This discovery once made, it is surprising what numbers of these ancient lake villages have been discovered. Switzerland abounds in large and small lakes, and in former times they must have been still more numerous, but in the course of years they have become filled up, and now exist only as peat bogs. But we now know that during the Neolithic Age the country was quite thickly inhabited, and these lakes were the sites of villages. Over two hundred have been found in Switzerland alone. Fishermen had known of the existence of these piles long before their meaning was understood. Lake Geneva is one of the most famous of the Swiss lakes. Though in the main it is deep, yet around the shore there is a fringe of shallow water.
It was in this shallow belt that the villages were built. The sites of twenty-four settlements are known. We are told that on “calm days, when the surface of the water is unruffled, the piles are plainly visible. Few of them now project more than two feet from the bottom, eaten away by the incessant action of the water. Lying among them are objects of bone, horn, pottery, and frequently even of bronze. So fresh are they, and so unaltered, they look as if they were only things of yesterday, and it seems hard to believe that they can have remained there for centuries.”7
A lake settlement represents an immense amount of work for a people destitute of metallic tools. After settling on the locality, the first step would be to obtain the timbers. The piles were generally composed of the trunks of small-sized trees at that time flourishing in Switzerland. But to cut down a tree with a stone hatchet is no slight undertaking. They probably used fire to help them. After the tree was felled it had to be cut off again at the right length, the branches lopped off, and one end rudely sharpened. It was then taken to the place and driven into the mud of the lake bottom. For this purpose they used heavy wooden mallets. It has been estimated that one of the settlements on Lake Constance required forty thousand piles in its construction.8
The platform which rested on these piles was elevated several feet above the surface of the water, so as to allow for the swash of the waves. It was composed of branches and trunks of trees banded together, the whole covered with clay. Sometimes they split the trees with wedges so as to make thick slabs. In some instances wooden pegs were used to fasten portions of the platform to the pilework.
As to the houses which were erected on these platforms, though they have utterly vanished, yet from a few remains we can judge something as to the mode of construction. They seem to have been formed of trunks of trees placed upright, one by the side of the other, and bound together by interwoven branches. This was then covered on both sides with two or three inches of clay. A plaster of clay and gravel formed the floor, and a few slabs of sandstone did duty for a fire-place. The roof was of bark, straw, or rushes. There does not seem to have been much of a plan used in laying out a settlement. As population increased other piles were added, and thus the village gradually extended. No one village would be likely to contain a great number of inhabitants. Calculations based on the area of one of the largest settlements in Lake Geneva, gives as a result a population of thirteen hundred, but manifestly nothing definite is known.
This brief description gives us an idea of a method of constructing villages which, as we shall soon see, extended all over Europe, though varied somewhat in detail. The condition of the remains indicate that these settlements were often destroyed by fire. At such times quantities of arms, implements, and household industries would have been lost in the water, and so preserved for our inspection.
This mode of building found such favor among the early inhabitants of Europe that it continued in use through the Neolithic Age, that of Bronze, and even into the age of Iron. Passages here and there in ancient histories evidently refer to them. Though they have long since passed away in Switzerland, the Spaniards found them in Mexico, and they are still to be seen in some of the isles of the Pacific. Remembering this, we need not be surprised if we find in one small lake settlements belonging to widely different ages. Here one of the Stone Age, there one of the Bronze, or even a confused mingling of what seems to be several ages in one settlement.9
There is scarcely a country in Europe that does not contain examples of lake villages. From their wide distribution we infer that a common race spread over the land. We will now mention some differences in construction discovered at some places, where, from the rocky nature of the bed of the lake, it was impossible to drive piles so as to form a firm foundation. They sometimes packed quantities of stone around the piles to serve as supports in a manner as here indicated. “In all probability the stones used were conveyed to the required spot by means of canoes, made of hollowed out trunks of trees. Several of these canoes may still be seen at the bottom of Lake Bienne, and one, indeed, laden with pebbles, which leads us to think it must have foundered with its cargo.”10
