quantities of sand and pebbles. The conclusion is inevitable, that man alone could have piled up these accumulations, which were the refuse flung away day by day after his meals. The excavation of the kitchen-middings confirmed in a remarkable manner the opinion of Steenstrup, and everywhere a number of important objects were discovered. In several places the old hearths were brought to light. They consisted of flat stones, on which were piles of cinders, with fragments of wood and charcoal. It was now finally proved that these mounds occupied the site of ancient settlements, the inhabitants of which rarely left the coast, and fed chiefly on the mollusca which abounded in the waters of the North Sea.These primeval races, however savage they may have been, were not wanting in intelligence. The earliest inhabitants of Russia placed their dwellings near rivers above the highest flood-level known to or foreseen by them. The Scandinavians were most precise in the orientation of their homes, and M. de Quatrefages points out that the kitchen-midding of Sœlager is set against a hill in the best position for protecting those who lived near it from the north winds, which are so trying in these districts on account of their violence. At Havelse, says Sir John Lubbock, the settlement was on rather higher ground, and, though close to the shore, was quite beyond the reach of the waves. The English visitors had an excavation made whilst they were present, and in two or three hours they obtained about a hundred fragments of bone, many rude flakes, sling stones, and fragments of flint, together with some rough axes of the ordinary shell-mound type. The excavations at Meilgaard a little later by the same explorers were even more fruitful in results.Scandinavia does not appear to have been occupied in the Paleolithic period, and the most ancient facts concerning it only date from the expeditions of the Romans against the Teutons, and our knowledge even of them is very incomplete.6We are still ignorant of much which may have been known to the Carthaginians and the Phœnicians. It is possible that in the remote days under notice the Scandinavians were ignorant of the art of tilling the ground, for so far no cereal or agricultural product of any kind has been discovered, nor the bones of any domestic animal, except indeed those of the dog, which may, however, have been still in a wild state. Amongst the bones collected from the kitchen-middings, those of the stag, the kid, and the boar are much the most numerous. The bear, the urns, the wild cat, the otter, the porpoise, the seal, and the small mammals, the marten, the water-rat and the mouse, have also been found. At Havelse were collected more than 3,500 mammal bones, amongst which do not occur those of the musk-ox, the reindeer, the elk, or the marmot; their absence bearing witness to a more temperate climate than that of the present day in the regions under notice. The stag antlers found belong to every season of the year, from which we may conclude that the people of these districts, like the cave-men of the Pyrenees, had given up a nomad life and remained at home all the year round, living in the dwellings they had built upon the shores of the sea.Amongst the birds found, we may mention the large penguin, now extinct, the moor-fowl, which fed entirely on pine buds, and several species of clucks and geese; whilst amongst the fish were the herring, the cod, the dab, and the eel. The numerous relics of chelonia prove the existence of numbers of the turtle tribe in the North Sea.A great variety of objects, most of them of a coarse type, have been found beneath the kitchen-middings; metals are however completely absent, and it is probable that they were quite unknown to the Scandinavians for several centuries after their arrival in the country.It is easy to quote similar facts in other countries. In 1877, Count Ouvarof mentioned, at the Archæological Congress at Kazan, some kitchen-middings near the Oka, a little river flowing into the Volga near Nijni-Novgorod. In excavating somebougrys, or little mounds of sand overlooking the valley, he discovered amongst the layers of alluvium, successive deposits of cinders and fragments of charcoal, which appear to have been the remains of a fire. A little lower down in another deposit were fragments of pottery, stone weapons and implements, and an immense number of shells. Judging from these relics of their daily life, this numerous population must have fed exclusively on fish and mollusca, for excavations brought to light but few mammal bones. The mollusca were all of species that only live in salt water. From this we know that the waves washed the shores near thisbougry, and that a milder climate probably prevailed in these regions, making life more supportable.Virchow has recognized on the shores of Lake Burtneek in Germany, a kitchen-midding belonging to the earliest Neolithic times, perhaps even to the close of the Palæolithic period. He there picked up some stone and bone implements, and notices on the one hand the absence of the reindeer, and on the other, as in Scandinavia, that of domestic animals. But in this case, the home of the living became the tomb of the dead, and numerous skeletons lay beside the abandoned hearths. Similar discoveries have been made in Portugal; shell-heaps having been found thirty-five to forty miles from the coast, and from sixty-five to eighty feet above the sea-level. Here also excavations have brought to light several different hearths; and in many of the most ancient kitchen-middings in the valley of the Tigris were found crouching skeletons, proving that here too the home had become the tomb.7Similar deposits are by no means rare in France. M. du Chatellier mentions one in Brittany, which he estimates as 325 cubic feet in size. From it be has taken spear- and arrow-heads, knives and scrapers, some highly finished, others but roughly cut and often with scarcely any shape at all. The population was evidently ichthyophagous, to judge by the vast accumulations of shells of scallops, oysters, limpets, pectens, and other mollusca. The few animal bones are those of the stag, the bear, and certain wading birds.At Canche, near Étaples, has been evade out a series of mounds forming a semicircle some eight hundred and fifty feet in extent. These mounds are made up of successive layers of shells and charcoal, the relics of successive occupations. Lastly we must mention a kitchen-midding situated at the mouth of the Somme, which is eight hundred and twenty feet long by about one hundred wide. It consists principally of shells of adult species, with which are mixed fragments of coarse black pottery and numerous goat and sheep bones, the latter bearing witness to a more recent date than that of the kitchen-middings of Scandinavia or of Germany.Throughout Europe similar facts are coming to light. Evans mentions heaps of shells on the coasts of England. Chantre speaks of others near Lake Gotchai in the Caucasus, and Nordenskiöld of others at Cape North, to which he wishes to restore its true name of Jokaipi. He sass these mounds are exactly like those of Denmark.It is, however, chiefly in America that these heaps attract attention, for there huge shell-mounds stretch along the coast in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, Louisiana, California, and Nicaragua. We meet with them again near the Orinoco and the Mississippi, in the Aleutian Islands, and in the Guianas, in Brazil and in Patagonia, on the coasts of the Pacific as on those of the Atlantic. Owing to the darker color of the vegetation growing on them, the shell-heaps of Tierra del Fuego are seen from afar by the navigator. For a long time the true character of these mounds was not known, and they were attributed to natural causes, such as the emergence of the ancient coast-line from the sea, and it was not until lately that it was discovered that they were the work of men.Some of these kitchen-middings are of great size. Sir Charles Lyell describes one on St. Simon’s Island, at the mouth of the Altamaha (Georgia), which covers ten acres of ground and varies in height from five to ten feet. It consisted almost entirely of oyster shells. In America, as in Europe, excavations brought to light hatchets, flints, arrows, and fragments of pottery. Another of these mounds, near the St. John River, consists, as does that visited by Lyell, of oyster shells, and is of extraordinary dimensions, being three hundred feet long, and though the exact width cannot be made out, is certainly several hundred feet across. Putnam8gives an account of the excavation of one of these mounds formed of shells of theMya, Venus, Pecten, Buccinum, andNaticagenera. It stretched along the sea-coast for a distance of several hundred feet, it was from four to five feet thick, and penetrated some distance below the surface of the ground. The valves had been opened with the aid of heat, and the animal bones found with the shells had been broken with heavy hammers which were found in the kitchen-midding. The bones included those of the stag, the wolf, and the fox. Fishes were also represented by remains of the cod, the plaice, and chelonia by turtle shells. Some bird bones were also found, and the knives, arrow- and spear-heads, scrapers, etc., were all of the rudest workmanship. Mr. Phelps has superintended yet more important excavations at Damariscotta9and all along the coast to the month of the Penobscot. In the lowest layers he made out ancient hearths, and found numerous fragments of pottery which are the most ancient examples of keramic ware found in New England, and were covered with incised ornamentation of considerable refinement.The kitchen-middings of Florida and Alabama are even more remarkable. There is one on Amelia Island which is a quarter of a mile long with a medium depth of three feet and a breadth of nearly five. That of Bear’s Point covers sixty acres of ground, that of Anercerty Point one hundred, and that of Santa Rosa five hundred. Others taper to a great height. Turtle Mound, near Smyrna, is formed of a mass of oyster shells attaining a height of nearly thirty feet, and the height of several others is more than forty feet.10In all of them bushels of shells have already been found, although a great part of the sites they occupy are still unexplored; huge trees, roots, and tropical creepers having, in the course of many centuries, covered them with an almost impenetrable thicket.Whether man did or did not live in the basin of the Delaware at the most remote times of which we have any knowledge, we meet with traces of his occupation in the same latitude at more recent periods. At Long-Nick-Branch is a shell-mound that extends for half a mile, and in California there is a yet larger kitchen-midding. It measures a mile in length by half a mile in width, and, as in similar accumulations, excavations have yielded thousands of stone hammers and bone implements (Fig. 24).The shell-mounds of which we have so far been speaking are all near the sea, but there is yet another consisting entirely of marine shells fifty miles beyond Mobile. This fact seems to point to a considerable change in the level of the ground since the time of man’s first occupancy, for he is not likely to have taken all the trouble involved in carrying the mollusca necessary for his daily food so far, when he might so easily have settled down near the shore.I cannot close this account of the kitchen-middings, without calling attention to two very interesting facts. The importance of these mounds bears witness alike to the number of the inhabitants who dwelt near them, and the long duration of their sojourn. Worsaae sets back the initial date of the most ancient of the shell-mounds of the New World more than three thousand years. This is however a delicate question, on which in the present state of our knowledge it is difficult to hazard a serious opinion. It is easier to come to a conclusion on other points: the close resemblance, for instance, between the kitchen-middings of America and those of Europe. In both continents we find the early inhabitants fed almost entirely on fish; their weapons, tools, and pottery were almost identical in character; and in both cases the characteristic animals of Quaternary times had disappeared, and the use of metals still remained unknown. Are these remarkable coincidences the result of chance, or must we not rather suppose that people of the same origin occupied at the same epoch both sides of the Atlantic?The man of the kitchen-middings evidently had a fixed abode. Long since, the tent, the temporary shelter of the nomad, had given place to the but. We have already said what this but may have been like, but the most certain data we have as to human habitations at this still but little known epoch, are those supplied by the Lake Stations of Switzerland, and it is to our own generation that we are indebted for the first discoveries relating to them.The memory of these Lake Stations bad completely passed away, and it was only the long drought which desolated Switzerland in 1853 and 1854, and the extraordinary sinking of Lake Zurich, revealing the piles still standing, that attracted the attention of archæologists. In the space still enclosed by these piles lay scattered pell-mell stones, bones, burnt cinders of ancient hearths, pestles, hammers, pottery, hatchets of various shapes, implements of many kinds, with innumerable objects of daily use. These relics prove that some of the ancient inhabitants of Switzerland had dwelt on the lake where they were found, in a refuge to which they had probably retired to escape from the attacks of their fellow-men or wild beasts. Though they bad succeeded in getting away from these enemies, they were to fall victims to a yet more formidable adversary, and the half-burnt piles have preserved to our own day the traces of a conflagration that destroyed the Lake dwelling so laboriously constructed.The discovery of these piles excited general interest, an interest that was redoubled when similar discoveries revealed that all the lakes of Switzerland were dotted with stations that had been built long centuries before in the midst of the waters. Twenty such stations were made out on Lake Bienne, twenty-four on the Lake of Geneva, thirty on Lake Constance, forty-nine on that of Neuchâtel, and others, though not so many, on Lakes Sempach, Morat, Mooseedorf, and Pfeffikon. In fact more than two hundred Lake Stations are now known in Switzerland; and how many more may have completely disappeared?There is really nothing to surprise us in the fact of buildings rising from the midst of waters. They are known in historic times; Herodotus relates that the inhabitants of pile dwellings on Lake Prasias successfully repelled the attacks of the Persians commanded by Megabasus. Alonzo de Ojeda, the companion of Amerigo Vespucci, speaks of a village consisting of twenty large houses built on piles in the midst of a lake, to which he gave the name of Venezuela in honor of Venice, his native town. We meet with pile dwellings in our own day in the Celebes, in New Guinea, in Java, at Mindanao, and in the Caroline Islands. Sir Richard Burton saw pile dwellings at Dahomey, Captain Cameron on the lakes of Central Africa, and the Bishop of Labuan tells us that the houses of the Dayaks are built on lofty platforms on the shores of rivers. The accounts of historians and travellers help us to understand alike the anode of construction of the Lake Stations and the kind of life led by their inhabitants.The Lake dwellings of Switzerland may be assigned to three different periods. That of Chavannes, on Lake Bienne, belongs to the earliest type. The hatchets found are small, scarcely polished, and always of native rock, such as serpentine, diorite, or saussurite; the pottery is coarse, mixed with grains of sand or bits of quartz; the bottoms of the vases are thick, and no traces of ornamentation can be made out. The pile-dwellings of the second period, such as those of Locras and Latringen, show considerable progress; the hatchets, some of which are very large, are well made. Several of them are of nephrite, chloromelanite, and jade; and their number, as compared with those in minerals native to Switzerland, varies from five to eight per cent. Here and there in rare instances we find a few copper or bronze lamellae amongst the piles. The pottery is now of finer clay, better kneaded; and ornamentation, including chevrons, wolves’ teeth, and mammillated designs, is more common. The handle, however, is still a mere projection. The third period, which we may date from the transition from stone to bronze, is largely represented; copper weapons and tools are already numerous, and bronze is beginning to occur. The stone hatchets and hammers are skilfully pierced, and wooden or horn implements are often found. The vases are of various shapes, all provided with handles, and are covered with ornaments, some made with the fingers of the potter, others with the help of a twig or some fine string. On the other hand, there are no hatchets of foreign rock; commerce and intercourse with people at a distance had ceased, or at least become rarer. The tools are fixed into handles of stag horn, which are found in every stage of manufacture. The personal property of the Lake Dwellers included bead necklaces, pendants, buttons, needles, and horn combs. The teeth of animals served as amulets, and the bones that were of denser material than born were used as javelin- or arrow-heads. The arrows were generally of triangular shape and not barbed.11The distance from the shore of the most ancient of the Lake dwellings varies from 131 to 298 feet. Gradually men began to take greater and greater precautions against danger, and the most recent stations are 656 to 984 feet from the banks of the lake. The piles of the Stone age are from eleven to twelve inches in diameter; those of the later epochs are smaller. They are pointed at the ends, and hardened by fire. When the piles had been driven into the bottom of the lake, a platform was laid on them solid enough to bear the weight of the buts. This platform was made of beams laid down horizontally, and bound together by interlaced branches. Two modes of construction can easily be distinguished. In one the platforms were upheld by numerous piles, ten yards long, firmly driven into the mud. This is how thePfahlbauten, Palafittes, or pile dwellings situated in shallow waters were generally put together. In other cases it seemed easier to raise the soil round the piles, than to drive them into the hard rock which formed the bed of the lake. Care was then taken to consolidate them, and keep them in position with blocks of stone, clay, and tiers of piles. Keller gives to these latter the name ofPackwerbauten, and other German archæologists call themSteinbergen.The mean depth of the waters in those parts of the lakes formerly occupied by the pile dwellings is from thirteen to sixteen feet, and we can still make out the piles when the water is calm and clear. Worn though they may be, their tops still emerge at a height varying from one to three feet above the mud at the bottom of the lake. Their number was originally considerable, and it is estimated that there were forty thousand at Wangen, and a hundred thousand at Robenhausen. The area occupied by the stations varies considerably; according to Troyon, that at Wangen was seven hundred paces long by one hundred and twenty broad. Baron von Mayenfisch explored seventeen sites in the Lake of Constance, the area of which varies from three to four acres. At Inkwyl is a little artificial island about forty-eight feet in diameter. The Lake dwelling of Morges, which was still inhabited in the Bronze age, covers an area of twelve hundred feet long by a mean width of one hundred and fifty. It is, however, useless to enumerate the various calculations that have been made, as they are founded on nothing but more or less probable guesswork.Excavations show that the buts that rose from the platforms were made of wattle and hurdle-work. In different places calcined and agglutinated fragments have been picked up, and pieces of clay which had served as facing. The house to which they had belonged had been destroyed by fire, and the clay, hardened in the flames, had resisted the disintegrating action of the water. On one side this clay is smooth, and on the other it still retains the marks of the interlaced branches, which had helped to form the inner walls. Some of these marks are so clear and regular that Troyon, noticing the way they curve, was able to assert that the buts were circular, and that they varied in diameter from ten to fifteen feet.A recent discovery at Schussenreid (Wurtemberg) gives completeness to our knowledge of the Swiss Lake dwellings. In the midst of a peat-bog rises a but known as aKnüppelbau, which is supposed to date from the Stone age. It is of rectangular form, and is divided into two compartments communicating with each other by a foot-bridge consisting of three beams laid side by side. The floors of this but are made of rounded wood, and the walls of piles split in half. Excavations have brought to light several floors, one above the other, and divided by thick layers of clay. The rising of the level of the peat doubtless compelled the Lake Dweller to add by degrees to the height of his house.The Proto-Helvetian race were well-developed men, and the bones that have been collected show that they were not at all wanting in symmetry of form or in cranial capacity. The crania found are distinctly dolichocephalous, and their owners had evidently attained to no small degree of culture and of technical skill. Judging from the length of the femora found, though it must be added that they are mostly those of women, the ancient Lake Dwellers were not so tall as the present inhabitants of Europe. The smallness of the handles of their weapons and tools points to the same conclusion.12Though the importance and number of the discoveries made in Switzerland render it the classic land of Lake Stations, it is not the only country in which they have been found. They have been made out in the Lago Maggiore and in the lakes of Varèse, Peschiera, and Garda in Lombardy; in Lake Salpi in the Capitanata, and in other parts of Italy. Judging from the objects recovered from these stations, they belonged partly to the Stone and partly to the Bronze age.The pile dwelling of Lagozza is one of the most interesting known to us. It forms a long square, facing due east, and covers an area of two thousand six hundred yards, now completely overgrown with peat six and a half feet thick. Amongst the posts still standing can be made out a number of half-burnt planks, which are probably the remains of the platform. One of the posts was still covered with bark, and it was easy to recognize the silver birch (Betula alba). Other posts consisted of the trunks of resinous trees, such as thePinus picea, thePinus sylvestris, and the larch, which now only grow in the lofty Alpine valleys. Amongst the industrial objects found in the Lagozza pile dwelling were polished stone hatchets, hammers, polishers of hard stone, knife-blades, flint scrapers, and seven or eight arrows with transverse cutting edges, a form rare in Italy.Castelfranco,13from whom we borrow these details, has also, in the excavations he superintended, picked up a number of earthenware spindle-whorls with a hole in the middle, amulets, and numerous pieces of pottery, some fine and some coarse, according to the purpose for which they were intended. The first mould had in most cases been covered over with a layer of very fine clay spread upon it with the aid of a kind of boasting-chisel. We may also mention a bone comb. The combs found in Swiss Lake dwellings are of horn, with the exception of one from Locras of yew wood.What chiefly distinguishes the Lagozza pile dwelling, however, is the absence of the bones, teeth, or horns of animals, and also of fish-hooks, harpoons, or nets, so that we must conclude that the inhabitants did not hunt or fish, that they did not breed domestic animals, and were probably vegetarians. The researches of Professor Sordelli confirm this hypothesis; from amongst the objects taken from the peat he recognized two kinds of corn (Triticum vulgare antiquorumandTriticum vulagere hibernum), six-rowed barley (Hordeum hexastichum), mosses, ferns, flax, the Indian poppy (Papaver somniferum), acorns, and an immense number of nuts and apples.The acorns are those of the common oak, and their cups and outer rind had been removed, so that they had evidently been prepared to serve as food for, man; the apples were small and coriaceous, resembling the modern crab-apple; the Indian poppy cannot have grown without cultivation; but this was perhaps but an example of the same species already recognized in the Lake dwellings of Switzerland. It is difficult to say whether it was used for food or whether oil was extracted from it.We have already spoken of the discoveries made in Austria and Hungary. Count Wurmbrand has described the difficulties with which explorers had to contend. The lakes have in many cases become inaccessible swamps, and in others, the waters having been artificially dimmed to regulate their overflow, the sites of the pile dwellings are so far below the level of the lakes that any excavations are impossible. Long and arduous researches have, however, been rewarded with some success, and the numerous objects recovered bear witness, as in Switzerland, to the gradual progress made by the successive generations who occupied these pile dwellings.Figure 50.Objects discovered in the peat-bogs of Laybach. A. Earthenware vase. B. Fragment of ornamented pottery. C. Bone needle. D. Earthenware weight for fishing-net. E. Fragment of jawbone.A lake near Laybach had been converted in drying up into an immense peat-bog, nearly thirty-eight miles in circumference, bounded on the right and left by lofty mountains.14When this bog was under water it had been the site of several Lake Stations. One, for instance, has been made out over three hundred and twenty yards from the bank. The piles, which consisted of the trunks of oaks, beeches, and poplars, varying from eight to ten inches in diameter, were placed at regular intervals. The objects taken from the peat-bog are simply innumerable (Fig. 50), and include hundreds of needles of different sizes, stilettos, dagger-blades, arrows, and hatchets, with stag-horn handles. Coarse black earthenware vases are equally numerous and are of a great variety of form, but their ornamentation is of the most primitive description, and was done sometimes with the nail of the potter, and sometimes with a pointed bone. Little earthenware figures (Figs.51and52) were also found, some of which were sent from the Laybach Museum to the French Exhibition of 1878. One of them is said to represent a woman, probably an idol. This is one of the first known examples of the representation of the human figure from a Lake dwelling. At Nimlau, near Olmutz, the drying lip of a little lake brought to light a Lake Station surrounded by the trunks of oak trees of a large size. They were piled up, one above the other, and strongly bound together with osiers. These trunks were evidently intended to fortify the station.Figure 51.Small terra-cotta figures, found in the Laybach pile dwellings.The mode of construction of the Lake Stations of the marshes of Pomerania is very different from that employed in Switzerland or in Austria. The foundations rest on horizontal beams, kept in place either by great blocks of rock or by piles driven in vertically. In many cases notches had evidently been made, the better to place the cross-beams; whilst in others forked branches had been selected, so that a second branch could be fitted into the fork. Primeval man soon learnt to appreciate the solidity of such a combination. Do these stations, however, really date from prehistoric times? Virchow, returning to his first opinion, now thinks that the pile dwellings of Germany belong to the same epoch as the intrenchments known asBurgwallen, when metals and even iron were already in general use. They were inhabited until the thirteenth century, and it is easy to trace in them, as in those of Switzerland, the signs of the successive occupations, the dwellings having evidently been abandoned and restored later by fresh comers.Figure 52.Small terra-cotta figures, from the Laybach pile dwellings.At the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle in 1863, Lord Lovaine described a Lake Station in the south of Scotland, and Sir J. Lubbock mentions one in the north of England. Others are known at Holderness (Yorkshire), at Thetford, on Barton Mere, near Bury St. Edmunds; but judging from the description of them they are not of earlier date than the Bronze age.Other stations are more ancient. A few years ago a number of piles were found a little above Kew, beneath a layer of alluvium, and embedded in the gravel which formed the ancient bed of the Thames. All around these piles were scattered the bones of animals, of which those of theBos longifronswere the most remarkable. The long bones had been split to get out the marrow, an evident proof of the intelligent action of man. In London two similar examples were found on the site of the present Mansion House, and beneath the ancient walls of the city. They are supposed to date from times earlier, not only than the cutting out of the present course of the Thames, but before that invasion of the sea which preceded the formation of the Thames valley, now the home of more than four million men and women.The Lake Stations of France are less