But perhaps the most important contribution to the subject was by Mr. Franks,[152] who demonstrated by an analysis of the style of ornamentation, together with an array of historical references bearing on the customs of the ancient Celtic races, that to them alone must be assigned the remarkable remains now in question. The few additional notices of later discoveries here introduced only strengthen this opinion. In my investigations of the British lake-dwellings, almost the only instance in which analogous remains have come to light is the "find" at Lisnacroghera; but the prevalence of such antiquities in Britain from about the second century B.C. till the introduction of Christianity, when the spiral and trumpet-shaped ornamentation became modified, and to a considerable extent superseded, by the addition of interlacements, has been so fully established by Mr. Franks that on this point nothing remains to be said.
From these remarks you see that we are among the class of antiquities (described and illustrated in "Horæ Ferales") to which Mr. Franks has given the name "Late Celtic." The owners of these La Tène weapons in Switzerland were the Helvetians, of Roman celebrity, who, according to Cæsar, were a branch of the great Celtic family who so long dominated over the rest of the Aryan races, and whose civilisation is only now in its death struggle in the outlying districts of Western Europe. Who these Celts were is a question which still puzzles historians, philologists, and archæologists. The term "Late Celtic" is sufficiently clear, and, as we have seen, accurately defines a most remarkable group of antiquities; but it necessarily involves a counterpart, viz. an "Early Celtic" period, in regard to which no archæologist has offered any opinion beyond mere conjecture. Before my rambles among the ruins and relics of the lacustrine villages I had no reason to doubt the correctness of the opinion advanced and promulgated by the late Dr. Keller, viz. that the early lake-dwellers belonged to the Celtic race. I do not think that archæology supports this opinion. If the "Late Celtic" relics correctly represent the Celts of that period they must have been a large-bodied race, wielding great swords with massive grips, totally out of keeping with the small-handed weapons of the Bronze Age as found on the sites of the lake-dwellings. The few indications derived from the data supplied by lake-dwelling research suggest the idea that the evolution of the Celts in Europe coincides with the substitution of iron for bronze in the manufacture of the more important cutting implements and weapons, and that the earlier stages of this transition are to be found considerably to the east of the Rhine districts—as, for example, at Hallstadt.
In hazarding an opinion as to the original founders of the lake-dwellings in Central Europe I would say that they were part of the first neolithic immigrants who entered the country by the regions surrounding the Black Sea and the shore of the Mediterranean, and spread westwards along the Danube and its tributaries till they reached the great central lakes. Here they founded that remarkable system of lake-villages whose ruins and relics are now being disinterred as it were from another or forgotten world. Those following the Drave and the Save entered Styria, where they established their settlements on what was then a great lake at Laibach. From this they crossed the mountains to the Po valley, where they founded not only the pile-villages, but subsequently the terremare. The Danubian wanderers having reached the upper sources of the Danube, crossed the uplands by way of Schussenried, and arrived on the shores of Lake Constance, from which they quickly spread over the low-lying districts of Switzerland. From Lake Neuchâtel, still continuing a westward course, they reached the Rhone valley by way of Morges, where they erected one of their earliest and largest settlements. From the Lake of Geneva they had easy access to the lakes of Annecy and Bourget.
It is worthy of note that almost the only historical notices of the habit of constructing lake-dwellings which have come down to us refer to districts along this supposed route. The following quotation from Herodotus (v. 16) gives a vivid description of a lake-village which flourished some 500 years before Christ. The Lake Prasias here referred to is situated in the south of Roumelia, not far from the mouth of the river Strymon, and the rather remarkable fact which is here recorded shows that its lake-dwellers were so powerful as to successfully defy the resources of a Persian army.
"They, on the other hand, who dwelt about Mount Pangæum and in the country of the Doberes, the Agrianians and the Odomantians, and they likewise who inhabited Lake Prasias, were not conquered by Megabazus. He sought, indeed, to subdue the dwellers upon the lake, but could not effect his purpose. Their manner of living is the following:—Platforms supported upon tall piles stand in the middle of the lake, which are approached from the land by a single narrow bridge. At the first the piles which bear up the platforms were fixed in their places by the whole body of the citizens; but since that time the custom which prevails about fixing them is this: they are brought from a hill called Orbelus, and every man drives in three for each wife that he marries. Now the men have all many wives apiece, and this is the way in which they live. Each has his own hut, wherein he dwells, upon one of the platforms; and each has also a trap door giving access to the lake beneath; and their wont is to tie their baby children by the foot with a string, to save them from rolling into the water. They feed their horses and their other beasts on fish, which abound in the lake to such a degree that a man has only to open his trap-door and to let down a basket by a rope into the water, and then to wait a very short time, when up he draws it quite full of them."
Another reference to lake-dwellings occurs in a passage by Hippocrates ("De Æribus," etc., xxxvii.), and the locality to which the remarks were applied lies to the east of the Black Sea.
"Concerning the people of the Phasis, that region is marshy and hot, and full of water, and woody; and at every season frequent and violent rains fall there. The inhabitants live in the marshes, and have houses of timber and of reeds constructed in the midst of the waters; and they seldom go out to the city or the market, but sail up and down in boats made out of a single tree-trunk, for there are numerous canals in that region. The water they drink is hot and stagnant, putrefied by the sun, and swollen by the rainfall, and the Phasis itself is the most stagnant and quiet-flowing of all rivers."
In the works of recent travellers I find statements corroborating the opinion already published by Dr. Keller (B. 119, 2nd ed., p. 666), that the remains of lake-dwellings have been detected in Asia Minor, more especially in the Caucasus and the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian. As early as 1849 Bayern discovered palafittes in Lake Gok-chai and in Lake Paleostrum, not far from the embouchure of the Rion (Phasis). Mr. Chantre states that on the lowering of Lake Toporovan, near the village of Choucha at the embouchure of the Koura, and in some other lakes on the coast of the Black Sea, indications of their existence have been observed.[153] None of these have, however, been sufficiently explored to be of archæological value.
While the lake-dwellers of Switzerland were quietly living in the peculiar habitations which the hydrographical conditions of the country enabled them to develop so largely, great and progressive changes were going on elsewhere among the neolithic settlers in Europe. Probably other immigrants soon found their way to the far west, and brought with them a knowledge of bronze. As time rolled on, considerable divergences from the primitive civilisation took place, partly the outcome of geographical and climatal conditions, and partly the result of innovations by freer intercourse with the inhabitants of the shores of the Mediterranean. Then were laid gradually the germs of the historical nationalities of Europe. Just at the dawn of history we find the Celts, not in the sunshine of their power, but with faded strength and departed glory, confined to a limited area in Europe. After the collapse of the great lake-villages it is not singular to find that a knowledge of the system remained among the surrounding nationalities which subsequently germinated into activity in various sporadic corners, and produced not only the Scottish and Irish crannogs, but the analogous remains in Friesland, North Germany, Paladru, etc. As the great extinct mammals are known to have lingered in the recesses of mountain ranges and other secluded localities, so the artificial islands or crannogs and other lake-habitations of the Iron Age are but the deteriorated remnants of a doomed system which, like every dying art before final extinction, passed through a stage of decay and degeneration.