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THE LAKE DWELLINGS OF SWITZERLAND.

ALTHOUGH public attention had not been drawn to the subject, and still less the researches of learned men directed to the elimination of the facts of the case, still it is very long since the dwellers on the shores of the Swiss lakes have been aware of the existence of sublacustrine constructions. Just as from the remote shores of the Issi Kul, in Mongolia, to those of Lough Neagh, in Ireland, traditions are handed down of submerged cities and palaces, so the losses experienced by the fishermen, when their nets got entangled, left no doubt as to the existence of primitive and ruinous structures in the Swiss lakes. These constructions are mainly rough stone-work, supported by piles -the Germans called them "pfahlbauten,"- constructions on piles ;" and the Italians "palafitta ;" and the latter word has been Frenchified into "palafittes." These constructions never rise above the surface of the water, but they come so near to it, that they have oftentimes, and long ago, been gazed at by boatmen in calm weather, wondering among themselves who had conceived the singular idea of sinking piles at such depths; but as "the oldest inhabitant" knew nought about them, they were dismissed, like the monuments of past races by iconoclast Mussulmans in the East, with the unsatisfactory comment that they belonged to bygone and unknown times. Sundry strange utensils had also been occasionally dragged up, especially from the bottom of Lake Zurich, but still no conclusions had been drawn from these facts, until M. Keller* established a connexion between the works of art and the lacustrine constructions, and first pointed out that there had existed buildings, of which the piled stones were the foundations, that these had been erected over the waters, and had been dwelt in for a lengthened period of time.

This revelation of an epoch in Swiss history which belonged to prehistoric times, and which indicated the existence of an unknown race of people, with peculiar habits of life, was not lost upon Swiss archæologists. They set to work dragging for relics wherever there were sublacustrine constructions, and their zeal was rewarded by success. At Meilen nothing, with one exception, but relics of stone and bone were found; but in some of the western lakes a number of utensils in bronze were discovered. It then became manifest that the lacustrian constructions themselves belonged to different epochs.

Discoveries soon multiplied to such an extent, that local museums were formed, among which the most remarkable are those of Colonel Schwab at Bienne, the museum of Neuchâtel, M. Troyon and M. de Pourtalès Sandoz at Lance, Dr. Clément at Saint Aubin, M. Rochat at Yverdon, and the museum at Friburg. Numerous works also appeared in illustration of the same subject; among the most important of which are M. Troyon's "Habitations Lacustres des Temps Anciens et Modernes," Lausanne, 1840; M. Morlot's "Etudes Géologico-Archéologiques en Danemark et en Suisse," Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise des Sc. Nat., 1860; M. Schaub's "Die Pfahlbauten in den Schweizerseen," Zurich, 1864; and to which we may add M. Désor's

Die Keltischen Pfahlbauten in den Schweizerseen. Mittheilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft. Zurich. 1854.

admirable work, "Les Palafittes, ou Constructions Lacustres du Lac de Neuchâtel." Paris: C. Reinwald.

The Lake of Neuchâtel, thanks to the interest which many of those living on its shores took in the history of their country, could not fail to give interesting results. It was known that lacustrine constructions existed at Bied, at Cortaillod, at Auvernier, at Concise, at Corcelettes, at Estavoyer, at Chevroux, and at Port Alban, and each of these places contributed their share of relics.

It was suggested at first that the level of the lakes had altered, that obstructions at their outlets, or in the rivers below, had caused a rise in the waters, and that these basements were not originally laid below the water. But without denying that this might be the case in some instances, as at the outlet of the Thielle, still, as the constructions are met with below the level in almost all the Swiss lakes, it has been justly opined that it is not likely they should have all been raised in level from similar causes. Again, the size of the piles was such that they could only have supported huts or light wooden houses, such as have been represented in Sir Charles Lyell's work, after Keller and Troyon.

It was also signalised at the onset as a strange and absurd thing that men should have built their homes over the water instead of on land; but full consideration of the subject showed that, as at that epoch the land was covered with forests, and the shores of the lakes were marshy, these lacustrine huts presented a safe asylum against the ambuscades of enemies and the attacks of wild beasts. It is supposed that, at a later period, in the epoch of bronze weapons, they became at once habitations and places of refuge, just as Herodotus describes the Pæonians of Thrace as dwelling upon Lake Prasias in huts on planks fitted on lofty piles in the middle of the lake, with a narrow entrance from the mainland by a single bridge. These Megabazus could not subdue (v. 15, 16).