important than those of the neighboring countries. It is supposed that Vatan, a little town of Berry, was built on the site of a Lake city. It is situated in the midst of a dried-up marsh, and at different points piles have been removed which were driven deep into the mud. We also hear of pile dwellings in the Jura Mountains, in the Pyrenean valleys of Haute-Garonne, Ariège, and Aude, as well as in those of the Eastern Pyrenees. In the department of Landes, which on one side joins the plateau of Lannemezan, and on the other the lofty plains of Béarn, are many marshy depressions, where have been found numbers of piles, with charred wood and fragments of pottery.Discoveries no less curious have been made in the Bourget Lake, but the dwellings rising from its surface date from a comparatively recent epoch. The numerous fragments of pottery found prove that terra-cotta ware had attained to a beauty of form and color unknown to primitive times. Indeed some of the vases actually bear the name of the Roman potter who made them. We must also assign to an epoch later than the Stone age the buildings, remains of which have beet found in the peat-bogs of Saint-Dos near Salies (Basses-Pyrénées). At a depth of about thirty-two inches has been found a regular floor formed of trunks of trees resting on piles and bound together in a primitive fashion with the filaments of roots. These piles bear a number of deep clean-cut notches, such as could only have been made with an iron implement. In other parts of France there are Lake Stations, which were occupied until the time of the Carlovingians. To this time belong the pile dwellings of Lake Paladru (Isère), which were abandoned, so far as we can tell, by their owners when they were swamped by the rising of the water.When the Lake Stations of Europe were inhabited, the characteristic animals of the Quaternary epoch, such as the elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion, and the hippopotamus had disappeared from that continent, and their place was taken by the earliest domestic animals. The Lake fauna of Switzerland includes about seventy species, thirty mammals twenty-six birds, ten kinds of fish, and four reptiles.15The mammals were the stag, the dog, the pig, the goat, the sheep, and two kinds of oxen. These animals were already domesticated, there can be absolutely no doubt on this point, for in manyPfahlbautentheir very dung has been found, a conclusive proof that they lived side by side with man.The remains of the stag and of the ox are more numerous than those of any other animal, and it is easy to see that every clay the importance of a pastoral life became more clearly recognized. In the most ancient Lake Stations, those of Mooseedorf, Wangen, and Meilen, for instance, the stag predominates; in those of the western lakes, which are comparatively more recent, relics of the ox are more numerous. In the Lake village of Nidau, which dates from the Bronze age, a greatly increased number of bones of domestic animals have been found, whilst those of wild creatures become rarer and rarer. The progress of domestication is evident, and it is no less certain that the lapse of centuries must have been required for the formation of the herds which evidently existed in certain localities. It is possible that these animals may have first entered Europe in the wake of foreign invaders, and before being reduced to servitude, they may have roamed about in a wild state, and even have been contemporaries with species now extinct. However that may be, there can be no doubt on one point, they could not domesticate themselves; one race of creatures after another must have fallen under the subjection of man, who gradually became the master of all the animals that are still about us.We do not meet in the pile dwellings with the common mouse, the rat, or the cat, and the horse is very rare. It is the same with the kitchen-middings and the caves occupied in Neolithic times. The disappearance of the horse, so numerous in earlier epochs, is general, and this would be inexplicable if history did not solve the mystery. The Bible, which gives us such complete details of the pastoral life of the Hebrews, speaks for the first time of the horse after the exodus from Egypt of the children of Israel, and in Egypt itself the horse is not represented in any monument of earlier date than the Seventeenth Dynasty. It is the same in America, animals of the equine race, that were so numerous in early geological times, had long since disappeared on the arrival of the Spaniards, and the horses they brought with them inspired the Mexicans and Peruvians with unutterable terror.Domestic animals require regular food through the long winter months; so that their presence alone is enough to prove that their owners were tillers of the soil. The discovery in many of the Helvetian Lake Stations of calcined cereals confirms this hypothesis. Amongst the cereals found, corn is the most abundant, and several bushels of it have been collected. In the department of the Gironde, regular silos or subterranean storing-places for grain have been found in which the calcined corn was stowed away. In the Lake Stations have also been found millet, peas, poppy-heads, nuts, plums, raspberries, and even dried apples and pears, doubtless set aside as a provision for the winter. From the water at Cortaillod, have been taken, with a few ears of barley, cherry-stones, acorns, and beechnuts16; and at Laybach, some water-chestnuts (trapa natans) of a kind that has long since disappeared from Carniola. Sometimes the cereals were roughly roasted, crushed, and put away in large earthenware vessels; but in some places, regular flat round loaves of bread have been found about one or two inches thick, which were baked without leaven. We may well assert that great changes lead taken place since the first arrival of man upon the earth.The so-calledterremaresof Italy date from the same period as the Danish kitchen-middings and the Swiss pile dwellings. They are met with chiefly in Lombardy and in the ancient duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and consist of low mounds rising from thirteen to sixteen feet above the surface of the soil. In some cases a number ofterremares, close to one another, form regular villages covering an area of from five to six miles square. Excavations of theterremarehave brought to light rows of piles from seven to ten feet long, connected by transverse beams, forming a regular floor, from which rose buts built in a similar way to those of the Swiss pile dwellings, of interlaced branches or of clay and straw, for no trace has been made out of the use of bricks or of stones. The refuse of the kitchen and rubbish of all kinds rapidly accumulated round about these buts, and formed the first nucleus of the mound, which soon grew to a considerable height as one occupant of the house succeeded another. When the refuse became too much of a nuisance, the owner of the but set up fresh piles at a greater height on the same site, laid down another platform, and built anew but. In some places three such platforms have been found one above another.As in the Lake Stations, excavations of theterremareshave brought to light numerous bones of domestic animals; but those of wild creatures, such as bears, stags, roedeer, and boars, are even rarer than in Switzerland. The inhabitants evidently had other resources than hunting at their command, and though the processes they employed were but elementary, they cultivated corn, beans, vines, and various fruits. Though iron was still unknown, some bronze objects have been found in certainterremares, but these were only roughly melted pieces of metal, showing no traces of having been either hammered or soldered. Amongst the pottery found in theterremares, we must mention a number of small objects not unlike acorns in form, pierced lengthwise, and decorated with incised lines, some straight, others curved. Italian archæologists call themfusaïoles, and Swiss savants, who have found a great many in the lakes of their native country, give them the name ofpesons de fuseau. Both these names connect them with the process of spinning; but their number renders this hypothesis inadmissible, and when we give an account of the excavations carried on at Hissarlik, under Dr. Schliemann, we shall be able to determine their character (seeChapter VII.).At Castione, near the town of Parma, and in several other parts of the provinces of Parma and Reggio,terremareshave been discovered rising from the midst of vast rectangular basins artificially hollowed out. Some have concluded from this that theterremarecollias the inhabitants of theterremareshave been called, were descended from the people who built the pile dwellings of Switzerland, and that, faithful to the traditions of their race, they hollowed out ponds in default of natural lakes. If this were so, Italy must have been peopled with a race that came over the Alps.17Who or what this race was can only be matter of conjecture. It cannot, however, have been the Ligures, a branch of the great Iberian family, who were totally ignorant of culture, and to whom the builders of the most ancient of theterremareswere certainly superior; nor can it have been the Etruscans, for all relics of that race, which are moreover easily recognizable, were found quite apart from the deep deposits containing theterremares. Many indications point to the conclusion that when the Celts came down into Italy their knowledge of metallurgy was already more advanced than that of the builders of theterremares. We are therefore disposed to think with Heilbig, that theterremarecolliwere the Itali, of Arian race, who were the ancestors of the Sabini, Umbri, Osci, and Latins. In the great migrations of races, the Itali bad separated themselves from their brethren the Pelasgi, who had remained in Epirus, and, continuing their march, they peopled Switzerland and crossed the Alps, settling down in the fertile plains watered by the Po, where it is easy even now to prove their presence.In superintending the excavation of aterremareat Toszig, in Hungary, Pigorini,18was greatly struck by the resemblance between it and similar erections in Italy, especially that of Casarolo. This is very much in favor of the Itali having been the builders. But the objects collected in some of theterremares, those of Varano and Chierici for instance, prove that they were inhabited from Neolithic times, so that the Itali of Italy, if Itali they were, did but follow the traditions of their predecessors. In spite, however, of zealous study, all that relates to the origin of tribes and races remains involved in the greatest obscurity, and we can but look to the future to supply what the present altogether fails to give.We have yet other tokens of the presence of the ancient races who peopled Italy. Dr. Concezio Rosa19noticed in the Abruzzi extensive black patches on the ground, which bore witness to the former residence of men. The excavation of theseFondi di Cabane, as they are called, led to the finding of a great many stone knives and scrapers with numerous bone stilettos and the bones of various animals, all of them of species still living. Later, similarfondiwere found between the Eastern Alps and Mount Gargano. In Reggio, at Rivaltella, at Castelnuovo de Sotto, and at Calerno, they formed regular groups, and from one of these stations more than one thousand worked flints were collected. We mention them especially because they were of lozenge (selci romboidali) and half-lozenge (semi-rombi) shapes, which are forms unknown in other districts.With these flints were hand-made vases with handles, the clay unmixed with sand or quartz and ornamented with lines, grooves, and raised knobs. These vases differ greatly from those found in theterremares; are they then, as has been said, of earlier (late? It is impossible to come to any decision on the point.Before closing our account of prehistoric buildings surrounded by water, we must say a few words on crannoges though there is the greatest difference of opinion as to their date.Crannoges are artificial islets raised above the level of certain lakes in Ireland and Scotland20by means of a series of layers of earth and stone, and strengthened by piles, some upright, others laid down lengthwise. Wylde counted forty-six in Ireland in his time, some of them of considerable extent. That of Ardkellin Lough (Roscommon) is surrounded by a wall of dry stones resting on piles. In other places have been found the remains of stockades very intelligently set up in such a manner as to break the force of the shock of the water.To add to the difficulties of dealing with the subject of crannoges, they were successively occupied for many centuries. They are mentioned in the most ancient Irish legends, and even in the sixteenth century they served as refuges for the kings of the country in the constant rebellions that took place. The objects taken from the lakes belong to very different epochs, and it is impossible to say anything positive as to the time of their construction.A but found in Donegal may, however, date from an extremely remote age.21It rested on a thick layer of sand brought front the neighboring shore, and was covered over by a bed of peat slot less than sixteen feet thick. Since the hilt was deserted by man the peat had gradually accumulated till it had at last invaded the dwelling itself. The but included a ground-floor, and one story about twelve feet long by nine wide and four high. The walls consisted of beams scarcely squared, joined together with wooden mortices and pegs. The roof, which was probably flat, consisted of oak planks, the spaces between which had been filled in with mortar made of sand and grease. On the ground-floor lay several flint implements, showing no signs of having been polished, a quartz wedge, and a stone chisel, which had evidently seen long service. This chisel, the discoverers say, corresponded exactly with the notches around the mortices. A regular paved way, formed of sea-beach pebbles placed on a foundation of interlaced branches, led up to a hearth made of flat stones measuring some three feet every way. All about lay fragments of charcoal and broken nuts, the latter partly burnt. Another but, with an oak floor resting on four posts, has recently been discovered in County Fermanagh, beneath a deposit of peat about twenty feet thick. No trace of metal has been found in either of these Irish buts, and the thickness of the peat beneath which they lay is another proof of their great antiquity. One serious objection, however, is this: Were the Irish sufficiently advanced in prehistoric times to be able to erect dwellings implying so considerable an amount of civilization?Crannoges are met with in Scotland as well as in Ireland, and excavations in Loch Lee have enabled explorers to make out their mode of construction. The Lake Dwellers began by piling up a number of trunks of trees in the shallower waters of a lake. They then strengthened these trunks with branches or beams about which the mud collected till the whole formed an islet. All about this islet, beneath the waters of the lake, were found various objects in stone, wood, and horn, as well as some canoes several feet long. Similar crannoges are to be seen on the lakes of Kincardine and Forfar, which Troyon thinks date from the Stone age.22If he be right, and we should not like to make any assertion one way or the other, the bronze objects and the enamelled glass bowls found near these dwellings prove that they were occupied by several successive generations.It is probable that Lake dwellings were also used in Asia and in Africa from prehistoric times. History tells us that the inhabitants of Phasis, the Mingrelians of the present day, lived in reed huts on the water, and that they went from one islet to another in canoes hollowed out of the trunks of oak-trees. A bas-relief from the palace of Sennacherib, preserved in the British Museum, represents warriors fighting on artificial islands made of large reeds. But here w e enter the domain of history, and we must return to Neolithic times, and speak of the habitations built of more durable materials and the ruins of which are still standing.It is impossible to say with any certainty to what period the most ancient of these structures belong. It is probable that man early learned to pile up stones, binding them together at first with clay, and then with some stronger cements. Theburghsof Scotland, thenurhagsof the island of Sardinia, thetalayotiof the Balearic Isles, thecastellieriof Istria, are all ancient witnesses of the modes of building employed in the most remote ages.Burghs, brocks, orbroughsare numerous in Scotland,23and also in the islands of the Atlantic. For a long time they were supposed to be of Scandinavian origin, but Sir J. Lubbock24remarks With reason that no building at all like them exists in Norway or in Denmark, and it is difficult to admit the idea that the Scandinavians set up in the islands tributary to them buildings which were unknown to their own mainland. We are therefore disposed to think that these curious structures, which were inhabited until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of the Christian era, are of much earlier date than the first invasion by the Northmen, and that the burgh still standing on the little island of Moussa, one of the Shetlands, is one of the best examples that we can quote. A tower, forty-one feet high, rises on the borders of the sea. The walls are of unhewn stones, piled up without cement, and they form two circles, separated by a passage four feet wide. In each story are a series of very small openings, intended to admit air and light to the cell-like rooms inside, and to a staircase that leads to the top of the tower. The only way into this burgh is through a door only seven feet high, and so narrow that it is impossible for two people to go in abreast.The regularity of the building of this burgh, and the architectural knowledge it implies, prevent our ascribing it either to the Stone or even to the Bronze age; but we find in Scotland itself more ancient examples, if we may so express ourselves, of domestic architecture. These examples are subterranean dwellings, made of rough-hewn stones of considerable size, laid down in regular courses, to which the names ofearth-houses, Picts’ houses, andweemshave been given. The walls converge towards the centre, leaving an opening at the top, which was covered in with large flat stones. These dwellings are certainly of earlier date than the burghs, and the discovery of aPicts’ houseactually beneath the ruins of a burgh enables us to speak with certainty on this point.In Ireland similar proofs have been found of the great antiquity of roan. More than one hundred towers have been found in that country, all built of large stones, and varying in height from seventy to one hundred and thirty feet, with a diameter of from eight to fifteen feet. The most diverse origins have been attributed to these towers, from prehistoric times to the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era; from the time of the Druids to that of the Friars. According to the point of view of different archæologists, they have been called temples of the sun, hermitages, phallic monuments, or signal towers.We meet with a similar problem in considering thenurhags, as in considering the burghs. They have been justly called a page of history, written all over the surface of Sardinia by an unknown people. Count Albert de la Marmora counted three thousand of them a few years ago, and more recent explorers tell us that this number is greatly exceeded. Like the burghs, which they strangely resemble, thenurhagsare conical towers with very thick walls made of huge stones, some Hewn, others in their natural state, arranged in regular courses without mortar. On entering one of them we find ourselves in a vaulted room, which looks exactly like one half of an egg in shape. In the upper stories are two, and sometimes three rooms, one above the other, to which access is gained by steps cut in the walls. The whole structure is crowned by a terrace (Fig. 53). We must add that the entrance to thenurhagis through an opening on a level with the ground, and so low that one can only go in by crawling on the stomach.Many conjectures have been made as to the use of these towers. Were they temples in which to worship, or trophies of victory? Their number is against either of these hypotheses. Were they then habitations or towers of observation? Not the former certainly, for no one could live between walls sixteen or twenty-two feet thick, shut out from air and light. Some travellers think they were tombs, but excavations have brought to light no bones or sepulchral relics. We can compare them to nothing but the Towers of Silence, on which the Parsees expose their dead to the birds of heaven, which are ever ready rapidly to acquit themselves of their melancholy functions.Figure 53.Nurhag at Santa Barbara (Sardinia).The origin of thenurhagsis as uncertain as their use. Diodorus Siculus considered them very ancient, and one fact has come to light in our day which enables us to arrive at a somewhat more exact decision. The island of Sardinia was taken by the Romans from the Carthaginians in 238 B.C., and an aqueduct, the ruins of which can still be seen, was built by the conquerors on the foundations of an ancientnurhag, so that the latter must belong to an earlier (late than the third century before our era. Fergusson, who speaks with authority on everything relating to the monuments of the Stone age, assigns thenurhagsto the mystic times of the Trojan War. In all probability they were built by an invading people. La Marmora thinks these invaders were the Libyans; M. de Rougemont, in his history of the Bronze age, says that the curved vault is the characteristic feature of Pelasgian architecture, which is often confounded with that of the Phœnicians. Although any final conclusion would be premature, we ourselves think that the builders of thenurhagsbelonged to the great stream of emigration from the East, the course of which is marked by megalithic monuments in so many parts of the world. In some instances,nurhagswere surrounded by cromlechs, of which most of the stones have now been thrown down. Some of these stones bore prominences resembling the breasts of a woman.The accumulations of earth and rubbish about thenurhagsare, some of them, from six to ten feet high. In the lower deposits have been found coarse pottery, with no attempt at ornamentation, fragments of flint, and obsidian hatchets of black basalt, or porphyry of the Palæolithic type, arrow-head, flint knives, stones used in slings, and numerous shells; whilst in the upper deposits were picked up black pottery and fragments of bronze belonging to the transition period between the Stone and Metal ages.All over the island of Sardinia, side by side with thenurhags, rise tombs to which have been given the name ofSepolture dei Giganti. They are from thirty-two to thirty-nine feet long by a nearly equal width, and are built, some of huge slabs of stone, some of stones of smaller size. They are in every case surmounted by a pediment, formed of a single block, and often covered with sculptures dating from different epochs. These sepulchres are certainly of later date than thenurhags, and in them have been found numerous implements of bronze, but none of stone.Figure 54.“Talayoti” at Trepuco (Minorca).Thetalayoti, of which one hundred and fifty are still standing in the island of Minorca, are circular or elliptical truncated cones, built of huge unhewn stones, laid one on the other without cement (Fig. 54). The most remarkable of all of them, that at Torello, near Mahon, is thirty-three feet high. In many cases there are two stone, one placed upright, the other across it, in front of thetalayoti. The meaning of these biliths is unknown.Yet another series of cyclopean monuments are known under the name ofnanetas, and are not unlike overturned boats. Seven suchnanetasare still to be seen in the Balearic Isles. The one which is best preserved consists of large unhewn stones of rectangular shape, enclosing an inner chamber about six feet in width. The roof having fallen in, its height cannot be exactly determined; we only know that the lateral walls are some forty-five feet high.In Algeria also have been preserved some towers built of stones without cement. Some of them are square (basina) and surmounted by a small dolmen, others are round (chouchet) and closed at the top by a large slab of stone, as in thenurhagswe have just described.It is difficult to bring this account to a close without mentioning thetruddhiand thespecchieof Otranto.25Atruddhiis a massive conical tower consisting of a heap of scarcely hewn stones piled up without cement and with an exterior facing. Inside is a round room, the roof of which is formed by a series of circular courses of stone projecting one beyond the other. Sometimes a second chamber rises above the first, whichisreached by steps cut in the facing, which steps also lead to the platform on the top of the tower. Thousands oftruddhiare to be seen in Italy; they date from every epoch, and the people of Lecce and Bari continue to erect them as did their fathers before them. Side by side with thetruddhirise thespecchie, which are conical masses of stone, of greater height and probably of more ancient date than the towers. Lenormant thinks they were used to live in; but his opinion has been much questioned, and it is necessary to speak on this point with great reserve.Thecastellieriof Istria, which the Slavonian peasants callstarigrad, are as yet but little known. Doubtless an examination of them will bring out their resemblance to thenurhagsandtalayoti. They are, however, more than mere towers, forming regularenceintesbetween walls formed of two facings of dry stones, the space between which is filled in with smaller stones. There are fifteen of thesecastellieriin the district of Albona, a little town on the southeast of Trieste. They were at first attributed to the Roman epoch, but later researches relegate them rather to prehistoric times, and the discovery near them of numerous stone implements rather tends to support this latter opinion, but it must not be considered conclusive.Perhaps we ought also to connect with the earliest ages of humanity the stations recently discovered in Spain by MM. Siret.26These were evidently centres of population, surrounded by walls of a very primitive description. We shall have to refer again to these discoveries; we will only add now that in the black earth forming the soil were found worked flints, polished diorite hatchets, pierced shells, with various pieces of pottery, and mills for grinding corn. So far, however though many of the stations have been explored, no trace has been found of the use of metals.A vast period of time, countless centuries, indeed, have passed away since the close of the Paleolithic epoch. The burghs,nurhags, andcastellierishow the progress of civilization, and at the same time prove that this progress extended throughout Europe, and that at a time not so very far removed from our own. The close resemblance between buildings of different dates enables us to speak with certainty of the connection between the races which succeeded each other in Europe. The importance of these conclusions is very great, and will be brought out still more in our study of megalithic monuments.1“El hombre seguramente habitaba las corazas de los Glyptodon Pero no siempre las colocaba en la posicion que acabo de indicar.”—“La Antiguedad del Hombre en el Plata,” vol. ii., p. 532.2“On Some Recent Researches in Cone-Caves in Wales,”Proc. Geol., Asso., vol. ix. “On the Flynnon, Benno, and Gwyu Caves,”Geol. Mag., Dec., 1886.3Revue des Questions Scientifiques, April, 1887.4“Odyssey,” book ix., v. 105–124.5Æschylus: “Prometheus Bound.”6A. Maury: “La Vieille Civilisation Scandinave,”Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1880.7F. de Olivera: “As Raças dos Kjoekkenmoeddings de Mugem,” Lisbon, 1881.8Report Peabody Museum, 1882.9Report Peabody Museum, 1882 and 1885.10Brinton: “Notes on the Floridian Peninsula,” Philadelphia, 1849.11We take many of these details from Dr. Gross’ excellent work on the “Pile Dwellings of Switzerland.”12Virchow: “Drei Schädel aus der Schweiz.”13Revue d’Anthropologie, 1887, p. 607.14G. Cotteau:Nature, 1877, first week, p. 161.15Rutimeyer: “Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz.”16Anzeiger für Schweizerische Alterthums Künde, April, 1884.17Comte Conestabile: “Sur les Anciennes Immigrations en Italie.” Heilbig: “Beitrage zur Altitalischen Kultur and Kund Geschichte,” i. Band. G. Boissier:Révue des Deux-Mondes, October, 1879.18Bul. di Palethnologia Ital., 1879. Theterpensof Holland, though of much more modern date, greatly resemble theterremares.19“Ricerce di Archeologia Preistorica nella Valle della Vibrata.”20Wylie,Arch. Brit., vol. xxxviii. Wylde,Proc. Royal Irish Acad., vol. i., p. 420.21Arch. Brit., vol. xxvi., p. 361.Proc. Royal Irish Academy, vol. vii., p. 155.22“Habitations Lacustres des Temps Anciens et Modernes,” p. 170.23R. Munro: “Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings or Crannoges, with a Supplementary Chapter on Remains of Lake Dwellings in England,” Edinburgh, 1882.24“Prehistoric Times.” Wilson: “Prehistoric Scotland.”25Nicolucci: “Scelse Lavorate, Bronzi e Monumenti di Terra d’Otranto.” Lenormant,Revue d’Ethnographie, February, 1882 (Bul. Soc. Anth., 1882 and 1884). S. Reinach: “Esquises Archéologiques.”26“Les Premiers Âges du Métal dans le Sud-Est de l’Espagne,” Brussels, 1887.

