LAKE-DWELLINGS.
[Illustration: PLATE 1. A VILLAGE BUILT ON PILES IN A SWISS LAKE]
(Restored by Dr. F. Keller, partly from Dumont D'Urville's
Sketch of similar habitations in New Guinea.)
Works of Art in Danish Peat-Mosses.
Remains of three Periods of Vegetation in the Peat.
Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron.
Shell-Mounds or ancient Refuse-Heaps of the Danish Islands.
Change in geographical Distribution of Marine Mollusca
since their Origin.
Embedded Remains of Mammalia of Recent Species.
Human Skulls of the same Period.
Swiss Lake-Dwellings built on Piles.
Stone and Bronze Implements found in them.
Fossil Cereals and other Plants.
Remains of Mammalia, wild and domesticated.
No extinct Species.
Chronological Computations of the Date of the Bronze and
Stone Periods in Switzerland.
Lake-Dwellings, or artificial Islands called "Crannoges,"
in Ireland.
WORKS OF ART IN DANISH PEAT.
When treating in the "Principles of Geology" of the changes of the earth
which have taken place in comparatively modern times, I have spoken of
the embedding of organic bodies and human remains in peat, and explained
under what conditions the growth of that vegetable substance is going on
in northern and humid climates. Of late years, since I first alluded
to the subject, more extensive investigations have been made into the
history of the Danish peat-mosses. Of the results of these inquiries
I shall give a brief abstract in the present chapter, that we may
afterwards compare them with deposits of older date, which throw light
on the antiquity of the human race.
The deposits of peat in Denmark,* varying in depth from 10 to 30 feet,
have been formed in hollows or depressions in the northern drift or
boulder formation hereafter to be described. (* An excellent account of
these researches of Danish naturalists and antiquaries has been drawn
up by an able Swiss geologist, M.A. Morlot, and will be found in the
"Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat." tome 6 Lausanne 1860.)
The lowest stratum, 2 to 3 feet thick, consists of swamp-peat composed
chiefly of moss or sphagnum, above which lies another growth of peat,
not made up exclusively of aquatic or swamp plants. Around the borders
of the bogs, and at various depths in them, lie trunks of trees,
especially of the Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris), often 3 feet in
diameter, which must have grown on the margin of the peat-mosses, and
have frequently fallen into them. This tree is not now, nor has ever
been in historical times, a native of the Danish Islands, and when
introduced there has not thriven; yet it was evidently indigenous in the
human period, for Steenstrup has taken out with his own hands a flint
instrument from below a buried trunk of one of these pines. It appears
clear that the same Scotch fir was afterwards supplanted by the sessile
variety of the common oak, of which many prostrate trunks occur in the
peat at higher levels than the pines; and still higher the pedunculated
variety of the same oak (Quercus robur, L.) occurs with the alder, birch
(Betula verrucosa, Ehrh.), and hazel. The oak has now in its turn been
almost superseded in Denmark by the common beech. Other trees, such as
the white birch (Betula alba), characterise the lower part of the
bogs, and disappear from the higher; while others again, like the aspen
(Populus tremula), occur at all levels, and still flourish in Denmark.
All the land and freshwater shells, and all the mammalia as well as the
plants, whose remains occur buried in the Danish peat, are of Recent
species. [3]
It has been stated, that a stone implement was found under a buried
Scotch fir at a great depth in the peat. By collecting and studying a
vast variety of such implements, and other articles of human workmanship
preserved in peat and in sand-dunes on the coast, as also in certain
shell-mounds of the aborigines presently to be described, the Danish
and Swedish antiquaries and naturalists, MM. Nilsson, Steenstrup,
Forchhammer, Thomsen, Worsaae, and others, have succeeded in
establishing a chronological succession of periods, which they have
called the ages of stone, of bronze, and of iron, named from the
materials which have each in their turn served for the fabrication of
implements.
The age of stone in Denmark coincided with the period of the first
vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir, and in part at least with the
second vegetation, or that of the oak. But a considerable portion of the
oak epoch coincided with "the age of bronze," for swords and shields of
that metal, now in the Museum of Copenhagen, have been taken out of peat
in which oaks abound. The age of iron corresponded more nearly with that
of the beech tree.*
(* Morlot "Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat."
tome 6 page 292.) [4]
M. Morlot, to whom we are indebted for a masterly sketch of the recent
progress of this new line of research, followed up with so much success
in Scandinavia and Switzerland, observes that the introduction of the
first tools made of bronze among a people previously ignorant of the use
of metals, implies a great advance in the arts, for bronze is an alloy
of about nine parts of copper and one of tin; and although the former
metal, copper, is by no means rare, and is occasionally found pure or
in a native state, tin is not only scarce but never occurs native. To
detect the existence of this metal in its ore, then to disengage it
from the matrix, and finally, after blending it in due proportion with
copper, to cast the fused mixture in a mould, allowing time for it to
acquire hardness by slow cooling, all this bespeaks no small sagacity
and skilful manipulation. Accordingly, the pottery found associated with
weapons of bronze is of a more ornamental and tasteful style than any
which belongs to the age of stone. Some of the moulds in which the
bronze instruments were cast, and "tags," as they are called, of bronze,
which are formed in the hole through which the fused metal was poured,
have been found. The number and variety of objects belonging to the age
of bronze indicates its long duration, as does the progress in the arts
implied by the rudeness of the earlier tools, often mere repetitions
of those of the stone age, as contrasted with the more skilfully worked
weapons of a later stage of the same period.
