The seeds and other parts of plants lying in the lake mud, or buried under several feet of peat, have been so well preserved, that their characters can be determined. The small-grained six-rowed barley and the small lake-dwelling wheat (triticum vulgare antiquorum) were, from the earliest period, the most generally cultivated of farinaceous seeds; and, notwithstanding the rudeness of the husbandry implements, the quality of the produce was apparently equal to that of modern times; the spelt (triticum spelta), now one of the most important cereals of Switzerland, did not appear till the bronze age; while rye was entirely unknown, thus showing a connection with the countries of the Mediterranean, the lake colonists having the same cereals as the Egyptians. Cakes of unleavened bread have been found, made of millet and wheat, which had been baked on the hearthstone in the dwellings. Barley seems to have been used boiled or parched; but as corn-crushers and mealing-stones have been found in most of the settlements, grain had been extensively used for food The latest settlement, dating backward [{403}] not less than 2,000 years, and the older going some 3,000 years and more further backward still, it is interesting to observe what change this long lapse of time produced on plants:
"The dense, compact wheat and the close, six-rowed barley have undergone no perceptible change, yet it must be confessed that most of them agree with no recent forms sufficiently to allow of their being classed together. The small Celtic beans, the peas, the small lake-dwelling barley, the Egyptian and small lake-dwelling wheat, and the two-rowed wheat, or emmer, form peculiar and apparently extinct races; they are distinguished for the most part from the modern cultivated kinds by smaller seeds. Man has, therefore, in course of time produced sorts which give a more abundant yield, and these have gradually supplanted the old varieties."
With wild plants the case is different:
"The flora of the lake-dwellings announces to us that all the plants which come in contact with man become changed up to a certain point, and man participates in the great transformations of nature, while the wild plants, which surround us at the present day, still grow in the same forms as they did three or four thousand years ago, and do not exhibit the slightest change."
The final abandonment of these lake-dwellings, about the beginning of the Christian era, would result from an improved civilization and a more united and orderly state of society; but how long before that time they had been occupied has not yet been definitely determined; our chronology is still relative rather than absolute. Peat has accumulated over some settlements, but as its rate of growth varies under different conditions, we are only told by it that the stone-age dwellings lasted many centuries. At Robenhausen peat moor, there are remains of three settlements of the stone age, one over the other; two of which had been destroyed by fire, and the last had been abandoned, probably on account of the increase of peat. Between the first and second settlement there are three feet of peat and one foot of other deposit, both containing relics; between the second and third settlements the deposits are the same in character and sickness, and over the last dwelling are two feet of peat and half-a-foot of mould; so that during the stone age there had been a slow growth of eight feet of peat, and the deposit of three and a half feet of other matter. Other means have been used to obtain more definite results; the most remarkable of which is that of Professor Morlot, who from an examination of a cone of gravel and alluvium, connected with deposits of the stone, bronze, Roman, and recent periods, and gradually built up by the torrent of Teniere where it falls into Lake Geneva, concludes that the age of bronze has an antiquity of from 3,000 to 4,000 years, and that of stone from 5,000 to 7,000 years—no very startling estimate, when we remember the high antiquity which has been assigned to the drift and cave men.
Of the physical characters of the lake-dwellers, Dr. Keller gives us little information; that they had small hands is probable from the shortness of their sword-handles. Few human bones, and those chiefly of children, have been found. No crania of the stone age have been seen, but a few out of the bronze period, one of which from Meilen differs little from the skulls of the existing Swiss. It is, therefore, mainly from the relics found that we can form any guess as to the origin and relationship of the lake-dwellers, and by those it is shown that they belonged to the very people who at the same time lived on the mainland. Dr. Keller concludes "that the builders of the lake-dwellings were a branch of the Celtic population of Switzerland, but that the earlier settlements belong to the pre-historic period, and had already fallen into decay before the Celts took their place in the history of Europe."
The history of the lake-dwellers opens a hopeful prospect for those races who are now in a degraded condition; for here they start with a low degree of civilization, and yet there is a gradual rise upward to that point where great skill was reached [{404}] in metallurgic and other arts; but even this was only a step onward to that high cultivation of intellect and morals among their descendants the Swiss people. Why should not other races pass through the same stages, especially when influenced by intercourse with modern civilized nations?