The earliest races of men lived in a climate less rigorous than ours, on the shores of wide rivers, in the midst of fertile districts, where fishing and the chase easily supplied all their needs. These races were numerous and prolific, and we find traces of them all over Western Europe, from Norfolk to the middle of Spain. What were the homes of these men and their families? Did they crouch in dens, as Tacitus says the German tribes did in his day? In his “Ancient Wiltshire,” Sir R. Coalt Hoare says that the earliest human habitations were holes dug in the earth and covered over with the branches of trees. Near Joigny there still remain some circular holes in the ground, about fifty feet in diameter by sixteen to twenty deep, known in the country under the name ofbuvards. The trunk of a tree was fixed at the bottom and rose above the ground, and the branches plastered with clay formed the roof. The floor of thesebuvardsconsists of a greasy black earth mixed with bones, cinders, charcoal, and worked flints. Amongst the last named, polished hatchets predominate, which proves that these refuges were inhabited in Neolithic times, but there is nothing to prevent our supposing that they were also occupied in the Palæolithic period. Ameghino gives a still more striking example of an earth-dwelling. Near Mercedes, about twenty leagues from Buenos Ayres, he picked up numerous human bones, together with arrow-heads, chisels, flint knives, bone stilettos and polishers, and bones of animals scratched and cut by man. Later, Ameghino discovered the actual dwelling of this primeval man, and his strange home was beneath the carapace of a gigantic armadillo, the now extinct glyptodon seen inFig. 48.

