Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/458

 CHAPTER XIV

coming to a decision as to the origin, chronological range, and racial affinities of the terramaricoli, it is necessary to examine for comparative purposes the archæological evidence derived from contemporary habitations. Prominent in importance among collateral remains of this kind are the pile-structures found in lakes and peat-bogs throughout the Po Valley. The purpose of the present lecture is to show the close relationship between the archæological materials found on the sites of these lacustrine abodes and those disinterred from the terremare, with the suggested inference that the lake-dwellers were the ancestors of the terramaricoli.

On the 20th of July 1860, M. G. de Mortillet wrote a letter to Sig. Cornalia, president of the Italian Society of the Natural Sciences at Milan (Atti detta Soc. It. di Sc. Nat., vol. ii., p. 177), in which, while mentioning the discoveries made in Switzerland, he suggested that similar antiquities might be found in the lakes of Lombardy. The reading of this letter led to a discussion which at once elicited one or two statements of archæological importance. The vice-president, Sig. Antonio Villa, recalled the fact that a bronze axe-head and some flint arrowheads were found in the turf bog of Bosisio, at a depth of 10 feet, which were described and figured in a Milan journal, Il Fotografo, 2nd August 1856. The president also mentioned that he possessed weapons of a similar character, which were found, along with some human bones, in the peat-bogs of Brenna. Shortly afterwards the celebrated naturalist Gastaldi, in an article in Il Nuovo Cirnento, directed attention to certain antiquities which the turf-cutters were in the habit of finding in the "torbiera di Mercurago" (B. 3). Subsequently Gastaldi visited this locality, and along with Prof. Moro of Arona (who first