lakes, and in peat-bogs near Pfeffikon, Inwyl, Wauwyl, and Moosseedorf. Often they are grouped into considerable villages, as on Lakes Constance, Neuchatel, Geneva, Zurich, and Morlat. These dwellings are found not only in Switzerland, but also in Bavaria, Carinthia, Moravia, Pomerania, and Mecklenburg, in Germany; and in France, England, Ireland, and the north of Italy. Of these some belong to the Stone age, some to the Bronze age, which we will next describe, and some were inhabited during both the Stone and Bronze ages.
With the pile-dwellings are to be classed the cranochs or cranogues—artificial islands, built upon piles in the peat-bogs and lakes of Ireland; the burial-places of Monsheim, near Worms; and land-stations in wellnigh every country in Europe, as well as in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Japan, Java, India, North Africa, Egypt, and North America. It must not be forgotten, however, that the polished-stone implements of some of these various localities may belong to later times, as there are now living tribes at about the grade of culture that was attained in the Stone age.[1] At Grand-Presigny, south of Tours, and at Charbonnières, in the Macon district, are places abounding with the nuclei of flint-boulders, and articles made therefrom in every stage of finish, with many spoiled in making—places evidently once devoted to this manufacture. Some caves in the departments of Yonne and Ariege show layers of loam upon calcareous tufa, the human and animal remains of each of which are exactly those of the successive ages we have discussed, viz., of the Mammoth, of the Reindeer, and of Polished Stone. That is, they constitute a succession of deposits, each with its peculiar animal remains, and hence offer the same kind of evidence as to their relative antiquity as do the older geological strata.
And like the earlier geological eras, the various ages of prehistoric human existence are not sharply defined and severed, each from the preceding and succeeding one, but one merges into the other by gradual progressions of thousands of years. Not only certain species of plants and animals, but entire races of man, have thus slowly vanished from off the earth, or retreated to lands far remote, while others have as gradually come in to occupy their places. Some animal species, as for instance Speller's Borken-thier[2] the dodo, and the auk or great diver, have died out within historic times; others in very recent times, as for example the huge birds of New
- ↑ Long after metals were in common use among them, many ancient peoples (of which the Jews were one, as the Bible informs us) employed stone knives in all religious sacrifices, etc. The Indians of North America and the Greenlanders yet use stone implements exactly similar to those of the lake-dwellings.
- ↑ Literally, bark-animal, or bark-eater, as we would say in English. I am utterly at a loss for the English or scientific synonym. The best guess I can offer is that it is a Castoroid, or Castor proper—possibly the giant beaver of the species Discopyhlus. (See Dana, "Geology," pp. 562, 563.)—Trans.