The glyptodon.

“All around the carapace,” says Ameghino, “in the reddish agglomerate of the original soil lay charcoal cinders, burnt and split bones, and flints. Digging beneath this, a flint implement was found, with some long split llama and stag bones, which had evidently been handled by man, with some toxodon and mylodon teeth.”Fig. 49represents the now extinct mylodon. Some time afterwards, the discovery of another carapace under similar conditions added weight to Ameghino’s supposition.1In the midst of the pampas, those vast treeless plains, where no rock or accident of conformation affords shelter from heat or cold or a hiding-place from wild beasts, man was not at a loss; he hollowed out for himself a hole in the earth, roofing it over with the shell of a glyptodon, and securing a retreat where he could be safe at least for a time.

Mylodon robustus.

It was not until later, driven to do so by the cold, that man learnt to use the natural caves hollowed out in limestone rocks, either in geological convulsions or by the quieter action of water. The absence in the caves which have been excavated in America of implements of the Chelléen type, the most ancient known as yet, would point to this conclusion, though it is impossible to fix the earliest date of their occupation. This date, moreover, varies very much in different localities. The earth was but gradually peopled, and our ancestors penetrated into different countries in successive migrations. Some caves have recently been discovered in Wales, in the midst of Glacial deposits.2The Boulder Clay and marine drift on neighboring heights are incontrovertible proofs of the submergence of this region, when Great Britain was almost completely covered with ice. Excavations made in 1886 have brought to light a series of deposits, one above the other, the gravel and red earth containing Quaternary bones and worked flints, whilst the stalagmite and ooze are evidently of more recent origin. This is the usual state of things in all the English eaves; but in those of the Clyde, the bone beds had been disturbed and mixed with striated pebbles and Glacial drift. From this Hicks, who superintended the excavations, concluded that man and the Quaternary animals had lived in those caves before the Glacial epoch, and before the great submergence, which in some places was no less than some 1,300 feet below the present level of the sea. If this were so, it would be one of the most ancient proofs not only of the presence of man, but also of the kind of habitation he first dwelt in. These conclusions have, however, been hotly disputed. M. Arcelin3remarks that there are in England two exceptional geological landmarks, the Forest Bed representing the last Pliocene formations, and the River Gravels, which are the most ancient Quaternary deposits. Between the two, we find the Boulder Clay of Glacial origin. Now the fauna of the caves of the Clyde, far from resembling that of the Forest Bed, appears to be more recent than that of the ancient deposits of the River Gravels. Amongst this fauna we find neither theElephas antiquusnor theRhinoceros Merckii; the worked flints are not like those known as belonging to the River-Gravel type, but the relics more nearly resemble those of the Reindeer period of France. It is therefore impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to assert that man lived in the southwest of England in the Glacial epoch, to the phenomena of which, if he witnessed them, he must eventually have fallen a victim.

Our ancestors must constantly have disputed the possession of their caves of refuge with animals, but there is often a certain distinction between those chiefly occupied by man and the mere dens of wild beasts. The latter are generally more difficult of access, and are only to be entered by long, low, narrow, dark passages. Those permanently inhabited by man are wide, not very deep, and they are well lighted. That at Montgaudier, for instance, has an arched entrance some forty-five feet wide by eighteen high. The cave-men had already learnt to appreciate the advantages of air and light.

The caves are often of considerable height; that of Massat is some 560 feet high, that of Lherm is 655, that of Bouicheta nearly 755, that of Loubens 820, and that of Santhenay is, as much as 1,344 feet high. Those of Eyziès, Moustier, and Aurignac are also very lofty. As the valleys were hollowed out by the rushing torrents of the Quaternary floods, men sought a home near the waters which were indispensable to their existence, and came to dwell on the shores of rivers. The most ancient of the inhabited caves, therefore, are those on the highest levels, but the difference in the nature of the country and the varying force of geological action have led to so many exceptions, that all we can say with any certainty is that the caves were inhabited at different epochs. That of Montgaudier, for instance, was filled with an accumulation of ooze about forty feet thick. Weapons and tools lay one above the other from the bottom to the top, and it is easy to distinguish the succession of hearths by the blackened earth, cinders, charcoal, and crushed bones lying about them.