It has been suggested that an age of copper must always have intervened
between that of stone and bronze; but if so, the interval seems to have
been short in Europe, owing apparently to the territory occupied by the
aboriginal inhabitants having been invaded and conquered by a people
coming from the East, to whom the use of swords, spears, and other
weapons of bronze was familiar. Hatchets, however, of copper have been
found in the Danish peat.
The next stage of improvement, or that manifested by the substitution of
iron for bronze, indicates another stride in the progress of the arts.
Iron never presents itself, except in meteorites, in a native state,
so that to recognise its ores, and then to separate the metal from its
matrix, demands no inconsiderable exercise of the powers of observation
and invention. To fuse the ore requires an intense heat, not to be
obtained without artificial appliances, such as pipes inflated by the
human breath, or bellows, or some other suitable machinery.
DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS, OR KJOKKENMODDING.*
(* Mr. John Lubbock published, after these sheets were
written, an able paper on the Danish "Shell-mounds" in the
October number of the "Natural History Review" 1861 page
489, in which he has described the results of a recent visit
to Denmark, made by him in company with Mr. Busk.)
In addition to the peat-mosses, another class of memorials found in
Denmark has thrown light on the pre-historical age. At certain points
along the shores of nearly all the Danish islands, mounds may be seen,
consisting chiefly of thousands of cast-away shells of the oyster,
cockle, and other molluscs of the same species as those which are now
eaten by Man. These shells are plentifully mixed up with the bones of
various quadrupeds, birds, and fish, which served as the food of the
rude hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were accumulated. I have
seen similar large heaps of oysters, and other marine shells with
interspersed stone implements, near the seashore, both in Massachusetts
and in Georgia, U.S.A., left by the native North American Indians at
points near to which they were in the habit of pitching their wigwams
for centuries before the white man arrived.
Such accumulations are called by the Danes, Kjokkenmodding, or
"kitchen-middens." Scattered all through them are flint knives,
hatchets, and other instruments of stone, horn, wood, and bone, with
fragments of coarse pottery, mixed with charcoal and cinders, but never
any implements of bronze, still less of iron. The stone hatchets and
knives had been sharpened by rubbing, and in this respect are one degree
less rude than those of an older date, associated in France with the
bones of extinct mammalia, of which more in the sequel. The mounds vary
in height from 3 to 10 feet, and in area are some of them 1000 feet
long, and from 150 to 200 wide. They are rarely placed more than 10
feet above the level of the sea, and are confined to its immediate
neighbourhood, or if not (and there are cases where they are several
miles from the shore), the distance is ascribable to the entrance of a
small stream, which has deposited sediment, or to the growth of a peaty
swamp, by which the land has been made to advance on the Baltic, as it
is still doing in many places, aided, according to Puggaard, by a very
slow upheaval of the whole country at the rate of 2 or 3 inches in a
century.
There is also another geographical fact equally in favour of the
antiquity of the mounds, namely, that they are wanting on those parts of
the coast which border the Western Ocean, or exactly where the waves are
now slowly eating away the land. There is every reason to presume that
originally there were stations along the coast of the North Sea as well
as that of the Baltic, but by the gradual undermining of the cliffs they
have all been swept away.
Another striking proof, perhaps the most conclusive of all, that the
"kitchen-middens" are very old, is derived from the character of their
embedded shells. These consist entirely of living species; but, in the
first place, the common eatable oyster is among them, attaining its
full size, whereas the same Ostrea edulis cannot live at present in the
brackish waters of the Baltic except near its entrance, where, whenever
a north-westerly gale prevails, a current setting in from the ocean
pours in a great body of salt water. Yet it seems that during the whole
time of the accumulation of the "kitchen-middens" the oyster flourished
in places from which it is now excluded. In like manner the eatable
cockle, mussel, and periwinkle (Cardium edule, Mytilus edulis, and
Littorina littorea), which are met with in great numbers in the
"middens," are of the ordinary dimensions which they acquire in the
ocean, whereas the same species now living in the adjoining parts of
the Baltic only attain a third of their natural size, being stunted and
dwarfed in their growth by the quantity of fresh water poured by rivers
into that inland sea.*
(* See "Principles of Geology" chapter 30.)
Hence we may confidently infer that in the days of the aboriginal
hunters and fishers, the ocean had freer access than now to the Baltic,
communicating probably through the peninsula of Jutland, Jutland having
been at no remote period an archipelago. Even in the course of the
nineteenth century, the salt waters have made one irruption into the
Baltic by the Lymfiord, although they have been now again excluded. It
is also affirmed that other channels were open in historical times which
are now silted up.*
(* See Morlot "Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci.
