Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

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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 archaeologists. 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 Neuchatel, 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.[120]

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 the
PFAHLBAUTEN, 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 of PACKWERBAUTEN, and
other German archaeologists call them STEINBERGEN.

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 a KNUPPELBAU, 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.[121]

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 Varese, 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 the PINUS PICEA,
the PINUS 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,[122] from 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 horn9 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 ANTIQUORUM and TRITICUM 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.[123] When 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. 51 and 52) 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 as BURGWALLEN, 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
the BOS LONGIFRONS were 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, Ariege, 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 Bearn,
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-Pyrenees). 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 (Isere), 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.[124]
The 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 many PFAHLBAUTEN their
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 beechnuts[125];
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-called TERREMARES of 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 of TERREMARES, close to
one another, form regular villages covering an area of from five to six
miles square. Excavations of the TERREMARE have 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.

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