In the Placard Cave eight different deposits bear witness to the presence of man; and these are separated by others bare of traces of human occupation. The lowest deposit, which is some twenty-five feet below the present level of the soil, contains worked flints of the Moustérien type, above which, but separated by an accumulation ofdébriswhich has fallen from the roof, comes a layer in which was found a number of arrow-heads of the shape of laurel leaves. The fauna of both these levels includes the reindeer, the horse, and the aurochs. As we go up we find, above another layer ofdébris, the Solutréen type of tools and weapons represented by bone implements and numerous arrow-heads, this time stalked and notched. The four following levels correspond with those belonging to what is known as the Madeleine type, and the arrow-heads are decorated with geometrical designs. The traces of human occupation at different times, doubtless separated by long intervals, are therefore very clearly defined. The Fontabert Cave, in Dauphiné, contained, at a depth of about six feet, traces of fire and roughly worked flints, and about three feet below the surface lay the skeleton of a man, who had perhaps been overtaken by a fall of earth, still holding in his hand a polished dipper of fine workmanship. Yet a third and evidently more recent period is characterized by a jade crescent. We might easily multiply instances of a similar kind, but that we wish to avoid so much repetition.

We soon begin to find evidence of the progress made by man, and though in Neolithic times he still continued to occupy caves he learned to adapt them better to his needs. The rock shelters of the Petit-Morin valley, so well explored by M. de Baye, are the best examples we can give.

These caves are hollowed out of a very thick belt of cretaceous limestone. They date from different epochs, and each presents special characteristics which can easily be recognized. Some were used as burial-places, others as habitations. In the former the entrance is of irregular shape, the walls are roughly cut, and the work is of the most elementary description. The sepulchral eaves were simply closed by a large stone rolled into place and covered with rubbish, the better to hide the entrance. The shelters used to live in show much more careful work, and are divided into two unequal parts by a wall cut in the living rock. To get into the second partition one has to go down steps, cut in the limestone, and these steps are worn with long usage. The entrance was cut out of a massive piece of rock, left thick on purpose, and on either side of the opening the edges still show the rabbet which was to receive the door. Two small holes on the right and left were probably used to fix a bar across the front to strengthen the entrance. A good many of these eaves are provided with an opening for ventilation, and some skilful contrivances were resorted to for keeping out water. Inside we find different floors, shelves, and crockets cut in the chalk, and on the floors M. de Baye picked up shells, ornaments, and flints, which were lying just where their owners had left them. Very different is all this from the Vezère caves, and everything proves an undeniable improvement in the conditions of life.

The most interesting of all the objects found in these caves are, however, the carvings; but few date from Neolithic times, and some archæologists have argued from their absence in favor of the displacement everywhere of old races by the incursion of new-corners. Some of these carvings represent hafted hatchets, the flint being painted black to make the raised design stand out better. Others represent human figures. In the Coizard Cave, for instance, was found a roughly outlined representation of a woman with a prominent nose, eyes indicated by black dots, highly developed breasts, but no lower limbs. A necklace adorns her throat, and a pendant hanging from this necklace is colored yellow. On the passage leading to the door is engraved another figure which was originally more accurately drawn than the others, but is not in such good preservation. In the Courjonnet Cave we see a woman with a bird’s bead; she was probably one of thelares penates, the protectors of the domestic hearth. We meet with this same goddess at Santorin, and at Troy, and on the shores of the Vistula, which is a very interesting ethnological fact.

The objects found in the sepulchral caves are important, and included a number of arrow-heads with transverse cutting edges. There is no doubt about their use; they have been picked up in black earth, in contact with human bones, the decomposition of the soft parts of which caused them to fall out of the mortal wound they had inflicted. With these arrow-heads were found flint knives, large sloped scrapers, polishers, and bone stilettos, the femora of a ruminant with a pig’s tooth fixed on to each end, hoes made of stag horn, beads and pendants made of bone, shell, schist, quartz, and aragonite, with the teeth of bears, boars, wolves, and foxes, all pierced with holes. Some of the shell anti schist beads were spread upon the surface of the skull, and perhaps formed a net orrésille, such as that already referred to as found at Baoussé-Roussé.

For centuries this occupation of caves continued, offering as they did a shelter that was dry and warm in winter, and cool in summer. Homer tells us that the Cyclops lived on the heights of the mountains and in the depths of the caves,4and Prometheus says that, like the feeble ant, men dwelt in deep subterranean caves, where the sun never penetrated.5

Whilst the men of the Petit-Morin valley hollowed out caves, or enlarged those made by nature, others took refuge in buts made of dried clay and interlaced branches, or in tents of the skins of the animals they had slain, and, though these fragile dwellings have disappeared, leaving no trace, there yet remain indelible evidences of the presence of many successive generations. Everywhere throughout the world we find heaps of rubbish, consisting chiefly of the shells of mollusca and crustacea, broken bones, flakes of flint, and fragments of stone and bone implements, covering vast areas and often rising to a considerable height.

Not until our own day did these rubbish heaps attract attention, and it was reserved to our own generation, so interested in all that relates to the past, to recognize their true significance. Steenstrup noticed, in the north of Europe, that these mounds consisted nearly entirely of the shells of edible species, such as the oyster, mussel, andlittorina littorea; that they were all those of adult specimens, but not all subject to similar conditions of existence or native to the same waters. The kitchen-middings, or heaps of kitchen refuse—such was the name given to these shell-mounds—could not have been the natural deposits left by the waves after storms, for in that case they would have been mixed with quantities of sand and pebbles. The conclusion is inevitable, that man alone could have piled up these accumulations, which were the refuse flung away day by day after his meals. The excavation of the kitchen-middings confirmed in a remarkable manner the opinion of Steenstrup, and everywhere a number of important objects were discovered. In several places the old hearths were brought to light. They consisted of flat stones, on which were piles of cinders, with fragments of wood and charcoal. It was now finally proved that these mounds occupied the site of ancient settlements, the inhabitants of which rarely left the coast, and fed chiefly on the mollusca which abounded in the waters of the North Sea.

These primeval races, however savage they may have been, were not wanting in intelligence. The earliest inhabitants of Russia placed their dwellings near rivers above the highest flood-level known to or foreseen by them. The Scandinavians were most precise in the orientation of their homes, and M. de Quatrefages points out that the kitchen-midding of Sœlager is set against a hill in the best position for protecting those who lived near it from the north winds, which are so trying in these districts on account of their violence. At Havelse, says Sir John Lubbock, the settlement was on rather higher ground, and, though close to the shore, was quite beyond the reach of the waves. The English visitors had an excavation made whilst they were present, and in two or three hours they obtained about a hundred fragments of bone, many rude flakes, sling stones, and fragments of flint, together with some rough axes of the ordinary shell-mound type. The excavations at Meilgaard a little later by the same explorers were even more fruitful in results.

Scandinavia does not appear to have been occupied in the Paleolithic period, and the most ancient facts concerning it only date from the expeditions of the Romans against the Teutons, and our knowledge even of them is very incomplete.6We are still ignorant of much which may have been known to the Carthaginians and the Phœnicians. It is possible that in the remote days under notice the Scandinavians were ignorant of the art of tilling the ground, for so far no cereal or agricultural product of any kind has been discovered, nor the bones of any domestic animal, except indeed those of the dog, which may, however, have been still in a wild state. Amongst the bones collected from the kitchen-middings, those of the stag, the kid, and the boar are much the most numerous. The bear, the urns, the wild cat, the otter, the porpoise, the seal, and the small mammals, the marten, the water-rat and the mouse, have also been found. At Havelse were collected more than 3,500 mammal bones, amongst which do not occur those of the musk-ox, the reindeer, the elk, or the marmot; their absence bearing witness to a more temperate climate than that of the present day in the regions under notice. The stag antlers found belong to every season of the year, from which we may conclude that the people of these districts, like the cave-men of the Pyrenees, had given up a nomad life and remained at home all the year round, living in the dwellings they had built upon the shores of the sea.

Amongst the birds found, we may mention the large penguin, now extinct, the moor-fowl, which fed entirely on pine buds, and several species of clucks and geese; whilst amongst the fish were the herring, the cod, the dab, and the eel. The numerous relics of chelonia prove the existence of numbers of the turtle tribe in the North Sea.

A great variety of objects, most of them of a coarse type, have been found beneath the kitchen-middings; metals are however completely absent, and it is probable that they were quite unknown to the Scandinavians for several centuries after their arrival in the country.

It is easy to quote similar facts in other countries. In 1877, Count Ouvarof mentioned, at the Archæological Congress at Kazan, some kitchen-middings near the Oka, a little river flowing into the Volga near Nijni-Novgorod. In excavating somebougrys, or little mounds of sand overlooking the valley, he discovered amongst the layers of alluvium, successive deposits of cinders and fragments of charcoal, which appear to have been the remains of a fire. A little lower down in another deposit were fragments of pottery, stone weapons and implements, and an immense number of shells. Judging from these relics of their daily life, this numerous population must have fed exclusively on fish and mollusca, for excavations brought to light but few mammal bones. The mollusca were all of species that only live in salt water. From this we know that the waves washed the shores near thisbougry, and that a milder climate probably prevailed in these regions, making life more supportable.

Virchow has recognized on the shores of Lake Burtneek in Germany, a kitchen-midding belonging to the earliest Neolithic times, perhaps even to the close of the Palæolithic period. He there picked up some stone and bone implements, and notices on the one hand the absence of the reindeer, and on the other, as in Scandinavia, that of domestic animals. But in this case, the home of the living became the tomb of the dead, and numerous skeletons lay beside the abandoned hearths. Similar discoveries have been made in Portugal; shell-heaps having been found thirty-five to forty miles from the coast, and from sixty-five to eighty feet above the sea-level. Here also excavations have brought to light several different hearths; and in many of the most ancient kitchen-middings in the valley of the Tigris were found crouching skeletons, proving that here too the home had become the tomb.7

Similar deposits are by no means rare in France. M. du Chatellier mentions one in Brittany, which he estimates as 325 cubic feet in size. From it be has taken spear- and arrow-heads, knives and scrapers, some highly finished, others but roughly cut and often with scarcely any shape at all. The population was evidently ichthyophagous, to judge by the vast accumulations of shells of scallops, oysters, limpets, pectens, and other mollusca. The few animal bones are those of the stag, the bear, and certain wading birds.

At Canche, near Étaples, has been evade out a series of mounds forming a semicircle some eight hundred and fifty feet in extent. These mounds are made up of successive layers of shells and charcoal, the relics of successive occupations. Lastly we must mention a kitchen-midding situated at the mouth of the Somme, which is eight hundred and twenty feet long by about one hundred wide. It consists principally of shells of adult species, with which are mixed fragments of coarse black pottery and numerous goat and sheep bones, the latter bearing witness to a more recent date than that of the kitchen-middings of Scandinavia or of Germany.

Throughout Europe similar facts are coming to light. Evans mentions heaps of shells on the coasts of England. Chantre speaks of others near Lake Gotchai in the Caucasus, and Nordenskiöld of others at Cape North, to which he wishes to restore its true name of Jokaipi. He sass these mounds are exactly like those of Denmark.

It is, however, chiefly in America that these heaps attract attention, for there huge shell-mounds stretch along the coast in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, Louisiana, California, and Nicaragua. We meet with them again near the Orinoco and the Mississippi, in the Aleutian Islands, and in the Guianas, in Brazil and in Patagonia, on the coasts of the Pacific as on those of the Atlantic. Owing to the darker color of the vegetation growing on them, the shell-heaps of Tierra del Fuego are seen from afar by the navigator. For a long time the true character of these mounds was not known, and they were attributed to natural causes, such as the emergence of the ancient coast-line from the sea, and it was not until lately that it was discovered that they were the work of men.

Some of these kitchen-middings are of great size. Sir Charles Lyell describes one on St. Simon’s Island, at the mouth of the Altamaha (Georgia), which covers ten acres of ground and varies in height from five to ten feet. It consisted almost entirely of oyster shells. In America, as in Europe, excavations brought to light hatchets, flints, arrows, and fragments of pottery. Another of these mounds, near the St. John River, consists, as does that visited by Lyell, of oyster shells, and is of extraordinary dimensions, being three hundred feet long, and though the exact width cannot be made out, is certainly several hundred feet across. Putnam8gives an account of the excavation of one of these mounds formed of shells of theMya, Venus, Pecten, Buccinum, andNaticagenera. It stretched along the sea-coast for a distance of several hundred feet, it was from four to five feet thick, and penetrated some distance below the surface of the ground. The valves had been opened with the aid of heat, and the animal bones found with the shells had been broken with heavy hammers which were found in the kitchen-midding. The bones included those of the stag, the wolf, and the fox. Fishes were also represented by remains of the cod, the plaice, and chelonia by turtle shells. Some bird bones were also found, and the knives, arrow- and spear-heads, scrapers, etc., were all of the rudest workmanship. Mr. Phelps has superintended yet more important excavations at Damariscotta9and all along the coast to the month of the Penobscot. In the lowest layers he made out ancient hearths, and found numerous fragments of pottery which are the most ancient examples of keramic ware found in New England, and were covered with incised ornamentation of considerable refinement.