Nat." tome 6.)
If we next turn to the remains of vertebrata preserved in the mounds,
we find that here also, as in the Danish peat-mosses, all the quadrupeds
belong to species known to have inhabited Europe within the memory of
Man. No remains of the mammoth, or rhinoceros, or of any extinct
species appear, except those of the wild bull (Bos urus, Linn., or Bos
primigenius, Bojanus), which are in such numbers as to prove that the
species was a favourite food of the ancient people. But as this animal
was seen by Julius Caesar, and survived long after his time, its
presence alone would not go far to prove the mounds to be of high
antiquity. The Lithuanian aurochs or bison (Bos bison, L., Bos priscus,
Boj.), which has escaped extirpation only because protected by the
Russian Czars, surviving in one forest in Lithuania) has not yet been
met with, but will no doubt be detected hereafter, as it has been
already found in the Danish peat. The beaver, long since destroyed in
Denmark, occurs frequently, as does the seal (Phoca Gryppus, Fab.), now
very rare on the Danish coast. With these are mingled bones of the red
deer and roe, but the reindeer has not yet been found. There are also
the bones of many carnivora, such as the lynx, fox, and wolf, but no
signs of any domesticated animals except the dog. The long bones of the
larger mammalia have been all broken as if by some instrument, in such
a manner as to allow of the extraction of the marrow, and the gristly
parts have been gnawed off, as if by dogs, to whose agency is also
attributed the almost entire absence of the bones of young birds and of
the smaller bones and softer parts of the skeletons of birds in general,
even of those of large size. In reference to the latter, it has been
proved experimentally by Professor Steenstrup, that if the same species
of birds are now given to dogs, they will devour those parts of the
skeleton which are missing, and leave just those which are preserved in
the old "kitchen-middens."
The dogs of the mounds, the only domesticated animals, are of a smaller
race than those of the bronze period, as shown by the peat-mosses, and
the dogs of the bronze age are inferior in size and strength to those
of the iron age. The domestic ox, horse, and sheep, which are wanting
in the mounds, are confined to that part of the Danish peat which was
formed in the ages of bronze and iron.
Among the bones of birds, scarcely any are more frequent in the mounds
than those of the auk (Alca impennis), now extinct. The Capercailzie
(Tetrao urogallus) is also met with, and may, it is suggested, have fed
on the buds of the Scotch fir in times when that tree flourished around
the peat-bogs. The different stages of growth of the roedeer's horns,
and the presence of the wild swan, now only a winter visitor, have
been appealed to as proving that the aborigines resided in the same
settlements all the year round. That they also ventured out to sea in
canoes such as are now found in the peat-mosses, hollowed out of the
trunk of a single tree, to catch fish far from land, is testified by the
bony relics of several deep-sea species, such as the herring, cod, and
flounder. The ancient people were not cannibals, for no human bones
are mingled with the spoils of the chase. Skulls, however, have been
obtained not only from peat, but from tumuli of the stone period
believed to be contemporaneous with the mounds. These skulls are small
and round, and have a prominent ridge over the orbits of the eyes,
showing that the ancient race was of small stature, with round heads and
overhanging eyebrows--in short, they bore a considerable resemblance to
the modern Laplanders. The human skulls of the bronze age found in the
Danish peat, and those of the iron period, are of an elongated form and
larger size. There appear to be very few well-authenticated examples
of crania referable to the bronze period--a circumstance no doubt
attributable to the custom prevalent among the people of that era of
burning their dead and collecting their bones in funeral urns.
No traces of grain of any sort have hitherto been discovered, nor
any other indication that the ancient people had any knowledge of
agriculture. The only vegetable remains in the mounds are burnt pieces
of wood and some charred substance referred by Dr. Forchhammer to the
Zostera marina, a sea plant which was perhaps used in the production of
salt.
What may be the antiquity of the earliest human remains preserved in
the Danish peat cannot be estimated in centuries with any approach
to accuracy. In the first place, in going back to the bronze age, we
already find ourselves beyond the reach of history or even of tradition.
In the time of the Romans the Danish Isles were covered, as now, with
magnificent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this tree flourish
more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen centuries seem to have
done little or nothing towards modifying the character of the forest
vegetation. Yet in the antecedent bronze period there were no beech
trees, or at most but a few stragglers, the country being then covered
with oak. In the age of stone again, the Scotch fir prevailed, and
already there were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. How many
generations of each species of tree flourished in succession before the
pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by the beech, can be but
vaguely conjectured, but the minimum of time required for the formation
of so much peat must, according to the estimate of Steenstrup and other
good authorities, have amounted to at least 4000 years; and there
is nothing in the observed rate of the growth of peat opposed to the
conclusion that the number of centuries may not have been four times as
great, even though the signs of Man's existence have not yet been traced
down to the lowest or amorphous stratum. As to the "kitchen-middens,"
they correspond in date to the older portion of the peaty record, or to
the earliest part of the age of stone as known in Denmark.
ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS, BUILT ON PILES.
[Illustration: Plate 1. Swiss Lake-Dwellings]
In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no
more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient wooden piles are observed
at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes
projecting slightly above it. These have evidently once supported
villages, nearly all of them of unknown date, but the most ancient of
which certainly belonged to the age of stone, for hundreds of implements
resembling those of the Danish shell-mounds and peat-mosses have been
dredged up from the mud into which the piles were driven.
The earliest historical account of such habitations is that given by
Herodotus of a Thracian tribe, who dwelt, in the year 520 B.C., in
Prasias, a small mountain-lake of Paeonia, now part of modern Roumelia.*
(* Herodotus lib. 5 cap. 16. Rediscovered by M. de Ville
"Natural History Review" volume 2 1862 page 486.)
Their habitations were constructed on platforms raised above the lake,
and resting on piles. They were connected with the shore by a narrow
causeway of similar formation. Such platforms must have been of
considerable extent, for the Paeonians lived there with their families
and horses. Their food consisted largely of the fish which the lake
produced in abundance.
In rude and unsettled times, such insular sites afforded safe retreats,
all communication with the mainland being cut off, except by boats, or
by such wooden bridges as could be easily removed.
The Swiss lake-dwellings seem first to have attracted attention during
the dry winter of 1853-54, when the lakes and rivers sank lower than had
ever been previously known, and when the inhabitants of Meilen, on the
Lake of Zurich, resolved to raise the level of some ground and turn it
into land, by throwing mud upon it obtained by dredging in the adjoining
shallow water. During these dredging operations they discovered a number
of wooden piles deeply driven into the bed of the lake, and among them
a great many hammers, axes, celts, and other instruments. All these
belonged to the stone period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of
thin brass wire, and a small bronze hatchet.
Fragments of rude pottery fashioned by the hand were abundant, also
masses of charred wood, supposed to have formed parts of the platform
on which the wooden cabins were built. Of this burnt timber, on this and
other sites, subsequently explored, there was such an abundance as to
lead to the conclusion that many of the settlements must have perished
by fire. Herodotus has recorded that the Paeonians, above alluded to,
preserved their independence during the Persian invasion, and defied the
attacks of Darius by aid of the peculiar position of their dwellings.
"But their safety," observes Mr. Wylie,* "was probably owing to their
living in the middle of the lake, (Greek) en mese te limne, whereas the
ancient Swiss settlers were compelled by the rapidly increasing depth of
the water near the margins of their lakes to construct their habitations
at a short distance from the shore, within easy bowshot of the land, and
therefore not out of reach of fiery projectiles, against which thatched
roofs and wooden walls could present but a poor defence."
(* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia" volume 38 1859, a valuable
paper on the Swiss and Irish lake-habitations.)
To these circumstances and to accidental fires we are probably indebted
for the frequent preservation, in the mud around the site of the old
settlements, of the most precious tools and works of art, such as would
never have been thrown into the Danish "kitchen-middens," which have
been aptly compared to a modern dusthole.
Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich has drawn up a series of most instructive
memoirs, illustrated with well-executed plates, of the treasures
in stone, bronze, and bone brought to light in these subaqueous
repositories, and has given an ideal restoration of part of one of the
old villages (see Plate 1 above),* such as he conceives may have existed
on the lakes of Zurich and Bienne.
(*Keller "Pfahlbauten, Antiquarische Gesellschaft in Zurich"
Bd. 12 and 13 1858-1861. In the fifth number of the "Natural
History Review" January 9, 1862, Mr. Lubbock has published
an excellent account of the works of the Swiss writers on
their lake-habitations.)
In this view, however, he has not simply trusted to his imagination,
but has availed himself of a sketch published by M. Dumont d'Urville, of
similar habitations of the Papuans in New Guinea in the Bay of Dorei. It
is also stated by Dr. Keller, that on the River Limmat, near Zurich, so
late as the last century, there were several fishing-huts constructed on
this same plan.*
(* Keller "Pfahlbauten, Antiquarische Gesellschaft in
Zurich" Bd. 9 page 81 note.)
It will be remarked that one of the cabins is represented as circular.
That such was the form of many in Switzerland is inferred from the
shape of pieces of clay which lined the interior, and which owe their
preservation apparently to their having been hardened by fire when the
village was burnt. In the sketch (Plate 1), some fishing-nets are seen
spread out to dry on the wooden platform. The Swiss archaeologist has
found abundant evidence of fishing-gear, consisting of pieces of cord,
hooks, and stones used as weights. A canoe also is introduced, such as
are occasionally met with. One of these, made of the trunk of a single
tree, fifty feet long and three and a half feet wide, was found capsized
at the bottom of the Lake of Bienne. It appears to have been laden
with stones, such as were used to raise the foundation of some of the
artificial islands.
