The new North-west., 1890-03-07
PEOPLE THAT CESAR KNEW.
The First and Last of tho Lake Dwellers
of Switzerland.

Of Switzerland.
The recent discovery of tombs Of the lake
dweilers has aw akened n renewed interest in
the people of prehistoric Switzerland. Tour
lists will hardly be content any more to pass
through Switzerland without visiting one or
more Of the museums where the collections
made from the excayated lake dwellings are
exhibited.
Perhaps the most extensive exhibition of
these relies is the one at the Helm house. i'll
Zurich. There one sees what are in fact the
greatest antiquities of the whole world There
are hundreds and thousands of specimens Of
stone, wood, cloth, weapons and ornaments
of aipeople whose towns were old n thousand
years before gray, old e1carated Pompeii was
ever thought of.
To Professor Ferdinand Keller before all
others the world is indebted for knowledge
of what it probably was before the time OF
history. All the later years of his life were
devoted to the Investigation of the lake dwell
ers' villages, aud no man was SO competent
as he to rejuvenute those dead old skulls and
relics, lifting thousand years from the for
gotten past into the middle of the Nineteenth
century.
Keller has translated the hieroglyphics of
the dead ages He has explained how the
antiquarians havo 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 Mcien, on the lake
of Zurich, in 1920, and more fully revealed
in 1851, 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 sbest families don't need to break off
1i,,o tl,
queror, or with my other William, Those
OF us who think we might be proud of our
far off prosenitors may yet be gratitied to
sec some shrewd Yankee following our line
clear back to Orgetorix, the youngest off,
spring of our Celtic Grandfathers Of the lake
dwellers.
If our American tourist will take IL little
more time, jump on the cars, and ride out to
Robenhausen, on the lake Of Pfuffikon, he
will there witness with his own eyes the turf
beds and the lake giving up the secrets of
the age OF stone Robcnhausen is Il town Of
the stone age period. 1t was perhaps 200
feet square, standing on a platform built OH
a hundred thousand piles driven into the
bottom of the shallow lake, about 500 yards
from the shore. Like all the other Swiss lake
towns it was connected with the land by a
long bridge, also built on piles Of course
tho visitor now will see little except chopped
off piles sticking in the peat, and among them
the debris Of the villages that have gone to
ruin. Robenhausen had been partly burned
down and built up again on the same site. but
at intervals Of ages, probably, apart; 50 that
the peat bed shows on being opened three sets
Of piles, one above the other, The only way
OF judging Of the probable uge Of these lake
dwellings is by estimating the centuries re-
quired FOR peat l,eds to form. 1seckoned III
this manner, the age Of the first town bnilt ut
tie bottom OF Isohcnhausen must be pro
digious.
In these lake villages once lived people rs
much civilized possibly, as are the MeSicans
Of today They titled the soil, they dweit in
houses, they wo>c fine linen, they had articles
OF luxury and traded more or less with other
countries OF them there are no written an
nails. History stops stock still with Switzer-
land only sixty years further back than the
birth of Christ. The nearest reference there
is in history to these Swiss lake dtvellers is
where Cesar tells how a quarter of a million
armed Hely yetians, under Divico, burned down
their homes and marched into Gaul Caesar
himself, after great battling. defeated them,
and drove them back into their own country,
There is now much reason to believe that
these Helvetians We're the last of the lake
lwellers 1t is known that most Of the lake
villages were destroyed by fire, and it is alto
gether probable that when Caesar compelled
the people to return they established new
homes on the shore instead Of rebuilding
their lake dwellings, which they had left III
search of a SUMMER cline and a more grateful
soil than We're found amid tho Alps-"The
Lake Dwellers,h by S. II. NJ. Byers, in Har-
per's Magazine.