It is, however, chiefly in America that these heaps attract attention, for there huge sh.e.l.l-mounds stretch along the coast in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 sh.e.l.l-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 sh.e.l.ls. 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 sh.e.l.ls, 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. Putnam[117] gives an account of the excavation of one of these mounds formed of sh.e.l.ls of the MYA, VENUS, PECTEN, BUCCINUM, and NATICA genera. 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ls. Some bird bones were also found, and the knives, arrow- and spear-heads, sc.r.a.pers, etc., were all of the rudest workmanship. Mr. Phelps has superintended yet more important excavations at Damariscotta[118] and all along the coast to the month of the Pen.o.bscot. 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 ma.s.s of oyster sh.e.l.ls attaining a height of nearly thirty feet, and the height of several others is more than forty feet.[119]
In all of them bushels of sh.e.l.ls 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 lat.i.tude at more recent periods. At Long-Nick-Branch is a sh.e.l.l-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 acc.u.mulations, excavations have yielded thousands of stone hammers and bone implements (Fig. 24).
The sh.e.l.l-mounds of which we have so far been speaking are all near the sea, but there is yet another consisting entirely of marine sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.o.r.e.
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 sh.e.l.l-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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sh.o.r.es 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 a.s.signed 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 coa.r.s.e, 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, b.u.t.tons, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 w.a.n.gen, and a hundred thousand at Robenhausen. The area occupied by the stations varies considerably; according to Troyon, that at w.a.n.gen 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 a.s.sert 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 cla.s.sic 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 sc.r.a.pers, 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 (TRITIc.u.m VULGARE ANTIQUORUM and TRITIc.u.m 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 circ.u.mference, 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. Coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sign 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 (Ba.s.ses-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, w.a.n.gen, 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 a.s.sert 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 acc.u.mulated 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 the TERREMARES have 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 certain TERREMARES, but these were only roughly melted pieces of metal, showing no traces of having been either hammered or soldered. Amongst the pottery found in the TERREMARES, 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 archaeologists call them FUSAIOLES, and Swiss savants, who have found a great many in the lakes of their native country, give them the name of PESONS 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 (see Chapter VII.).
At Castione, near the town of Parma, and in several other parts of the provinces of Parma and Reggio, TERREMARES have been discovered rising from the midst of vast rectangular basins artificially hollowed out. Some have concluded from this that the TERREMARECOLLI as the inhabitants of the TERREMARES have 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.[126] Who 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 the TERREMARES were 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 the TERREMARES. 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 the TERREMARES. We are therefore disposed to think with Heilbig, that the TERREMARECOLLI were 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 a TERREMARE at Toszig, in Hungary, Pigorini,[127] was 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 the TERREMARES, 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 Rosa[128] noticed in the Abruzzi extensive black patches on the ground, which bore witness to the former residence of men. The excavation of these FONDI DI CABANE, as they are called, led to the finding of a great many stone knives and sc.r.a.pers with numerous bone stilettos and the bones of various animals, all of them of species still living. Later, similar FONDI were 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 k.n.o.bs. These vases differ greatly from those found in the TERREMARES; 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.