It is believed that as many as 300 wooden huts were sometimes comprised
in one settlement, and that they may have contained about 1000
inhabitants. At Wangen, M. Lohle has calculated that 40,000 piles were
used, probably not all planted at one time nor by one generation. Among
the works of great merit devoted specially to a description of the Swiss
lake-habitations is that of M. Troyon, published in 1860.*
(* "Sur les Habitations lacustres.")
The number of sites which he and other authors have already enumerated
in Switzerland is truly wonderful. They occur on the large lakes of
Constance, Zurich, Geneva, and Neufchatel, and on most of the smaller
ones. Some are exclusively of the stone age, others of the bronze
period. Of these last more than twenty are spoken of on the Lake of
Geneva alone, more than forty on that of Neufchatel, and twenty on the
small Lake of Bienne.
One of the sites first studied by the Swiss antiquaries was the small
lake of Moosseedorf, near Berne, where implements of stone, horn, and
bone, but none of metal, were obtained. Although the flint here employed
must have come from a distance (probably from the south of France), the
chippings of the material are in such profusion as to imply that there
was a manufactory of implements on the spot. Here also, as in several
other settlements, hatchets and wedges of jade have been observed of a
kind said not to occur in Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Europe,
and which some mineralogists would fain derive from the East; amber
also, which, it is supposed, was imported from the shores of the Baltic.
At Wangen near Stein, on the Lake of Constance, another of the most
ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpentine and greenstone,
and arrow-heads of quartz have been met with. Here also remains of a
kind of cloth, supposed to be of flax, not woven but plaited, have
been detected. Professor Heer has recognised lumps of carbonised wheat,
Triticum vulgare, and grains of another kind, T. dicoccum, and barley,
Hordeum distichum, and flat round cakes of bread; and at Robbenhausen
and elsewhere Hordeum hexastichum in fine ears, the same kind of barley
which is found associated with Egyptian mummies, showing clearly that in
the stone period the lake-dwellers cultivated all these cereals, besides
having domesticated the dog, the ox, the sheep, and the goat.
Carbonised apples and pears of small size, such as still grow in the
Swiss forests, stones of the wild plum, seeds of the raspberry and
blackberry, and beech-nuts, also occur in the mud, and hazel-nuts in
great plenty.
Near Morges, on the Lake of Geneva, a settlement of the bronze period,
no less than forty hatchets of that metal have been dredged up, and in
many other localities the number and variety of weapons and utensils
discovered, in a fine state of preservation, is truly astonishing.
It is remarkable that as yet all the settlements of the bronze period
are confined to Western and Central Switzerland. In the more eastern
lakes those of the stone period alone have as yet been discovered.
The tools, ornaments, and pottery of the bronze period in Switzerland
bear a close resemblance to those of corresponding age in Denmark,
attesting the wide spread of a uniform civilisation over Central Europe
at that era. In some few of the Swiss aquatic stations a mixture of
bronze and iron implements has been observed, but no coins. At Tiefenau,
near Berne, in ground supposed to have been a battle-field, coins
and medals of bronze and silver, struck at Marseilles, and of Greek
manufacture, and iron swords, have been found, all belonging to the
first and pre-Roman division of the age of iron.
In the settlements of the bronze era the wooden piles are not so much
decayed as those of the stone period; the latter having wasted down
quite to the level of the mud, whereas the piles of the bronze age (as
in the Lake of Bienne, for example) still project above it.
Professor Rutimeyer of Basle, well-known to palaeontologists as the
author of several important memoirs on fossil vertebrata, has recently
published a scientific description of great interest of the animal
remains dredged up at various stations where they had been embedded for
ages in the mud into which the piles were driven.*
(* "Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz" Basel 1861.)
These bones bear the same relation to the primitive inhabitants of
Switzerland and some of their immediate successors as do the contents of
the Danish "kitchen-middens" to the ancient fishing and hunting tribes
who lived on the shores of the Baltic.
The list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent treatise contains
no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of several domesticated
ones: besides which there are eighteen species of birds, the wild swan,
goose, and two species of ducks being among them; also three reptiles,
including the eatable frog and freshwater tortoise; and lastly, nine
species of freshwater fish. All these (amounting to fifty-four species)
are with one exception still living in Europe. The exception is the wild
bull (Bos primigenius), which, as before stated, survived in historical
times. The following are the mammalia alluded to:--The bear (Ursus
arctos), the badger, the common marten, the polecat, the ermine, the
weasel, the otter, wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse
(Mus sylvaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the
wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus elaphus), the roe-deer,
the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (Capra ibex), the chamois, the
Lithuanian bison, and the wild bull. The domesticated species comprise
the dog, horse, ass, pig, goat, sheep, and several bovine races.
The greater number, if not all, of these animals served for food, and
all the bones which contained marrow have been split open in the same
way as the corresponding ones found in the shell-mounds of Denmark
before mentioned. The bones both of the wild bull and the bison are
invariably split in this manner. As a rule, the lower jaws with teeth
occur in greater abundance than any other parts of the skeleton--a
circumstance which, geologists know, holds good in regard to fossil
mammalia of all periods. As yet the reindeer is missing in the Swiss
lake-settlements as in the Danish "kitchen-middens," although this
animal in more ancient times ranged over France, together with the
mammoth, as far south as the Pyrenees.