The kitchen-middings of Florida and Alabama are even more remarkable. There is one on Amelia Island which is a quarter of a mile long with a medium depth of three feet and a breadth of nearly five. That of Bear’s Point covers sixty acres of ground, that of Anercerty Point one hundred, and that of Santa Rosa five hundred. Others taper to a great height. Turtle Mound, near Smyrna, is formed of a mass of oyster shells attaining a height of nearly thirty feet, and the height of several others is more than forty feet.10In all of them bushels of shells have already been found, although a great part of the sites they occupy are still unexplored; huge trees, roots, and tropical creepers having, in the course of many centuries, covered them with an almost impenetrable thicket.

Whether man did or did not live in the basin of the Delaware at the most remote times of which we have any knowledge, we meet with traces of his occupation in the same latitude at more recent periods. At Long-Nick-Branch is a shell-mound that extends for half a mile, and in California there is a yet larger kitchen-midding. It measures a mile in length by half a mile in width, and, as in similar accumulations, excavations have yielded thousands of stone hammers and bone implements (Fig. 24).

The shell-mounds of which we have so far been speaking are all near the sea, but there is yet another consisting entirely of marine shells fifty miles beyond Mobile. This fact seems to point to a considerable change in the level of the ground since the time of man’s first occupancy, for he is not likely to have taken all the trouble involved in carrying the mollusca necessary for his daily food so far, when he might so easily have settled down near the shore.

I cannot close this account of the kitchen-middings, without calling attention to two very interesting facts. The importance of these mounds bears witness alike to the number of the inhabitants who dwelt near them, and the long duration of their sojourn. Worsaae sets back the initial date of the most ancient of the shell-mounds of the New World more than three thousand years. This is however a delicate question, on which in the present state of our knowledge it is difficult to hazard a serious opinion. It is easier to come to a conclusion on other points: the close resemblance, for instance, between the kitchen-middings of America and those of Europe. In both continents we find the early inhabitants fed almost entirely on fish; their weapons, tools, and pottery were almost identical in character; and in both cases the characteristic animals of Quaternary times had disappeared, and the use of metals still remained unknown. Are these remarkable coincidences the result of chance, or must we not rather suppose that people of the same origin occupied at the same epoch both sides of the Atlantic?

The man of the kitchen-middings evidently had a fixed abode. Long since, the tent, the temporary shelter of the nomad, had given place to the but. We have already said what this but may have been like, but the most certain data we have as to human habitations at this still but little known epoch, are those supplied by the Lake Stations of Switzerland, and it is to our own generation that we are indebted for the first discoveries relating to them.

The memory of these Lake Stations bad completely passed away, and it was only the long drought which desolated Switzerland in 1853 and 1854, and the extraordinary sinking of Lake Zurich, revealing the piles still standing, that attracted the attention of archæologists. In the space still enclosed by these piles lay scattered pell-mell stones, bones, burnt cinders of ancient hearths, pestles, hammers, pottery, hatchets of various shapes, implements of many kinds, with innumerable objects of daily use. These relics prove that some of the ancient inhabitants of Switzerland had dwelt on the lake where they were found, in a refuge to which they had probably retired to escape from the attacks of their fellow-men or wild beasts. Though they bad succeeded in getting away from these enemies, they were to fall victims to a yet more formidable adversary, and the half-burnt piles have preserved to our own day the traces of a conflagration that destroyed the Lake dwelling so laboriously constructed.

The discovery of these piles excited general interest, an interest that was redoubled when similar discoveries revealed that all the lakes of Switzerland were dotted with stations that had been built long centuries before in the midst of the waters. Twenty such stations were made out on Lake Bienne, twenty-four on the Lake of Geneva, thirty on Lake Constance, forty-nine on that of Neuchâtel, and others, though not so many, on Lakes Sempach, Morat, Mooseedorf, and Pfeffikon. In fact more than two hundred Lake Stations are now known in Switzerland; and how many more may have completely disappeared?

There is really nothing to surprise us in the fact of buildings rising from the midst of waters. They are known in historic times; Herodotus relates that the inhabitants of pile dwellings on Lake Prasias successfully repelled the attacks of the Persians commanded by Megabasus. Alonzo de Ojeda, the companion of Amerigo Vespucci, speaks of a village consisting of twenty large houses built on piles in the midst of a lake, to which he gave the name of Venezuela in honor of Venice, his native town. We meet with pile dwellings in our own day in the Celebes, in New Guinea, in Java, at Mindanao, and in the Caroline Islands. Sir Richard Burton saw pile dwellings at Dahomey, Captain Cameron on the lakes of Central Africa, and the Bishop of Labuan tells us that the houses of the Dayaks are built on lofty platforms on the shores of rivers. The accounts of historians and travellers help us to understand alike the anode of construction of the Lake Stations and the kind of life led by their inhabitants.

The Lake dwellings of Switzerland may be assigned to three different periods. That of Chavannes, on Lake Bienne, belongs to the earliest type. The hatchets found are small, scarcely polished, and always of native rock, such as serpentine, diorite, or saussurite; the pottery is coarse, mixed with grains of sand or bits of quartz; the bottoms of the vases are thick, and no traces of ornamentation can be made out. The pile-dwellings of the second period, such as those of Locras and Latringen, show considerable progress; the hatchets, some of which are very large, are well made. Several of them are of nephrite, chloromelanite, and jade; and their number, as compared with those in minerals native to Switzerland, varies from five to eight per cent. Here and there in rare instances we find a few copper or bronze lamellae amongst the piles. The pottery is now of finer clay, better kneaded; and ornamentation, including chevrons, wolves’ teeth, and mammillated designs, is more common. The handle, however, is still a mere projection. The third period, which we may date from the transition from stone to bronze, is largely represented; copper weapons and tools are already numerous, and bronze is beginning to occur. The stone hatchets and hammers are skilfully pierced, and wooden or horn implements are often found. The vases are of various shapes, all provided with handles, and are covered with ornaments, some made with the fingers of the potter, others with the help of a twig or some fine string. On the other hand, there are no hatchets of foreign rock; commerce and intercourse with people at a distance had ceased, or at least become rarer. The tools are fixed into handles of stag horn, which are found in every stage of manufacture. The personal property of the Lake Dwellers included bead necklaces, pendants, buttons, needles, and horn combs. The teeth of animals served as amulets, and the bones that were of denser material than born were used as javelin- or arrow-heads. The arrows were generally of triangular shape and not barbed.11

The distance from the shore of the most ancient of the Lake dwellings varies from 131 to 298 feet. Gradually men began to take greater and greater precautions against danger, and the most recent stations are 656 to 984 feet from the banks of the lake. The piles of the Stone age are from eleven to twelve inches in diameter; those of the later epochs are smaller. They are pointed at the ends, and hardened by fire. When the piles had been driven into the bottom of the lake, a platform was laid on them solid enough to bear the weight of the buts. This platform was made of beams laid down horizontally, and bound together by interlaced branches. Two modes of construction can easily be distinguished. In one the platforms were upheld by numerous piles, ten yards long, firmly driven into the mud. This is how thePfahlbauten, Palafittes, or pile dwellings situated in shallow waters were generally put together. In other cases it seemed easier to raise the soil round the piles, than to drive them into the hard rock which formed the bed of the lake. Care was then taken to consolidate them, and keep them in position with blocks of stone, clay, and tiers of piles. Keller gives to these latter the name ofPackwerbauten, and other German archæologists call themSteinbergen.

The mean depth of the waters in those parts of the lakes formerly occupied by the pile dwellings is from thirteen to sixteen feet, and we can still make out the piles when the water is calm and clear. Worn though they may be, their tops still emerge at a height varying from one to three feet above the mud at the bottom of the lake. Their number was originally considerable, and it is estimated that there were forty thousand at Wangen, and a hundred thousand at Robenhausen. The area occupied by the stations varies considerably; according to Troyon, that at Wangen was seven hundred paces long by one hundred and twenty broad. Baron von Mayenfisch explored seventeen sites in the Lake of Constance, the area of which varies from three to four acres. At Inkwyl is a little artificial island about forty-eight feet in diameter. The Lake dwelling of Morges, which was still inhabited in the Bronze age, covers an area of twelve hundred feet long by a mean width of one hundred and fifty. It is, however, useless to enumerate the various calculations that have been made, as they are founded on nothing but more or less probable guesswork.

Excavations show that the buts that rose from the platforms were made of wattle and hurdle-work. In different places calcined and agglutinated fragments have been picked up, and pieces of clay which had served as facing. The house to which they had belonged had been destroyed by fire, and the clay, hardened in the flames, had resisted the disintegrating action of the water. On one side this clay is smooth, and on the other it still retains the marks of the interlaced branches, which had helped to form the inner walls. Some of these marks are so clear and regular that Troyon, noticing the way they curve, was able to assert that the buts were circular, and that they varied in diameter from ten to fifteen feet.

A recent discovery at Schussenreid (Wurtemberg) gives completeness to our knowledge of the Swiss Lake dwellings. In the midst of a peat-bog rises a but known as aKnüppelbau, which is supposed to date from the Stone age. It is of rectangular form, and is divided into two compartments communicating with each other by a foot-bridge consisting of three beams laid side by side. The floors of this but are made of rounded wood, and the walls of piles split in half. Excavations have brought to light several floors, one above the other, and divided by thick layers of clay. The rising of the level of the peat doubtless compelled the Lake Dweller to add by degrees to the height of his house.

The Proto-Helvetian race were well-developed men, and the bones that have been collected show that they were not at all wanting in symmetry of form or in cranial capacity. The crania found are distinctly dolichocephalous, and their owners had evidently attained to no small degree of culture and of technical skill. Judging from the length of the femora found, though it must be added that they are mostly those of women, the ancient Lake Dwellers were not so tall as the present inhabitants of Europe. The smallness of the handles of their weapons and tools points to the same conclusion.12

Though the importance and number of the discoveries made in Switzerland render it the classic land of Lake Stations, it is not the only country in which they have been found. They have been made out in the Lago Maggiore and in the lakes of Varèse, Peschiera, and Garda in Lombardy; in Lake Salpi in the Capitanata, and in other parts of Italy. Judging from the objects recovered from these stations, they belonged partly to the Stone and partly to the Bronze age.

The pile dwelling of Lagozza is one of the most interesting known to us. It forms a long square, facing due east, and covers an area of two thousand six hundred yards, now completely overgrown with peat six and a half feet thick. Amongst the posts still standing can be made out a number of half-burnt planks, which are probably the remains of the platform. One of the posts was still covered with bark, and it was easy to recognize the silver birch (Betula alba). Other posts consisted of the trunks of resinous trees, such as thePinus picea, thePinus sylvestris, and the larch, which now only grow in the lofty Alpine valleys. Amongst the industrial objects found in the Lagozza pile dwelling were polished stone hatchets, hammers, polishers of hard stone, knife-blades, flint scrapers, and seven or eight arrows with transverse cutting edges, a form rare in Italy.

Castelfranco,13from whom we borrow these details, has also, in the excavations he superintended, picked up a number of earthenware spindle-whorls with a hole in the middle, amulets, and numerous pieces of pottery, some fine and some coarse, according to the purpose for which they were intended. The first mould had in most cases been covered over with a layer of very fine clay spread upon it with the aid of a kind of boasting-chisel. We may also mention a bone comb. The combs found in Swiss Lake dwellings are of horn, with the exception of one from Locras of yew wood.

What chiefly distinguishes the Lagozza pile dwelling, however, is the absence of the bones, teeth, or horns of animals, and also of fish-hooks, harpoons, or nets, so that we must conclude that the inhabitants did not hunt or fish, that they did not breed domestic animals, and were probably vegetarians. The researches of Professor Sordelli confirm this hypothesis; from amongst the objects taken from the peat he recognized two kinds of corn (Triticum vulgare antiquorumandTriticum vulagere hibernum), six-rowed barley (Hordeum hexastichum), mosses, ferns, flax, the Indian poppy (Papaver somniferum), acorns, and an immense number of nuts and apples.

The acorns are those of the common oak, and their cups and outer rind had been removed, so that they had evidently been prepared to serve as food for, man; the apples were small and coriaceous, resembling the modern crab-apple; the Indian poppy cannot have grown without cultivation; but this was perhaps but an example of the same species already recognized in the Lake dwellings of Switzerland. It is difficult to say whether it was used for food or whether oil was extracted from it.

We have already spoken of the discoveries made in Austria and Hungary. Count Wurmbrand has described the difficulties with which explorers had to contend. The lakes have in many cases become inaccessible swamps, and in others, the waters having been artificially dimmed to regulate their overflow, the sites of the pile dwellings are so far below the level of the lakes that any excavations are impossible. Long and arduous researches have, however, been rewarded with some success, and the numerous objects recovered bear witness, as in Switzerland, to the gradual progress made by the successive generations who occupied these pile dwellings.

Objects discovered in the peat-bogs of Laybach. A. Earthenware vase. B. Fragment of ornamented pottery. C. Bone needle. D. Earthenware weight for fishing-net. E. Fragment of jawbone.

