Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/36

 12 Outlines of European History Civilization of the Late Stone Age ; wooden dwellings and wooden furniture Discovery of burned clay and appear- ance of earli- est pottery Flax and woven clothing Seed-bearing wild grasses become do- mesticated grain Domestica- tion of cattle, sheep, and goats Earliest carts Communities organized whence they were strewn far up the winding valleys of the rivers into the interior of Europe. The w^ooden dwellings of the Late Stone Age are the earliest such shelters found in Europe. Sunken fragments of these houses are found all along the shores of the Swiss lakes, lying at the bottom, among the piles which supported the houses of the village (Fig. 6). Pieces of stools, chests, carved dippers, spoons, and the like, all of wood, show that these houses were equipped with convenient wooden furniture. The householder now knows that clay will harden in the fire, and he makes handy jars, bowls, and dishes of burned clay (Fig. 7). Although roughly made without the use of the potter's wheel and unevenly burned without an oven, they add much to the equipment of his dwelling. Before his door the women spin their flax, and the rough skin clothing of his ancestors has given way to garments of woven stuff. Up the hillside stretches the field of flax, and beside it another of wheat or of barley. The seeds which their ancestors once gath- ered from the scattered tufts of the wild grasses, these I>ate Stone Age men have slowly learned may be planted near the dwelling in ground prepared for the purpose. Thus wild grain is domes- ticated, and agriculture has been introduced. On the green uplands above are now feeding the creatures which the Middle Stone Age man once pursued through the wilds, for the mountain sheep and goats and the wild cattle have now learned to dwell near man" and submit to his control. Indeed, the wild ox bows his neck to the yoke and draws the plow across the forest-girt field where he once wandered in unhampered freedom. Fragments of wooden wheels in the lake-villages show that he is also drawing the w^heeled cart, the earliest in Europe. Groups of massive tombs still surviving, built of enormous blocks of stone (Fig. 8), requiring the united efforts of large numbers of men, disclose to us the beginnings of cooperation and social unity. The driving of fifty thousand piles for the lake-village at Wangen shows that men were learning to work together in communities, but a flint arrowhead