A careful comparison of the bones from different sites has shown that
in settlements such as Wangen and Moosseedorf, belonging to the earliest
age of stone, when the habits of the hunter state predominated over
those of the pastoral, venison, or the flesh of the stag and roe, was
more eaten than the flesh of the domestic cattle and sheep. This was
afterwards reversed in the later stone period and in the age of bronze.
At that later period also the tame pig, which is wanting in some of the
oldest stations, had replaced the wild boar as a common article of
food. In the beginning of the age of stone, in Switzerland, the goats
outnumbered the sheep, but towards the close of the same period the
sheep were more abundant than the goats.
The fox in the first era was very common, but it nearly disappears in
the bronze age, during which period a large hunting-dog, supposed to
have been imported into Switzerland from some foreign country, becomes
the chief representative of the canine genus.
A single fragment of the bone of a hare (Lepus timidus) has been found
at Moosseedorf. The almost universal absence of this quadruped is
supposed to imply that the Swiss lake-dwellers were prevented from
eating that animal by the same superstition which now prevails among
the Laplanders, and which Julius Caesar found in full force amongst the
ancient Britons.*
(* "Commentaries" lib 5 chapter 12.)
That the lake-dwellers should have fed so largely on the fox, while
they abstained from touching the hare, establishes, says Rutimeyer, a
singular contrast between their tastes and ours.
Even in the earliest settlements, as already hinted, several
domesticated animals occur, namely, the ox, sheep, goat, and dog. Of the
three last, each was represented by one race only; but there were two
races of cattle, the most common being of small size, and called by
Rutimeyer Bos brachyceros (Bos longifrons, Owen), or the marsh cow,
the other derived from the wild bull; though, as no skull has yet been
discovered, this identification is not so certain as could be wished.
It is, however, beyond question that at a later era, namely, towards the
close of the stone and beginning of the bronze period, the lake-dwellers
had succeeded in taming that formidable brute the Bos primigenius, the
Urus of Caesar, which he described as very fierce, swift, and strong,
and scarcely inferior to the elephant in size. In a tame state its
bones were somewhat less massive and heavy, and its horns were somewhat
smaller than in wild individuals. Still in its domesticated form, it
rivalled in dimensions the largest living cattle, those of Friesland,
in North Holland, for example. When most abundant, as at Concise on
the Lake of Neufchatel, it had nearly superseded the smaller race,
Bos brachyceros, and was accompanied there for a short time by a third
bovine variety, called Bos trochoceros, an Italian race, supposed
to have been imported from the southern side of the Alps. (Caesar
"Commentaries" lib 5 chapter 12.) This last-mentioned race, however,
seems only to have lasted for a short time in Switzerland.
The wild bull (Bos primigenius) is supposed to have flourished for a
while in a wild and tame state, just as now in Europe the domestic
pig co-exists with the wild boar; and Rutimeyer agrees with Cuvier and
Bell,* in considering our larger domestic cattle of northern Europe as
the descendants of this wild bull, an opinion which Owen disputes.**
(* "British Quadrupeds" page 415.)
(** "British Fossil Mammal." page 500.)
In the later division of the stone period, there were two tame races of
the pig, according to Rutimeyer; one large, and derived from the
wild boar, the other smaller, called the "marsh-hog," or Sus scrofa
palustris. It may be asked how the osteologist can distinguish the tame
from the wild races of the same species by their skeletons alone.
Among other characters, the diminished thickness of the bones and the
comparative smallness of the ridges, which afford attachment to the
muscles, are relied on; also the smaller dimensions of the tusks in
the boar, and of the whole jaw and skull; and, in like manner, the
diminished size of the horns of the bull and other modifications, which
are the effects of a regular supply of food, and the absence of all
necessity of exerting their activity and strength to obtain subsistence
and defend themselves against their enemies.
A middle-sized race of dogs continued unaltered throughout the whole of
the stone period; but the people of the bronze age possessed a larger
hunting-dog, and with it a small horse, of which genus very few traces
have been detected in the earlier settlements--a single tooth, for
example, at Wangen, and only one or two bones at two or three other
places.
In passing from the oldest to the most modern sites, the extirpation of
the elk and beaver, and the gradual reduction in numbers of the bear,
stag, roe, and freshwater tortoise are distinctly perceptible. The
aurochs, or Lithuanian bison, appears to have died out in Switzerland
about the time when weapons of bronze came into use. It is only in a few
of the most modern lake-dwellings, such as Noville and Chavannes in the
Canton de Vaud (which the antiquaries refer to the sixth century), that
some traces are observable of the domestic cat, as well as of a sheep
with crooked horns and with them bones of the domestic fowl.
