Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/117

Rh they wanting in Africa, where the Pyramids themselves exhibit the most magnificent development of the same idea; indeed, the whole world is studded with the burial places of the dead. Tumuli or barrows are much more numerous and more widely distributed than stone circles. No doubt the great majority of them are burial mounds, but some also were erected as memorials, like the "heap of witness" erected by Laban and Jacob, or the mound heaped up by the ten thousand in their celebrated retreat, when they obtained their first view of the sea.

One of the most curious habits of the prehistoric European was that of constructing his dwellings upon piles above the surface of the water. The vestiges of many Swiss buildings of this sort are not unlike those of the Pæonians, described by Herodotus.

"Their dwellings," he says, "are contrived after this manner planks fitted on lofty piles are placed in the middle of the lake, with a narrow entrance from the mainland by a single bridge. These piles, that support the planks, all the citizens anciently placed there at the public charge; but afterward they established a law to the following effect: whenever a man marries, for each wife he sinks three piles, bringing wood from a mountain called Orbelus: but every man has