A lake near Laybach had been converted in drying up into an immense peat-bog, nearly thirty-eight miles in circumference, bounded on the right and left by lofty mountains.14When this bog was under water it had been the site of several Lake Stations. One, for instance, has been made out over three hundred and twenty yards from the bank. The piles, which consisted of the trunks of oaks, beeches, and poplars, varying from eight to ten inches in diameter, were placed at regular intervals. The objects taken from the peat-bog are simply innumerable (Fig. 50), and include hundreds of needles of different sizes, stilettos, dagger-blades, arrows, and hatchets, with stag-horn handles. Coarse black earthenware vases are equally numerous and are of a great variety of form, but their ornamentation is of the most primitive description, and was done sometimes with the nail of the potter, and sometimes with a pointed bone. Little earthenware figures (Figs.51and52) were also found, some of which were sent from the Laybach Museum to the French Exhibition of 1878. One of them is said to represent a woman, probably an idol. This is one of the first known examples of the representation of the human figure from a Lake dwelling. At Nimlau, near Olmutz, the drying lip of a little lake brought to light a Lake Station surrounded by the trunks of oak trees of a large size. They were piled up, one above the other, and strongly bound together with osiers. These trunks were evidently intended to fortify the station.

Small terra-cotta figures, found in the Laybach pile dwellings.

The mode of construction of the Lake Stations of the marshes of Pomerania is very different from that employed in Switzerland or in Austria. The foundations rest on horizontal beams, kept in place either by great blocks of rock or by piles driven in vertically. In many cases notches had evidently been made, the better to place the cross-beams; whilst in others forked branches had been selected, so that a second branch could be fitted into the fork. Primeval man soon learnt to appreciate the solidity of such a combination. Do these stations, however, really date from prehistoric times? Virchow, returning to his first opinion, now thinks that the pile dwellings of Germany belong to the same epoch as the intrenchments known asBurgwallen, when metals and even iron were already in general use. They were inhabited until the thirteenth century, and it is easy to trace in them, as in those of Switzerland, the signs of the successive occupations, the dwellings having evidently been abandoned and restored later by fresh comers.

Small terra-cotta figures, from the Laybach pile dwellings.

At the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle in 1863, Lord Lovaine described a Lake Station in the south of Scotland, and Sir J. Lubbock mentions one in the north of England. Others are known at Holderness (Yorkshire), at Thetford, on Barton Mere, near Bury St. Edmunds; but judging from the description of them they are not of earlier date than the Bronze age.

Other stations are more ancient. A few years ago a number of piles were found a little above Kew, beneath a layer of alluvium, and embedded in the gravel which formed the ancient bed of the Thames. All around these piles were scattered the bones of animals, of which those of theBos longifronswere the most remarkable. The long bones had been split to get out the marrow, an evident proof of the intelligent action of man. In London two similar examples were found on the site of the present Mansion House, and beneath the ancient walls of the city. They are supposed to date from times earlier, not only than the cutting out of the present course of the Thames, but before that invasion of the sea which preceded the formation of the Thames valley, now the home of more than four million men and women.

The Lake Stations of France are less important than those of the neighboring countries. It is supposed that Vatan, a little town of Berry, was built on the site of a Lake city. It is situated in the midst of a dried-up marsh, and at different points piles have been removed which were driven deep into the mud. We also hear of pile dwellings in the Jura Mountains, in the Pyrenean valleys of Haute-Garonne, Ariège, and Aude, as well as in those of the Eastern Pyrenees. In the department of Landes, which on one side joins the plateau of Lannemezan, and on the other the lofty plains of Béarn, are many marshy depressions, where have been found numbers of piles, with charred wood and fragments of pottery.

Discoveries no less curious have been made in the Bourget Lake, but the dwellings rising from its surface date from a comparatively recent epoch. The numerous fragments of pottery found prove that terra-cotta ware had attained to a beauty of form and color unknown to primitive times. Indeed some of the vases actually bear the name of the Roman potter who made them. We must also assign to an epoch later than the Stone age the buildings, remains of which have beet found in the peat-bogs of Saint-Dos near Salies (Basses-Pyrénées). At a depth of about thirty-two inches has been found a regular floor formed of trunks of trees resting on piles and bound together in a primitive fashion with the filaments of roots. These piles bear a number of deep clean-cut notches, such as could only have been made with an iron implement. In other parts of France there are Lake Stations, which were occupied until the time of the Carlovingians. To this time belong the pile dwellings of Lake Paladru (Isère), which were abandoned, so far as we can tell, by their owners when they were swamped by the rising of the water.

When the Lake Stations of Europe were inhabited, the characteristic animals of the Quaternary epoch, such as the elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion, and the hippopotamus had disappeared from that continent, and their place was taken by the earliest domestic animals. The Lake fauna of Switzerland includes about seventy species, thirty mammals twenty-six birds, ten kinds of fish, and four reptiles.15The mammals were the stag, the dog, the pig, the goat, the sheep, and two kinds of oxen. These animals were already domesticated, there can be absolutely no doubt on this point, for in manyPfahlbautentheir very dung has been found, a conclusive proof that they lived side by side with man.

The remains of the stag and of the ox are more numerous than those of any other animal, and it is easy to see that every clay the importance of a pastoral life became more clearly recognized. In the most ancient Lake Stations, those of Mooseedorf, Wangen, and Meilen, for instance, the stag predominates; in those of the western lakes, which are comparatively more recent, relics of the ox are more numerous. In the Lake village of Nidau, which dates from the Bronze age, a greatly increased number of bones of domestic animals have been found, whilst those of wild creatures become rarer and rarer. The progress of domestication is evident, and it is no less certain that the lapse of centuries must have been required for the formation of the herds which evidently existed in certain localities. It is possible that these animals may have first entered Europe in the wake of foreign invaders, and before being reduced to servitude, they may have roamed about in a wild state, and even have been contemporaries with species now extinct. However that may be, there can be no doubt on one point, they could not domesticate themselves; one race of creatures after another must have fallen under the subjection of man, who gradually became the master of all the animals that are still about us.

We do not meet in the pile dwellings with the common mouse, the rat, or the cat, and the horse is very rare. It is the same with the kitchen-middings and the caves occupied in Neolithic times. The disappearance of the horse, so numerous in earlier epochs, is general, and this would be inexplicable if history did not solve the mystery. The Bible, which gives us such complete details of the pastoral life of the Hebrews, speaks for the first time of the horse after the exodus from Egypt of the children of Israel, and in Egypt itself the horse is not represented in any monument of earlier date than the Seventeenth Dynasty. It is the same in America, animals of the equine race, that were so numerous in early geological times, had long since disappeared on the arrival of the Spaniards, and the horses they brought with them inspired the Mexicans and Peruvians with unutterable terror.

Domestic animals require regular food through the long winter months; so that their presence alone is enough to prove that their owners were tillers of the soil. The discovery in many of the Helvetian Lake Stations of calcined cereals confirms this hypothesis. Amongst the cereals found, corn is the most abundant, and several bushels of it have been collected. In the department of the Gironde, regular silos or subterranean storing-places for grain have been found in which the calcined corn was stowed away. In the Lake Stations have also been found millet, peas, poppy-heads, nuts, plums, raspberries, and even dried apples and pears, doubtless set aside as a provision for the winter. From the water at Cortaillod, have been taken, with a few ears of barley, cherry-stones, acorns, and beechnuts16; and at Laybach, some water-chestnuts (trapa natans) of a kind that has long since disappeared from Carniola. Sometimes the cereals were roughly roasted, crushed, and put away in large earthenware vessels; but in some places, regular flat round loaves of bread have been found about one or two inches thick, which were baked without leaven. We may well assert that great changes lead taken place since the first arrival of man upon the earth.

The so-calledterremaresof Italy date from the same period as the Danish kitchen-middings and the Swiss pile dwellings. They are met with chiefly in Lombardy and in the ancient duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and consist of low mounds rising from thirteen to sixteen feet above the surface of the soil. In some cases a number ofterremares, close to one another, form regular villages covering an area of from five to six miles square. Excavations of theterremarehave brought to light rows of piles from seven to ten feet long, connected by transverse beams, forming a regular floor, from which rose buts built in a similar way to those of the Swiss pile dwellings, of interlaced branches or of clay and straw, for no trace has been made out of the use of bricks or of stones. The refuse of the kitchen and rubbish of all kinds rapidly accumulated round about these buts, and formed the first nucleus of the mound, which soon grew to a considerable height as one occupant of the house succeeded another. When the refuse became too much of a nuisance, the owner of the but set up fresh piles at a greater height on the same site, laid down another platform, and built anew but. In some places three such platforms have been found one above another.

As in the Lake Stations, excavations of theterremareshave brought to light numerous bones of domestic animals; but those of wild creatures, such as bears, stags, roedeer, and boars, are even rarer than in Switzerland. The inhabitants evidently had other resources than hunting at their command, and though the processes they employed were but elementary, they cultivated corn, beans, vines, and various fruits. Though iron was still unknown, some bronze objects have been found in certainterremares, but these were only roughly melted pieces of metal, showing no traces of having been either hammered or soldered. Amongst the pottery found in theterremares, we must mention a number of small objects not unlike acorns in form, pierced lengthwise, and decorated with incised lines, some straight, others curved. Italian archæologists call themfusaïoles, and Swiss savants, who have found a great many in the lakes of their native country, give them the name ofpesons de fuseau. Both these names connect them with the process of spinning; but their number renders this hypothesis inadmissible, and when we give an account of the excavations carried on at Hissarlik, under Dr. Schliemann, we shall be able to determine their character (seeChapter VII.).

At Castione, near the town of Parma, and in several other parts of the provinces of Parma and Reggio,terremareshave been discovered rising from the midst of vast rectangular basins artificially hollowed out. Some have concluded from this that theterremarecollias the inhabitants of theterremareshave been called, were descended from the people who built the pile dwellings of Switzerland, and that, faithful to the traditions of their race, they hollowed out ponds in default of natural lakes. If this were so, Italy must have been peopled with a race that came over the Alps.17Who or what this race was can only be matter of conjecture. It cannot, however, have been the Ligures, a branch of the great Iberian family, who were totally ignorant of culture, and to whom the builders of the most ancient of theterremareswere certainly superior; nor can it have been the Etruscans, for all relics of that race, which are moreover easily recognizable, were found quite apart from the deep deposits containing theterremares. Many indications point to the conclusion that when the Celts came down into Italy their knowledge of metallurgy was already more advanced than that of the builders of theterremares. We are therefore disposed to think with Heilbig, that theterremarecolliwere the Itali, of Arian race, who were the ancestors of the Sabini, Umbri, Osci, and Latins. In the great migrations of races, the Itali bad separated themselves from their brethren the Pelasgi, who had remained in Epirus, and, continuing their march, they peopled Switzerland and crossed the Alps, settling down in the fertile plains watered by the Po, where it is easy even now to prove their presence.

In superintending the excavation of aterremareat Toszig, in Hungary, Pigorini,18was greatly struck by the resemblance between it and similar erections in Italy, especially that of Casarolo. This is very much in favor of the Itali having been the builders. But the objects collected in some of theterremares, those of Varano and Chierici for instance, prove that they were inhabited from Neolithic times, so that the Itali of Italy, if Itali they were, did but follow the traditions of their predecessors. In spite, however, of zealous study, all that relates to the origin of tribes and races remains involved in the greatest obscurity, and we can but look to the future to supply what the present altogether fails to give.

We have yet other tokens of the presence of the ancient races who peopled Italy. Dr. Concezio Rosa19noticed in the Abruzzi extensive black patches on the ground, which bore witness to the former residence of men. The excavation of theseFondi di Cabane, as they are called, led to the finding of a great many stone knives and scrapers with numerous bone stilettos and the bones of various animals, all of them of species still living. Later, similarfondiwere found between the Eastern Alps and Mount Gargano. In Reggio, at Rivaltella, at Castelnuovo de Sotto, and at Calerno, they formed regular groups, and from one of these stations more than one thousand worked flints were collected. We mention them especially because they were of lozenge (selci romboidali) and half-lozenge (semi-rombi) shapes, which are forms unknown in other districts.

With these flints were hand-made vases with handles, the clay unmixed with sand or quartz and ornamented with lines, grooves, and raised knobs. These vases differ greatly from those found in theterremares; are they then, as has been said, of earlier (late? It is impossible to come to any decision on the point.

Before closing our account of prehistoric buildings surrounded by water, we must say a few words on crannoges though there is the greatest difference of opinion as to their date.

Crannoges are artificial islets raised above the level of certain lakes in Ireland and Scotland20by means of a series of layers of earth and stone, and strengthened by piles, some upright, others laid down lengthwise. Wylde counted forty-six in Ireland in his time, some of them of considerable extent. That of Ardkellin Lough (Roscommon) is surrounded by a wall of dry stones resting on piles. In other places have been found the remains of stockades very intelligently set up in such a manner as to break the force of the shock of the water.

To add to the difficulties of dealing with the subject of crannoges, they were successively occupied for many centuries. They are mentioned in the most ancient Irish legends, and even in the sixteenth century they served as refuges for the kings of the country in the constant rebellions that took place. The objects taken from the lakes belong to very different epochs, and it is impossible to say anything positive as to the time of their construction.

