The remains of the stag and of the ox are more numerous than those of any other animal, and it is easy to see that every clay the importance of a pastoral life became more clearly recognized. In the most ancient Lake Stations, those of Mooseedorf, Wangen, and Meilen, for instance, the stag predominates; in those of the western lakes, which are comparatively more recent, relics of the ox are more numerous. In the Lake village of Nidau, which dates from the Bronze age, a greatly increased number of bones of domestic animals have been found, whilst those of wild creatures become rarer and rarer. The progress of domestication is evident, and it is no less certain that the lapse of centuries must have been required for the formation of the herds which evidently existed in certain localities. It is possible that these animals may have first entered Europe in the wake of foreign invaders, and before being reduced to servitude, they may have roamed about in a wild state, and even have been contemporaries with species now extinct. However that may be, there can be no doubt on one point, they could not domesticate themselves; one race of creatures after another must have fallen under the subjection of man, who gradually became the master of all the animals that are still about us.
We do not meet in the pile dwellings with the common mouse, the rat, or the cat, and the horse is very rare. It is the same with the kitchen-middings and the caves occupied in Neolithic times. The disappearance of the horse, so numerous in earlier epochs, is general, and this would be inexplicable if history did not solve the mystery. The Bible, which gives us such complete details of the pastoral life of the Hebrews, speaks for the first time of the horse after the exodus from Egypt of the children of Israel, and in Egypt itself the horse is not represented in any monument of earlier date than the Seventeenth Dynasty. It is the same in America, animals of the equine race, that were so numerous in early geological times, had long since disappeared on the arrival of the Spaniards, and the horses they brought with them inspired the Mexicans and Peruvians with unutterable terror.
Domestic animals require regular food through the long winter months; so that their presence alone is enough to prove that their owners were tillers of the soil. The discovery in many of the Helvetian Lake Stations of calcined cereals confirms this hypothesis. Amongst the cereals found, corn is the most abundant, and several bushels of it have been collected. In the department of the Gironde, regular silos or subterranean storing-places for grain have been found in which the calcined corn was stowed away. In the Lake Stations have also been found millet, peas, poppy-heads, nuts, plums, raspberries, and even dried apples and pears, doubtless set aside as a provision for the winter. From the water at Cortaillod, have been taken, with a few ears of barley, cherry-stones, acorns, and beechnuts[16]; and at Laybach, some water-chestnuts (trapa natans) of a kind that has long since disappeared from Carniola. Sometimes the cereals were roughly roasted, crushed, and put away in large earthenware vessels; but in some places, regular flat round loaves of bread have been found about one or two inches thick, which were baked without leaven. We may well assert that great changes lead taken place since the first arrival of man upon the earth.
The so-called terremares of Italy date from the same period as the Danish kitchen-middings and the Swiss pile dwellings. They are met with chiefly in Lombardy and in the ancient duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and consist of low mounds rising from thirteen to sixteen feet above the surface of the soil. In some cases a number of terremares, close to one another, form regular villages covering an area of from five to six miles square. Excavations of the terremare have brought to light rows of piles from seven to ten feet long, connected by transverse beams, forming a regular floor, from which rose buts built in a similar way to those of the Swiss pile dwellings, of interlaced branches or of clay and straw, for no trace has been made out of the use of bricks or of stones. The refuse of the kitchen and rubbish of all kinds rapidly accumulated round about these buts, and formed the first nucleus of the mound, which soon grew to a considerable height as one occupant of the house succeeded another. When the refuse became too much of a nuisance, the owner of the but set up fresh piles at a greater height on the same site, laid down another platform, and built anew but. In some places three such platforms have been found one above another.
As in the Lake Stations, excavations of the terremares have brought to light numerous bones of domestic animals; but those of wild creatures, such as bears, stags, roedeer, and boars, are even rarer than in Switzerland. The inhabitants evidently had other resources than hunting at their command, and though the processes they employed were but elementary, they cultivated corn, beans, vines, and various fruits. Though iron was still unknown, some bronze objects have been found in certain terremares, but these were only roughly melted pieces of metal, showing no traces of having been either hammered or soldered. Amongst the pottery found in the terremares, we must mention a number of small objects not unlike acorns in form, pierced lengthwise, and decorated with incised lines, some straight, others curved. Italian archæologists call them fusaïoles, and Swiss savants, who have found a great many in the lakes of their native country, give them the name of pesons de fuseau. Both these names connect them with the process of spinning; but their number renders this hypothesis inadmissible, and when we give an account of the excavations carried on at Hissarlik, under Dr. Schliemann, we shall be able to determine their character (see [a]Chapter VII].).
At Castione, near the town of Parma, and in several other parts of the provinces of Parma and Reggio, terremares have been discovered rising from the midst of vast rectangular basins artificially hollowed out. Some have concluded from this that the terremarecolli as the inhabitants of the terremares have been called, were descended from the people who built the pile dwellings of Switzerland, and that, faithful to the traditions of their race, they hollowed out ponds in default of natural lakes. If this were so, Italy must have been peopled with a race that came over the Alps.[17] Who or what this race was can only be matter of conjecture. It cannot, however, have been the Ligures, a branch of the great Iberian family, who were totally ignorant of culture, and to whom the builders of the most ancient of the terremares were certainly superior; nor can it have been the Etruscans, for all relics of that race, which are moreover easily recognizable, were found quite apart from the deep deposits containing the terremares. Many indications point to the conclusion that when the Celts came down into Italy their knowledge of metallurgy was already more advanced than that of the builders of the terremares. We are therefore disposed to think with Heilbig, that the terremarecolli were the Itali, of Arian race, who were the ancestors of the Sabini, Umbri, Osci, and Latins. In the great migrations of races, the Itali bad separated themselves from their brethren the Pelasgi, who had remained in Epirus, and, continuing their march, they peopled Switzerland and crossed the Alps, settling down in the fertile plains watered by the Po, where it is easy even now to prove their presence.
In superintending the excavation of a terremare at Toszig, in Hungary, Pigorini,[18] was greatly struck by the resemblance between it and similar erections in Italy, especially that of Casarolo. This is very much in favor of the Itali having been the builders. But the objects collected in some of the terremares, those of Varano and Chierici for instance, prove that they were inhabited from Neolithic times, so that the Itali of Italy, if Itali they were, did but follow the traditions of their predecessors. In spite, however, of zealous study, all that relates to the origin of tribes and races remains involved in the greatest obscurity, and we can but look to the future to supply what the present altogether fails to give.
We have yet other tokens of the presence of the ancient races who peopled Italy. Dr. Concezio Rosa[19] noticed in the Abruzzi extensive black patches on the ground, which bore witness to the former residence of men. The excavation of these Fondi di Cabane, as they are called, led to the finding of a great many stone knives and scrapers with numerous bone stilettos and the bones of various animals, all of them of species still living. Later, similar fondi were found between the Eastern Alps and Mount Gargano. In Reggio, at Rivaltella, at Castelnuovo de Sotto, and at Calerno, they formed regular groups, and from one of these stations more than one thousand worked flints were collected. We mention them especially because they were of lozenge (selci romboidali) and half-lozenge (semi-rombi) shapes, which are forms unknown in other districts.
With these flints were hand-made vases with handles, the clay unmixed with sand or quartz and ornamented with lines, grooves, and raised knobs. These vases differ greatly from those found in the terremares; are they then, as has been said, of earlier (late? It is impossible to come to any decision on the point.
Before closing our account of prehistoric buildings surrounded by water, we must say a few words on crannoges though there is the greatest difference of opinion as to their date.