After the sixth century, no extinction of any wild quadruped nor
introduction of any tame one appears to have taken place, but the fauna
was still modified by the wild species continuing to diminish in number
and the tame ones to become more diversified by breeding and crossing,
especially in the case of the dog, horse, and sheep. On the whole,
however, the divergence of the domestic races from their aboriginal wild
types, as exemplified at Wangen and Moosseedorf, is confined, according
to Professor Rutimeyer, within narrow limits. As to the goat, it has
remained nearly constant and true to its pristine form, and the small
race of goat-horned sheep still lingers in some alpine valleys in the
Upper Rhine; and in the same region a race of pigs, corresponding to the
domesticated variety of Sus scrofa palustris, may still be seen.
Amidst all this profusion of animal remains extremely few bones of Man
have been discovered; and only one skull, dredged up from Meilen, on
the Lake of Zurich, of the early stone period, seems as yet to have been
carefully examined. Respecting this specimen, Professor His observes
that it exhibits, instead of the small and rounded form proper to
the Danish peat-mosses, a type much more like that now prevailing
in Switzerland, which is intermediate between the long-headed and
short-headed form. (Rutimeyer "Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz"
page 181.)
So far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a single
specimen, there has been no marked change of race in the human
population of Switzerland during the periods above considered.
It is still a question whether any of these subaqueous repositories
of ancient relics in Switzerland go back so far in time as the
kitchen-middens of Denmark, for in these last there are no domesticated
animals except the dog, and no signs of the cultivation of wheat or
barley; whereas we have seen that, in one of the oldest of the
Swiss settlements, at Wangen, no less than three cereals make their
appearance, with four kinds of domestic animals. Yet there is no small
risk of error in speculating on the relative claims to antiquity of such
ancient tribes, for some of them may have remained isolated for ages and
stationary in their habits, while others advanced and improved.
We know that nations, both before and after the introduction of metals,
may continue in very different stages of civilisation, even after
commercial intercourse has been established between them, and where they
are separated by a less distance than that which divides the Alps from
the Baltic.
The attempts of the Swiss geologists and archaeologists to estimate
definitely in years the antiquity of the bronze and stone periods,
although as yet confessedly imperfect, deserve notice, and appear to me
to be full of promise. The most elaborate calculation is that made by M.
Morlot, respecting the delta of the Tiniere, a torrent which flows
into the Lake of Geneva near Villeneuve. This small delta, to which the
stream is annually making additions, is composed of gravel and sand.
Its shape is that of a flattened cone, and its internal structure has of
late been laid open to view in a railway cutting 1000 feet long and 32
feet deep. The regularity of its structure throughout implies that it
has been formed very gradually, and by the uniform action of the same
causes. Three layers of vegetable soil, each of which must at one time
have formed the surface of the cone, have been cut through at different
depths. The first of these was traced over a surface of 15,000 square
feet, having an average thickness of 5 inches, and being about 4 feet
below the present surface of the cone. This upper layer belonged to the
Roman period, and contained Roman tiles and a coin. The second layer,
followed over a surface of 25,000 square feet, was 6 inches thick, and
lay at a depth of 10 feet. In it were found fragments of unvarnished
pottery and a pair of tweezers in bronze, indicating the bronze epoch.
The third layer, followed for 35,000 square feet, was 6 or 7 inches
thick and 19 feet deep. In it were fragments of rude pottery, pieces of
charcoal, broken bones, and a human skeleton having a small, round and
very thick skull. M. Morlot, assuming the Roman period to represent an
antiquity of from sixteen to eighteen centuries, assigns to the bronze
age a date of between 3000 and 4000 years, and to the oldest layer, that
of the stone period, an age of from 5000 to 7000 years.
Another calculation has been made by M. Troyon to obtain the approximate
date of the remains of an ancient settlement built on piles and
preserved in a peat-bog at Chamblon, near Yverdun, on the Lake of
Neufchatel. The site of the ancient Roman town of Eburodunum (Yverdun),
once on the borders of the lake, and between which and the shore there
now intervenes a zone of newly-gained dry land, 2500 feet in breadth,
shows the rate at which the bed of the lake has been filled up with
river sediment in fifteen centuries. Assuming the lake to have retreated
at the same rate before the Roman period, the pile-works of Chamblon,
which are of the bronze period, must be at the least 3300 years old.
For the third calculation, communicated to me by M. Morlot, we are
indebted to M. Victor Gillieron, of Neuveville, on the Lake of Bienne.
It relates to the age of a pile-dwelling, the mammalian bones of which
are considered by M. Rutimeyer to indicate the earliest portion of
the stone period of Switzerland, and to correspond in age with the
settlement of Moosseedorf.
