Besides these there have been found many specimens of plaited and woven cloth; also ropes, cords, and a portion of a linseed cake.[70]
In the different settlements the same axes and knives abound, and are of small size. The arrow-heads and saws are an improvement on those of the preceding epoch. Among domestic implements, spindle-whorls of rude earthenware were abundant in some of the villages, and corn-crushers are occasionally met with from two to three inches in diameter. About five hundred implements of stone have been found at Wauwyl, consisting of axes, small flint arrow-heads, flint-flakes, corn-crushers, rude stones used as hammers, whetstones, and sling-stones.
As these Lake-Dwellings not only belong to the last of the neolithic, but extend beyond, they naturally have a place in the close of this period. M. Troyon says the dwellings of this period came suddenly to an "end by the irruption of a people provided with bronze implements. The lake-dwellings were burned by these new-comers, and the primitive inhabitants were slaughtered or driven back into remote places. This catastrophe affects chiefly the settlements of East Switzerland, which entirely disappeared, and also a number of those on the shore of the western lakes. Some few settlements, however—namely, those of the so-called transition period—are said not to have been destroyed by the new people till after the inhabitants had begun to make use of bronze implements."[71]
Dr. Keller takes exception to these views. He says there is no sudden leap from one class of civilization to another, and that the metals came gradually into use. The lake-dwellings were not burned down by the irruption of a foreign people; for at Niederwyl, and several settlements of the Unter-See, no traces of fire have been observed. The fact that but a very few human skeletons have been found in the whole settlements, contradicts the supposition of a battle having taken place between the aborigines and the supposed conquerors, and of the destruction of the former by the latter.[72]
Lake-dwellings belonging to this age and the bronze, have been found in Bavaria, Northern Italy, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Herodotus says that the Pæonians lived this way in Lake Prasias (Thrace), and Lubbock says that the fishermen of Lake Prasias still inhabit wooden huts built over the water. The town of Tcherkask in Russia, is constructed over the river Don, and Venice itself is but a lacustrine city.[73]
Several attempts have been made to estimate the time which has elapsed since the neolithic period. The estimates of M. Morlot are based on the discoveries made in a hillock formed by the river Tinière at its entrance into the lake of Geneva. This cone contained three distinct layers of vegetable earth placed at different depths between the deposits of alluvium. The first was at a depth of three and one-half feet from the top, and was from four to six inches thick, and in it were found relics of the Roman period; the second was five and one-fourth feet lower, and six inches thick, in which were fragments of bronze; the third was at a depth of eighteen feet from the top, and varied in thickness from six to seven inches, and contained fragments of the stone age. History proves that the layer containing the Roman relics is from thirteen to eighteen centuries old. Since that epoch the cone has increased three and one-half feet, and if the increase was the same in previous ages, then the bed containing the bronze is from twenty-nine hundred to forty-two hundred years old, and the lowest layer, belonging to the stone age, is from four thousand seven hundred to ten thousand years old.
The calculation by M. Gillieron was made from the discoveries near the bridge of Thièle. About one thousand two hundred and thirty feet from the present shore is the old abbey of Saint Jean, built in the year 1100. There is a document which seems to show that the abbey was built on the edge of the lake. Then, in seven hundred and fifty years the lake retired one thousand two hundred and thirty feet. The distance of the present shore from the settlement of the bridge of Thièle is eleven thousand and seventy-two feet, and consequently the settlement is not less than six thousand seven hundred and fifty years old.
M. Figuier assigns to the lake-dwellings an antiquity of from six to seven thousand years before the Christian era.[74]