The idea of dividing these lacustrine relics into three epochs, those of the age of stone, those of the age of bronze, and those of the age of iron, all three of which are met with in Lake Neuchâtel alone, was borrowed from the Danes, and correct, probably, with regard to the first two, it is not so much so in the latter case, for it is difficult to conceive a race of people who would, except by the accident of commercial communication, adopt a metallurgical compound prior to a raw or native metal. Livingstone found the Africans on the tributaries to the Zambesi workers in iron, yet this iron age was not preceded by a bronze age. The Bible, as also Homer, recognises a primitive age of iron; and the bronzes of Hallstadt and of the Etruscan necropolises of the Romagna have been shown to belong to the age of iron. This, as Nilsson argues ("Die Ureinwoher Scandinaviens"), may also have been the case with the beautiful bronzes of the north, unless, in some cases, it may have happened, the trafficking nations of antiquity introduced bronze among people still in the infancy of civilisation, and they went at once from the stone to the bronze period a leap calculated in some instances to mislead archæologists, and to induce them to suppose that there was no iron epoch, and that so the age of bronze antedated that of iron.

The stations which belong to the stone age are by no means so

numerous in the western lakes of Switzerland as in the eastern; but they are not wanting. At least a dozen are known. They have a peculiar characteristic, inasmuch as they are less extensive than those of the age of bronze; they are at a less depth, and not so far from the shore. The piles are at the same time much larger, being at times whole trunks of trees. Some specimens of the canoes by which the stones were conveyed and deposited between the piles have been discovered, and one is to be seen in the museum of Neuchâtel. Where the bottom of the lake was muddy, the piles were driven into the mud, and not supported by stones in heaps, and which are variously designated as ténevières, pervous, and steinbergs. In the stone age the piles were fashioned by means of kelts, or hatchets of flint. It is supposed that some of these steinbergs, or "heaps of stone," were mere islands of refuge, or of religious rites or sacrifices, as in Ireland, the more especially as they often present vast accumulations of bones. The station at Concise alone has furnished more bones of animals than all the stations of the bronze epoch put together. Among these bones, those of the bear, badger, polecat, marten, ermine, otter, wolf, fox, dog, cat, hedgehog, beaver, squirrel, horse, boar, stag, deer, sheep, bison, aurochs, goat, and chamois have been determined, besides numerous remains of domestic oxen, of which there appear to have been two varieties-one large and the other small. Bones of the domestic pig and of a marsh pig (Sus palustris) are found mingled with those of the wild boar, according to M. Rütimeyer. This latter species is, with the aurochs, now extinct in Europe. Only one cranium has been obtained from the stone stations, and, according to Rütimeyer and His, in their "Crania Helvetica," it occupies a middle place between the long and the short heads, approximating to the most common type in Switzerland.

To judge by their arms and utensils, the people of the stone age were not more advanced in civilisation than the savages of the Pacific Ocean. Their arms consisted of spears and arrows of silex or flint. The arrow-heads are most carefully fashioned off. Bones were also fashioned into arrow-heads, daggers, spear-heads, and pins, also as handles for knives and scissors of flint. The best-executed tools are hammers of serpentine. The hatchets were of diorite, serpentine, or quartzite, with handles of stag's horn. The hatchets and little kelts of stone have also been sharpened on a grindstone, which is not the case with the hatchets of Abbeville and other more remote antehistoric races.

Besides these arms and tools, which are common to almost all savage people, the Swiss of the stone epoch fabricated rude pottery by the hand alone, and of a grey or black colour. They preserved fruits and cereals in vases by no means of an inelegant shape. Hence it is manifest that they cultivated the land, as they also brought up cattle; and they were not, therefore, utterly savages, like the aborigines of Australia. They had also little hand corn-mills, and they made bread. Some fragments of linen stuffs have also been detected. The flints are supposed to have been obtained from the Jura; the nephrite, or jade, from Haute Maurienne; possibly both may have been obtained from pebbles of transport. It is admitted that the diorite, serpentine, and quartzites were obtained from "galets erratiques."

Why not the flints and the nephrite, the latter of which it has even been argued came from the East? M. de Fellengberg analysed five kinds of jade, or nephritic weapons, and found four out of the five to be identical in composition with the Oriental jade-silicates of magnesia and lime; the fifth was a silicate of alumina and soda. But there is really nothing surprising in the fact that the Swiss jade should be similar in chemical constitution to the Oriental jade, whereas it would be very surprising to found on that similarity the deduction that the Swiss of the stone period had communication with China. As to fragments of white coral found at Concise, and of amber found at Meilen, they are supposed to belong to the bronze age.

However insignificant the arms and tools of the Swiss of the stone epoch, it appears that they did not neglect personal ornaments, as attested by necklaces of teeth and bone, and disks of bone and staghorn, as also by hair-pins. Disks of stone with a hole through the centre were also used as weights for nets, or for spinning.