The piles in question occur at the Pont de Thiele, between the lakes of
Bienne and Neufchatel. The old convent of St. Jean, founded 750 years
ago, and built originally on the margin of the Lake of Bienne, is now
at a considerable distance from the shore, and affords a measure of the
rate of the gain of land in seven centuries and a half. Assuming that
a similar rate of the conversion of water into marshy land prevailed
antecedently, we should require an addition of sixty centuries for the
growth of the morass intervening between the convent and the aquatic
dwelling of Pont de Thiele, in all 6750 years. M. Morlot, after
examining the ground, thinks it highly probable that the shape of the
bottom on which the morass rests is uniform; but this important point
has not yet been tested by boring. The result, if confirmed, would agree
exceedingly well with the chronological computation before mentioned
of the age of the stone period of Tiniere. As I have not myself visited
Switzerland since these chronological speculations were first hazarded,
I am unable to enter critically into a discussion of the objections
which have been raised to the two first of them, or to decide on the
merits of the explanations offered in reply.
IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS OR CRANNOGES.
The lake-dwellings of the British isles, although not explored as yet
with scientific zeal, as those of Switzerland have been in the last ten
years, are yet known to be very numerous, and when carefully examined
will not fail to throw great light on the history of the bronze and
stone periods.
In the lakes of Ireland alone, no less than forty-six examples of
artificial islands, called crannoges, have been discovered. They occur
in Leitrim, Roscommon, Cavan, Down, Monaghan, Limerick, Meath, King's
County, and Tyrone.*
(* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia" volume 38 1859 page 8.)
One class of these "stockaded islands," as they have been sometimes
called, was formed, according to Mr. Digby Wyatt, by placing horizontal
oak beams at the bottom of the lake, into which oak posts, from 6 to
8 feet high, were mortised, and held together by cross beams, till a
circular enclosure was obtained.
A space of 520 feet diameter, thus enclosed at Lagore, was divided into
sundry timbered compartments, which were found filled up with mud or
earth, from which were taken "vast quantities of the bones of oxen,
swine, deer, goats, sheep, dogs, foxes, horses, and asses." All these
were discovered beneath 16 feet of bog, and were used for manure; but
specimens of them are said to be preserved in the museum of the Royal
Irish Academy. From the same spot were obtained a great collection of
antiquities, which, according to Lord Talbot de Malahide and Mr. Wylie,
were referable to the ages of stone, bronze, and iron.*
(* W.M. Wylie "Archaeologia" volume 38 1859 page 8, who
cites "Archaeological Journal" volume 6 page 101.)
In Ardekillin Lake, in Roscommon, an islet of an oval form was observed,
made of a layer of stones resting on logs of timber. Round this
artificial islet or crannoge thus formed was a stone wall raised on oak
piles. A careful description has been put on record by Captain Mudge,
R.N., of a curious log-cabin discovered by him in 1833 in Drumkellin
bog, in Donegal, at a depth of 14 feet from the surface. It was 12 feet
square and 9 feet high, being divided into two stories each 4 feet high.
The planking was of oak split with wedges of stone, one of which was
found in the building. The roof was flat. A staked enclosure had been
raised round the cabin, and remains of other similar huts adjoining were
seen but not explored. A stone celt, found in the interior of the hut,
and a piece of leather sandal, also an arrow-head of flint, and in the
bog close at hand a wooden sword, give evidence of the remote antiquity
of this building, which may be taken as a type of the early dwellings on
the Crannoge islands.
"The whole structure," says Captain Mudge, "was wrought with the
rudest kind of implements, and the labour bestowed on it must have been
immense. The wood of the mortises was more bruised than cut, as if by a
blunt stone chisel."*
(* Mudge "Archaeologia" volume 26.)
Such a chisel lay on the floor of the hut, and by comparing it with
the marks of the tool used in forming the mortises, they were found "to
correspond exactly, even to the slight curved exterior of the chisel;
but the logs had been hewn by a larger instrument, in the shape of an
axe. On the floor of the dwelling lay a slab of freestone, 3 feet
long and 14 inches thick, in the centre of which was a small pit three
quarters of an inch deep, which had been chiselled out. This is presumed
to have been used for holding nuts to be cracked by means of one of the
round shingle stones, also found there, which had served as a hammer.
Some entire hazel-nuts and a great quantity of broken shells were
strewed about the floor."
The foundations of the house were made of fine sand, such as is found
with shingle on the seashore about 2 miles distant. Below the layer of
sand the bog or peat was ascertained, on probing it with an instrument,
to be at least 15 feet thick. Although the interior of the building when
discovered was full of "bog" or peaty matter, it seems when inhabited to
have been surrounded by growing trees, some of the trunks and roots
of which are still preserved in their natural position. The depth of
overlying peat affords no safe criterion for calculating the age of the
cabin or village, for I have shown in the "Principles of Geology" that
both in England and Ireland, within historical times, bogs have burst
and sent forth great volumes of black mud, which has been known to
creep over the country at a slow pace, flowing somewhat at the rate of
ordinary lava-currents, and sometimes overwhelming woods and cottages,
and leaving a deposit upon them of bog-earth 15 feet thick.
None of these Irish lake-dwellings were built, like those of Helvetia,
on platforms supported by piles deeply driven into the mud. "The
Crannoge system of Ireland seems," says Mr. Wylie, "well nigh without a
parallel in Swiss waters."