Lake Dwellings
primitive houses built over water on piles. They are found within the shallow margins of both lakes and rivers where they have been built for protection at some distance from the shore. In South America the custom is prevalent in the Gulf of Maracaibo and in the waters of the lower Orinoco and the Amazon. The houses stand on tall poles driven into the soft mud of the bottoms and have sloping roofs which are thatched with reeds. The floors are made of split logs and are covered with matting. Each house has two rooms. The native reaches his hut by means of a dugout canoe. He climbs up by a ladder--a mere tree trunk with notches, knots, and branches. The piles are so well driven, the entire edifice so well built, that the structure defies storms and shows no evidence of shakiness though occupied by a large number of persons. The houses are grouped in villages and are connected by planks reaching from door to door.
Similar houses have been described by travelers in New Guinea, Borneo, Celebes, Caroline Islands, Central Africa, the Gold Coast, and elsewhere. Fishermen have been in the habit, until of late at least, of constructing houses of this sort, for occupancy during the fishing season, in the waters of the Black Sea and the Bosporus. Herodotus and other ancient writers mention dwellings of this sort. During the troublous times of the early centuries of the Christian era, in fact, as late as the sixteenth century, the petty chieftains of Ireland constructed lake fortresses as places of refuge. They were known as crannoges. Remains of similar strongholds are found in Scotland. It has been shown that pile houses were built extensively by the Celts, but the remains of a lake dwelling are not considered a proof of former Celtic occupancy.
South Central Europe was at one time peopled by a great number of lake dwellers. In Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Savoy, and Switzerland, there are extensive traces of pile dwellings. The alpine lakes of this region have been studied with especial care. The sites of fifty villages have been found in Lake Neuchatel, thirty-two in Lake Constance, twenty-four in Lake Geneva, etc. These settlements were not only extensive, but they were laid out with regularity, and the buildings were erected with a degree of skill worthy of the builder of the modern Swiss chalet. They were laid out not infrequently in the form of parallelograms. One such settlement in Lake Constance was 2,100 feet long by 360 feet wide. Another in Lake Geneva was 1,200 feet long and 150 feet wide. Still another in the Lake of Bienne covered six acres of water. For convenient comparison, we may remember that a modern city block, 330 feet on a side, is considered large.
Occasionally the foundation of a lake settlement was a large platform of bundles of brush and limbs--fagots--piled up from the bottom and strengthened by stakes driven downward through the mass to hold it in shape; but ordinarily a forest of piles sharpened by fire or with primitive stone axes were driven into the bottom of the lake. As high as 100,000 piles were used for a single village. If the bottom was too soft and yielding to hold the piles, heaps of stones were piled around them. If the bottom was rocky, logs were laid down and holes were worked in them to receive the ends of the piles. The upper ends of the piles were trimmed into tenons. Crosspieces to receive the floor were mortised on, or else the beams were laid on the tops of the piles and pegged down by wooden pins. A heavy wooden floor of split logs was laid on the beams.
On a huge platform of this sort the huts of the individual families were built. These huts were four-sided. The roofs were made of bark, straw, reeds, or rushes, and were supported on short posts or else on piles of unusual length left standing high for the purpose. The walls were made of willow or wattle work plastered with clay. There are no walls standing. No one knows whether the huts were provided with windows or what sort of doors were used. Fireplaces were built of slabs of stone, jointed with clay. As platforms are still standing, it is known that the huts varied in size. The largest discovered were twenty-seven feet long and twenty-two feet wide. They were about three feet apart.
Many of the settlements appear to have been reached by canoes. Others were provided with causeways built on long ricks of fagots piled like cordwood. I n such villages there is evidence that domestic animals were stabled between the huts, possibly only in time of especial danger. Cattle, hogs, sheep, and goats were protected in this way. Remains of the dog and the horse have been found. Fire was the great danger to which the lake dwellers were exposed. On a dry, windy day we may imagine that fire would spread from thatch to thatch, destroying a settlement in a few minutes. In fact, no less than three platforms have been traced--the piles of the one penetrating the charred remains of its predecessors. Since their former occupancy a number of lakes have dried up into peat bogs, making it easy to search for antiquities. Ditchers have found many relics. The largest dugout canoe found is forty-three feet long and fifty-two inches wide.
The historical museums of the Swiss cities and universities, including those at Berne, Geneva, Lucerne, and Zurich, contain large collections of lake antiquities. A mere list of the articles found intermingled with charcoal on the sites of these old dwellings is interesting. Among these relics are stone axes lashed to handles of stag's horn and wood, flint saws gummed with asphalt into fir handles, and bone chisels--the rude implements with which they built their platforms and dug out their canoes. Clubs, flint knives, arrowheads, and fir longbows were evidently relied on in the chase and in battle. Barbed harpoons of stag's horn, bone fishhooks, and wooden floats for nets indicate the manner in which fish were caught. Bone awls, needles, scraping tools, and shoemakers' lasts were used in preparing and fashioning skins, moccasins, and fur clothing. Wooden spoons, platters, ladles, and tubs belonged evidently to the housewife. Remains are found showing that the food of the family consisted in part of fish, the flesh of domestic animals and such game as the bear, beaver, fox, elk, and bison. Charred grain and the flail indicate that the lake dweller raised wheat, barley, and millet. Cloth of various sorts of wool and linen indicate that felting and weaving were well understood. Pottery, well burned and well shaped, is abundant. The later settlements show that the working of bronze was understood. Crucibles or melting-pots of clay and horse dung have been found still retaining the dross of the metal. Stone moulds have been discovered. A great number of bronze swords, spear-heads, ax-heads, sickles, knives, chisels, hammers, an anvil, as well as rings, bracelets, and other articles of personal adornment have found their way into museums.
Historians are of the opinion that the lake dwellers, being an interior people, were users of stone long after maritime people had begun to use bronze and iron, and were users of bronze when more favored people were users of iron and steel. In the debris of one settlement, in fact, evidently one of the most recent, iron swords and implements have the place occupied elsewhere by stone and bronze. A few Roman coins and trinkets, as well as bits of amber, indicate that commerce had reached the region. Whether the lake dwellers were exterminated or joined their brethren on the land, and whether their descendants now people parts of Europe are questions as yet unsolved.
