Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
One of the sites first studied by the Swiss antiquaries was the small
lake of Moosseedorf, near Berne, where implements of stone, horn, and
bone, but none of metal, were obtained. Although the flint here employed
must have come from a distance (probably from the south of France), the
chippings of the material are in such profusion as to imply that there
was a manufactory of implements on the spot. Here also, as in several
other settlements, hatchets and wedges of jade have been observed of a
kind said not to occur in Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Europe,
and which some mineralogists would fain derive from the East; amber
also, which, it is supposed, was imported from the shores of the Baltic.
At Wangen near Stein, on the Lake of Constance, another of the most
ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpentine and greenstone,
and arrow-heads of quartz have been met with. Here also remains of a
kind of cloth, supposed to be of flax, not woven but plaited, have
been detected. Professor Heer has recognised lumps of carbonised wheat,
Triticum vulgare, and grains of another kind, T. dicoccum, and barley,
Hordeum distichum, and flat round cakes of bread; and at Robbenhausen
and elsewhere Hordeum hexastichum in fine ears, the same kind of barley
which is found associated with Egyptian mummies, showing clearly that in
the stone period the lake-dwellers cultivated all these cereals, besides
having domesticated the dog, the ox, the sheep, and the goat.
Carbonised apples and pears of small size, such as still grow in the
Swiss forests, stones of the wild plum, seeds of the raspberry and
blackberry, and beech-nuts, also occur in the mud, and hazel-nuts in
great plenty.
Near Morges, on the Lake of Geneva, a settlement of the bronze period,
no less than forty hatchets of that metal have been dredged up, and in
many other localities the number and variety of weapons and utensils
discovered, in a fine state of preservation, is truly astonishing.
It is remarkable that as yet all the settlements of the bronze period
are confined to Western and Central Switzerland. In the more eastern
lakes those of the stone period alone have as yet been discovered.
The tools, ornaments, and pottery of the bronze period in Switzerland
bear a close resemblance to those of corresponding age in Denmark,
attesting the wide spread of a uniform civilisation over Central Europe
at that era. In some few of the Swiss aquatic stations a mixture of
bronze and iron implements has been observed, but no coins. At Tiefenau,
near Berne, in ground supposed to have been a battle-field, coins
and medals of bronze and silver, struck at Marseilles, and of Greek
manufacture, and iron swords, have been found, all belonging to the
first and pre-Roman division of the age of iron.
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