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In the first place, the disappearance of a great variety of species of wild animals from every part of a wide continent must have required a vast period for its accomplishment; yet this took place while man existed upon the earth, and was completed before that early period when the Danish shell-mounds were formed or the oldest of the Swiss lake-dwellings constructed.
The most interesting facts are those concerning the use of apples by the Romans and by their contemporaries of the Swiss and middle European lake-dwellings. Oswald Heer has collected large numbers of the relics of this prehistoric period. Apples were found in large quantities, ordinarily cut into halves and with the signs of having been dried.
Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron. Shell-Mounds or ancient Refuse-Heaps of the Danish Islands. Change in geographical Distribution of Marine Mollusca since their Origin. Embedded Remains of Mammalia of Recent Species. Human Skulls of the same Period. Swiss Lake-Dwellings built on Piles. Stone and Bronze Implements found in them. Fossil Cereals and other Plants.
The lake-dwellings in Switzerland huts built on piles or logs, wattled with boughs were, as may be inferred from the accompanying implements, begun in the Stone age, and continued into that of Bronze. In the latter period the evidences become numerous of the adoption of an agricultural life.
Danish Peat and Kitchen-Middens. Swiss Lake-Dwellings. Local Changes in Vegetation and in the wild and domesticated Animals and in Physical Geography coeval with the Age of Bronze and the later Stone Period. Estimates of the positive Date of some Deposits of the later Stone Period. Ancient Division of the Age of Stone of St. Acheul and Aurignac.
The lake-dwellings in Switzerland were well contrived for shelter and defense. Every hut had its hearth. It is probable that most of them were furnished with a loom for weaving. Fragments of pottery are found, and flax was grown and made into cord, nettings, etc. Stalls were constructed near the huts for the ox, the goat, the horse, sheep, and pigs. The lake-dwellers cultivated wheat and barley.
Meanwhile the east was growing paler, time passed rapidly; when there was not a soul anywhere near, as though everything were dead, the five buildings and their chimneys against the grey background of the dawn had a peculiar look not the same as by day; one forgot altogether that inside there were steam motors, electricity, telephones, and kept thinking of lake-dwellings, of the Stone Age, feeling the presence of a crude, unconscious force. . . .
Remains of Mammalia, wild and domesticated. No extinct Species. Chronological Computations of the Date of the Bronze and Stone Periods in Switzerland. Lake-Dwellings, or artificial Islands called "Crannoges," in Ireland.
Among the vanished forms are the special barley and wheat of the lake-dwellings, the remains of which have been accidentally preserved, but most of the forms must have disappeared without leaving any trace. This inference is supported by the researches of Solms-Laubach, who found that in Abyssinia numerous primitive types of cereals are still in culture.
In other temples and pyramids and among the stones of the walls of Dashur and El Kab studied by Unger, different species and varieties of cereals were discovered in large quantities, that showed their identity with the present prevailing cultivated races of Egypt. The inhabitants of the lake-dwellings in Switzerland possessed some varieties of cereals, which have entirely disappeared.
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