A but found in Donegal may, however, date from an extremely remote age.21It rested on a thick layer of sand brought front the neighboring shore, and was covered over by a bed of peat slot less than sixteen feet thick. Since the hilt was deserted by man the peat had gradually accumulated till it had at last invaded the dwelling itself. The but included a ground-floor, and one story about twelve feet long by nine wide and four high. The walls consisted of beams scarcely squared, joined together with wooden mortices and pegs. The roof, which was probably flat, consisted of oak planks, the spaces between which had been filled in with mortar made of sand and grease. On the ground-floor lay several flint implements, showing no signs of having been polished, a quartz wedge, and a stone chisel, which had evidently seen long service. This chisel, the discoverers say, corresponded exactly with the notches around the mortices. A regular paved way, formed of sea-beach pebbles placed on a foundation of interlaced branches, led up to a hearth made of flat stones measuring some three feet every way. All about lay fragments of charcoal and broken nuts, the latter partly burnt. Another but, with an oak floor resting on four posts, has recently been discovered in County Fermanagh, beneath a deposit of peat about twenty feet thick. No trace of metal has been found in either of these Irish buts, and the thickness of the peat beneath which they lay is another proof of their great antiquity. One serious objection, however, is this: Were the Irish sufficiently advanced in prehistoric times to be able to erect dwellings implying so considerable an amount of civilization?

Crannoges are met with in Scotland as well as in Ireland, and excavations in Loch Lee have enabled explorers to make out their mode of construction. The Lake Dwellers began by piling up a number of trunks of trees in the shallower waters of a lake. They then strengthened these trunks with branches or beams about which the mud collected till the whole formed an islet. All about this islet, beneath the waters of the lake, were found various objects in stone, wood, and horn, as well as some canoes several feet long. Similar crannoges are to be seen on the lakes of Kincardine and Forfar, which Troyon thinks date from the Stone age.22If he be right, and we should not like to make any assertion one way or the other, the bronze objects and the enamelled glass bowls found near these dwellings prove that they were occupied by several successive generations.

It is probable that Lake dwellings were also used in Asia and in Africa from prehistoric times. History tells us that the inhabitants of Phasis, the Mingrelians of the present day, lived in reed huts on the water, and that they went from one islet to another in canoes hollowed out of the trunks of oak-trees. A bas-relief from the palace of Sennacherib, preserved in the British Museum, represents warriors fighting on artificial islands made of large reeds. But here w e enter the domain of history, and we must return to Neolithic times, and speak of the habitations built of more durable materials and the ruins of which are still standing.

It is impossible to say with any certainty to what period the most ancient of these structures belong. It is probable that man early learned to pile up stones, binding them together at first with clay, and then with some stronger cements. Theburghsof Scotland, thenurhagsof the island of Sardinia, thetalayotiof the Balearic Isles, thecastellieriof Istria, are all ancient witnesses of the modes of building employed in the most remote ages.

Burghs, brocks, orbroughsare numerous in Scotland,23and also in the islands of the Atlantic. For a long time they were supposed to be of Scandinavian origin, but Sir J. Lubbock24remarks With reason that no building at all like them exists in Norway or in Denmark, and it is difficult to admit the idea that the Scandinavians set up in the islands tributary to them buildings which were unknown to their own mainland. We are therefore disposed to think that these curious structures, which were inhabited until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of the Christian era, are of much earlier date than the first invasion by the Northmen, and that the burgh still standing on the little island of Moussa, one of the Shetlands, is one of the best examples that we can quote. A tower, forty-one feet high, rises on the borders of the sea. The walls are of unhewn stones, piled up without cement, and they form two circles, separated by a passage four feet wide. In each story are a series of very small openings, intended to admit air and light to the cell-like rooms inside, and to a staircase that leads to the top of the tower. The only way into this burgh is through a door only seven feet high, and so narrow that it is impossible for two people to go in abreast.

The regularity of the building of this burgh, and the architectural knowledge it implies, prevent our ascribing it either to the Stone or even to the Bronze age; but we find in Scotland itself more ancient examples, if we may so express ourselves, of domestic architecture. These examples are subterranean dwellings, made of rough-hewn stones of considerable size, laid down in regular courses, to which the names ofearth-houses, Picts’ houses, andweemshave been given. The walls converge towards the centre, leaving an opening at the top, which was covered in with large flat stones. These dwellings are certainly of earlier date than the burghs, and the discovery of aPicts’ houseactually beneath the ruins of a burgh enables us to speak with certainty on this point.

In Ireland similar proofs have been found of the great antiquity of roan. More than one hundred towers have been found in that country, all built of large stones, and varying in height from seventy to one hundred and thirty feet, with a diameter of from eight to fifteen feet. The most diverse origins have been attributed to these towers, from prehistoric times to the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era; from the time of the Druids to that of the Friars. According to the point of view of different archæologists, they have been called temples of the sun, hermitages, phallic monuments, or signal towers.

We meet with a similar problem in considering thenurhags, as in considering the burghs. They have been justly called a page of history, written all over the surface of Sardinia by an unknown people. Count Albert de la Marmora counted three thousand of them a few years ago, and more recent explorers tell us that this number is greatly exceeded. Like the burghs, which they strangely resemble, thenurhagsare conical towers with very thick walls made of huge stones, some Hewn, others in their natural state, arranged in regular courses without mortar. On entering one of them we find ourselves in a vaulted room, which looks exactly like one half of an egg in shape. In the upper stories are two, and sometimes three rooms, one above the other, to which access is gained by steps cut in the walls. The whole structure is crowned by a terrace (Fig. 53). We must add that the entrance to thenurhagis through an opening on a level with the ground, and so low that one can only go in by crawling on the stomach.

Many conjectures have been made as to the use of these towers. Were they temples in which to worship, or trophies of victory? Their number is against either of these hypotheses. Were they then habitations or towers of observation? Not the former certainly, for no one could live between walls sixteen or twenty-two feet thick, shut out from air and light. Some travellers think they were tombs, but excavations have brought to light no bones or sepulchral relics. We can compare them to nothing but the Towers of Silence, on which the Parsees expose their dead to the birds of heaven, which are ever ready rapidly to acquit themselves of their melancholy functions.

Nurhag at Santa Barbara (Sardinia).

The origin of thenurhagsis as uncertain as their use. Diodorus Siculus considered them very ancient, and one fact has come to light in our day which enables us to arrive at a somewhat more exact decision. The island of Sardinia was taken by the Romans from the Carthaginians in 238 B.C., and an aqueduct, the ruins of which can still be seen, was built by the conquerors on the foundations of an ancientnurhag, so that the latter must belong to an earlier (late than the third century before our era. Fergusson, who speaks with authority on everything relating to the monuments of the Stone age, assigns thenurhagsto the mystic times of the Trojan War. In all probability they were built by an invading people. La Marmora thinks these invaders were the Libyans; M. de Rougemont, in his history of the Bronze age, says that the curved vault is the characteristic feature of Pelasgian architecture, which is often confounded with that of the Phœnicians. Although any final conclusion would be premature, we ourselves think that the builders of thenurhagsbelonged to the great stream of emigration from the East, the course of which is marked by megalithic monuments in so many parts of the world. In some instances,nurhagswere surrounded by cromlechs, of which most of the stones have now been thrown down. Some of these stones bore prominences resembling the breasts of a woman.

The accumulations of earth and rubbish about thenurhagsare, some of them, from six to ten feet high. In the lower deposits have been found coarse pottery, with no attempt at ornamentation, fragments of flint, and obsidian hatchets of black basalt, or porphyry of the Palæolithic type, arrow-head, flint knives, stones used in slings, and numerous shells; whilst in the upper deposits were picked up black pottery and fragments of bronze belonging to the transition period between the Stone and Metal ages.

All over the island of Sardinia, side by side with thenurhags, rise tombs to which have been given the name ofSepolture dei Giganti. They are from thirty-two to thirty-nine feet long by a nearly equal width, and are built, some of huge slabs of stone, some of stones of smaller size. They are in every case surmounted by a pediment, formed of a single block, and often covered with sculptures dating from different epochs. These sepulchres are certainly of later date than thenurhags, and in them have been found numerous implements of bronze, but none of stone.

“Talayoti” at Trepuco (Minorca).

Thetalayoti, of which one hundred and fifty are still standing in the island of Minorca, are circular or elliptical truncated cones, built of huge unhewn stones, laid one on the other without cement (Fig. 54). The most remarkable of all of them, that at Torello, near Mahon, is thirty-three feet high. In many cases there are two stone, one placed upright, the other across it, in front of thetalayoti. The meaning of these biliths is unknown.

Yet another series of cyclopean monuments are known under the name ofnanetas, and are not unlike overturned boats. Seven suchnanetasare still to be seen in the Balearic Isles. The one which is best preserved consists of large unhewn stones of rectangular shape, enclosing an inner chamber about six feet in width. The roof having fallen in, its height cannot be exactly determined; we only know that the lateral walls are some forty-five feet high.

In Algeria also have been preserved some towers built of stones without cement. Some of them are square (basina) and surmounted by a small dolmen, others are round (chouchet) and closed at the top by a large slab of stone, as in thenurhagswe have just described.

It is difficult to bring this account to a close without mentioning thetruddhiand thespecchieof Otranto.25Atruddhiis a massive conical tower consisting of a heap of scarcely hewn stones piled up without cement and with an exterior facing. Inside is a round room, the roof of which is formed by a series of circular courses of stone projecting one beyond the other. Sometimes a second chamber rises above the first, whichisreached by steps cut in the facing, which steps also lead to the platform on the top of the tower. Thousands oftruddhiare to be seen in Italy; they date from every epoch, and the people of Lecce and Bari continue to erect them as did their fathers before them. Side by side with thetruddhirise thespecchie, which are conical masses of stone, of greater height and probably of more ancient date than the towers. Lenormant thinks they were used to live in; but his opinion has been much questioned, and it is necessary to speak on this point with great reserve.

Thecastellieriof Istria, which the Slavonian peasants callstarigrad, are as yet but little known. Doubtless an examination of them will bring out their resemblance to thenurhagsandtalayoti. They are, however, more than mere towers, forming regularenceintesbetween walls formed of two facings of dry stones, the space between which is filled in with smaller stones. There are fifteen of thesecastellieriin the district of Albona, a little town on the southeast of Trieste. They were at first attributed to the Roman epoch, but later researches relegate them rather to prehistoric times, and the discovery near them of numerous stone implements rather tends to support this latter opinion, but it must not be considered conclusive.

Perhaps we ought also to connect with the earliest ages of humanity the stations recently discovered in Spain by MM. Siret.26These were evidently centres of population, surrounded by walls of a very primitive description. We shall have to refer again to these discoveries; we will only add now that in the black earth forming the soil were found worked flints, polished diorite hatchets, pierced shells, with various pieces of pottery, and mills for grinding corn. So far, however though many of the stations have been explored, no trace has been found of the use of metals.

A vast period of time, countless centuries, indeed, have passed away since the close of the Paleolithic epoch. The burghs,nurhags, andcastellierishow the progress of civilization, and at the same time prove that this progress extended throughout Europe, and that at a time not so very far removed from our own. The close resemblance between buildings of different dates enables us to speak with certainty of the connection between the races which succeeded each other in Europe. The importance of these conclusions is very great, and will be brought out still more in our study of megalithic monuments.

1“El hombre seguramente habitaba las corazas de los Glyptodon Pero no siempre las colocaba en la posicion que acabo de indicar.”—“La Antiguedad del Hombre en el Plata,” vol. ii., p. 532.

2“On Some Recent Researches in Cone-Caves in Wales,”Proc. Geol., Asso., vol. ix. “On the Flynnon, Benno, and Gwyu Caves,”Geol. Mag., Dec., 1886.

3Revue des Questions Scientifiques, April, 1887.

4“Odyssey,” book ix., v. 105–124.

5Æschylus: “Prometheus Bound.”

6A. Maury: “La Vieille Civilisation Scandinave,”Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1880.

7F. de Olivera: “As Raças dos Kjoekkenmoeddings de Mugem,” Lisbon, 1881.

8Report Peabody Museum, 1882.

9Report Peabody Museum, 1882 and 1885.

10Brinton: “Notes on the Floridian Peninsula,” Philadelphia, 1849.

11We take many of these details from Dr. Gross’ excellent work on the “Pile Dwellings of Switzerland.”

12Virchow: “Drei Schädel aus der Schweiz.”

13Revue d’Anthropologie, 1887, p. 607.

14G. Cotteau:Nature, 1877, first week, p. 161.

15Rutimeyer: “Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz.”

16Anzeiger für Schweizerische Alterthums Künde, April, 1884.

17Comte Conestabile: “Sur les Anciennes Immigrations en Italie.” Heilbig: “Beitrage zur Altitalischen Kultur and Kund Geschichte,” i. Band. G. Boissier:Révue des Deux-Mondes, October, 1879.

18Bul. di Palethnologia Ital., 1879. Theterpensof Holland, though of much more modern date, greatly resemble theterremares.

19“Ricerce di Archeologia Preistorica nella Valle della Vibrata.”

20Wylie,Arch. Brit., vol. xxxviii. Wylde,Proc. Royal Irish Acad., vol. i., p. 420.

21Arch. Brit., vol. xxvi., p. 361.Proc. Royal Irish Academy, vol. vii., p. 155.

22“Habitations Lacustres des Temps Anciens et Modernes,” p. 170.

23R. Munro: “Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings or Crannoges, with a Supplementary Chapter on Remains of Lake Dwellings in England,” Edinburgh, 1882.

24“Prehistoric Times.” Wilson: “Prehistoric Scotland.”

25Nicolucci: “Scelse Lavorate, Bronzi e Monumenti di Terra d’Otranto.” Lenormant,Revue d’Ethnographie, February, 1882 (Bul. Soc. Anth., 1882 and 1884). S. Reinach: “Esquises Archéologiques.”

26“Les Premiers Âges du Métal dans le Sud-Est de l’Espagne,” Brussels, 1887.

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