The "palafittes" of the age of bronze are much larger, sometimes many acres in extent, more numerous, at a greater distance from the shore, and hence in deeper water. The piles are also slenderer, and by thousands. They are fixed in the mud without the support of stones. The arms, tools, and other relics are found in the intervals between the piles. The vases and pottery are more varied and elegant in form than those of the preceding epoch, and they are sometimes rudely ornamented. The disks, formerly of stone, are now of baked earth. The bronze objects are remarkable for their excellent state of preservation. There are hatchets of various types, of which, as of most of the other characteristic relics, representations are given in M. Désor's work. Knives are numerous; small, but always elegant. Reaping-hooks are also found, as well as scissors, hammers, and fishhooks, large and small. The arms of the epoch were swords, daggers, spears, and arrows. The relics are, however, by no means numerous. Among ornaments we find bracelets, earrings, hair-pins, and engraved plates, which appear to have served as amulets, or may have been a kind of currency. Fibulæ, so common at later epochs, are not met with. Chemical analysis shows that the proportions of copper and tin vary much in the lacustrine bronzes. This alone would tend to show that the ancient Helvetians obtained their first metallic arms and tools from foreign sources. Had they manufactured them themselves, they would have been alike in constitution, as coming from the same furnaces. A people circumstanced as the Helvetians were would be expected to obtain their first metallic arms from without. When they began to manufacture themselves, they would manufacture in iron. If at this latter epoch there exist fibule and other works of art of more elegant finish, it only shows that they were in a more advanced state of civilisation when they began to manufacture in iron, and that the age of bronze antedated that of iron with them from purely adventitious circumstances. The savage left to himself, as in Eastern Africa, manufactures in iron before he works with alloys, especially in expensive and more or less intractable alloys, like tin and copper. The stone age of archaeologists represents, according to this view of the subject, the era of kelts; the bronze age, the era of transition, when a people favourably circumstanced obtained bronze weapons from

others more advanced in civilisation; and the iron age, the epoch when they began to manufacture themselves. When people are not favourably placed for exchange, as the Africans and Tierra del Fuegans, there is no transition age. The existence of such is, under all circumstances, adventitious, and cannot be regarded by any means as a step essential to civilisation. On the contrary, it is quite accidental, and depends upon the contact of a semi-savage race with people more highly civilised. A notable fact connected with the bronze epoch of Switzerland is the absence of all other metals, such as lead, iron, or zinc. If the inhabitants had manufactured their own weapons of bronze, they would have worked in other metals, as iron or lead, as well as in copper or tin. Tin is also a rare metal, and was only obtained by the Phoenicians and other ancient navigators from the Cassiterides, in Britain.

Hand stone-mills for grinding corn belong to both ages. Only two skulls have been obtained-one of an adult, small, elongated, and narrow; another of a child, also elongated. They would indicate a small race of men, a fact which is also borne out by the size of the sword handles. Messrs. Rütimeyer and His class those crania in the same type of those of Sion-the most common of the ante-Roman epoch. The introduction of bronze among such a people tended to increase their security and well-being, and there is reason to believe, from moulds found in the Lake of Geneva, that they learnt to work in bronze themselves, or, what is more likely, that workers in bronze settled among them from the south, in what has always been the centre of civilisation in Helvetia.

M. Désor is inclined to think from the number of bronze objects in good keeping, and the few skeletons found in the lakes, that these lacustrine constructions became at that epoch rather magazines than habitations. The existence of habitations on the mainland at the same time has, indeed, been shown by the discovery of relics similar to those which characterise the lake constructions at Ebersberg in Zurich, at Gorgier in Neuchâtel, at Grange in Soleure, at Vitur-Berg in Lower Austria, and elsewhere. But while there is nothing to surprise us in the fact that there were dwellers on the mainland contemporaneous with the dwellers on the lakes, this does not disprove the existence of the latter, although it is quite possible that such constructions were chiefly used as places of refuge or defence. Skeletons would be exposed to destructive agencies in waters abounding in living things. Such as have been obtained were accidentally preserved, in one instance by a pile partly carbonised. It was the same with the Pæonians before noticed, and who are described by Herodotus as dwelling on the sea-shore, on the mainland and on mountains, as well as on Lake Prasias.

No traces of idols or religious emblems have been found among these pre-historic Swiss relics. The only object which has admitted of some doubts are a kind of crescents of baked earth, designated as croissants lacustres, and which, from no possible use being found for them, it has been supposed may have been religious symbols.

That the epoch of the introduction of bronze was marked by commercial communication with other people, is established by a variety of facts. Among others, are the glass and amber beads, and the