Page:The Rise of the Swiss Republic (1892).djvu/27

Rh belonged to a more primitive race. Mr. Robert Munro states it as his conclusion that the original founders of the settlements were immigrants who penetrated into Europe from the East during the neolithic period. He thinks that they spread from the regions surrounding the Black Sea and the shores of the Mediterranean, up the Danube and its tributaries into Styria, into the valley of the Po, and to the Swiss lakes, and that the Scotch and Irish crannogs with analogous remains in other countries are cases of the system cropping up in out-of-the-way corners after the great lake dwelling centres had already collapsed. Although it is impossible to fix upon precise dates for this lake dwelling era, the approximate age of the earliest settlements has been computed as perhaps 2000 or 3000 B. C. and the latest as 800 or 1000 B. C.

No very definite explanation has yet been given of the reason why these people invariably built their homes over the water. Some writers ascribe this practice to a desire for protection; others to the primeval forests which covered the available land, or to the facilities for communication and for fishing. Personally I am inclined to think that it was a racial custom which they brought with them from their homes in the swamps of Asia, and which had become a fixed tradition amongst them.

As for the subsequent history of the Lake Dwellers, it is shrouded in complete mystery, for when we next hear of the territory occupied by modern Switzerland, it is described as inhabited by Celts, living in towns and villages on the land. This strange race, therefore, returns to the darkness from which the discoveries of Obermeilen momentarily caused it to emerge.