Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/319

] our ideas as to the Neolithic civilisation of Britain.

In the year 1829 an excavation for the sake of deepening the harbour at Ober Meilen, on the lake of Zurich, revealed the existence of piles and other antiquities, which, however, excited as little interest at the time as the discoveries in Kent's Hole, which were being made by Mr. MacEnery about the same date. Their importance was recognised in the year 1854. From that time down to the present day researches have been carried on in many of the lakes of Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, which have resulted in proving that a large population dwelt in houses built on platforms, at a short distance from the shore, in the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and in Switzerland as late as the first century after Christ. In most cases the habitations had been burnt, and the platforms, with what remained of the huts and of the household stuff, had dropped down to the bottom of the lake, and, together with the refuse and the various articles lost from time to time, constituted a relic bed, which places before us the manners and customs of the inhabitants in most extra- ordinary detail. In some cases this had happened repeatedly, each conflagration being marked by its layer of ashes and charred piles.

The artificial platforms for the huts were built sometimes on piles interlaced with timbers, and sometimes on bundles of brushwood, or fascines, occasionally weighted with clay or stone, and were connected with the land by a narrow causeway. They were intended