New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1890-04-16
PEOPLE THAT CESAR KNEW. s
Remains of the Inhabitants of villages Of
the Stone and Iron Ages.

i ~ ~ -. :
Remains of the Inhabitants of villages Of
the Stone and Iron Ages.
The recent discovery of tonlbs Of the
lake jewellers has awakened "a renewed
interest in the people Of prehistoric
Switzerland. Tourists will hardly be
content any more to pass through
Switzerland without visiting one or
more of the museums where the col,
lections made from the excavated lake
dwellings are exhibited.
Perhaps the most extensive exhibition
of these relics is the one at the Helm
House." in Zurich. There one sees
what are in fact the greatest antiquities
Of the whole world. There are hun-3
dreds and thousands of specimens of
stone, wood, cloth, weapons and orna-
ments,> Of a people whose towns were
old thousand years before gray old
excasated Pompeii was ever thought
of.
To Professor Ferdinand Keller before
all others the world is indebted for a
knowledge of what it probably was be-
fore the time of history. All the later
years of his life were devoted to the in
vestigation Of the lake dwellers'
villages, and no man was so competent
as he to reiuvenate those dead old
skulls and relics, lifting thousand
years from the forgotten past into the
middle of the nineteenth century.
Keller has translated the hieroglyph.
les of the dead ages. He has explained
how the antiguarians have divided all
the prehistoric past into the ages Of
stone, of bronze, and of iron; how the
lake dwellings of Switzerland were first
discovered at Meilen, on the lake of
Zurich, in 1929, and more fully re-
vealed in 1854; and how the world
at large shut its eyes, almost, to the
great contribution made to history. He
has told, too, how the patient, hard
working Investigators, of whom he is
chief, have uncovered and dug out
enough of these buried towns to prove
that our ''best families don't need to
break off their ancestral line with
William the Conquerer, or with any
other William. Those of us who think
we might be proud of our far-off pro-
genitors may yet be gratifed to see
some shreWd Yankee following our
line clear back to Orgetorix, the
youngest offspring of our Celtic grand
fathers Of the lake jewellers.
If our American tourist viii take a
little more time, jump on the cars, and
ride out to Robenhansen, on the lake Of
Pfaffkon, hew will there witness with his
own eyes the turf beds and the lake
giving up the. secrets of the age Of
stone. Robenhausen is town Of the
stone-age period. It. was perhaps
Il
on a platform built on hundred
thousand piles driven into the bottom
of the shallow lake, about three hum
dred yards from the shore. Like all
the other Swiss lake towns it was con.
nected with the land by long bridge,
also built on piles :. OF course the
visitor now will see little except
chopped-ot< piles sticking in the peat,
and among them the debris Of the vii.
lagos that have gone to ruin. Roben.
hansen had been partly burned down
and built up again on the same,site, but
at intervals of ages. probably, apart.
so that the peat bed shows on being
opened three sets of piles, one above
the other. The only way of Judging al
the probable age of these lake dwell
ings is by estimating the centuries re-
quired for peat beds to form. Reck-
oned in this manner, the age Of the frs
town built at the bottom of Roben
hansen must be prodigious.
In these lake villages once lived &
people as much civilized. possibly, az
are the Mexicans of to-day. They
titled the soil, they dwelt in houses,
they Wove fine linen, they had articles
of luxury, and traded more or less with
other countries. Of them there are no
written ANNALS. History stops stock
still with Switzerland only sixty YEAR,
farther back than the birth Of Christ
The nearest reference there is in history
to these Swiss lake jewellers is where
Caesar tells how a quarter of a million
armed Helvetians, under Divico, burned
down their homes and marched into
Gaul. Cesar himself, after great
battling. defeated them, and drove
them back into their own country.
There is now much reason to believe
that these Hclvetians were the last OF
the lake jewellers. It is known that
most of the lake villages were de-
stroyed by fire, and it is altogether
probable that when Caesar compelled
the people to return they established
new homes on the shore, instead of re.
building their lake dwellings,, which
they had left in search of a SUMMER.
cline and a more grateful soil than
were found amid the Alps. H. NJ
Byers, IN Hdapeg's Magazine.
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