The Lebanon express. (Lebanon, Linn County, Or.) 1887-1898, 1890-05-30
PEOPLE THAT CESAR KNEW.
Remains OF the Inhabitants OF villages OF
the stone and Iron Ages.


The recent discovery of tomhs of the
lake dwellers has awakened 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 eXeayated 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 hum
dreds and thousands of specimens of
stone. wood, cloth. weapons and orna-
ments. of people whose towns were
old thousand years before gray old
excavated Pompeii was ever thought
of.
To Professor Ferdinand Keller before
all others the world is indebted for "A
knowledge of what 1t 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 reiGvenate those dead old
skulls and relics. lifting thousand
years from the forgotten past into the
I nlfuOie 81 lUe ulHttSttlln
Keller has translated the hieroglyph-
les of the dead ages. He has explained
how the antiuuarians have divided all
the prehistoric past into the ages of
stone, of bronze. and of iron; how the
lake dwellings of Switzerland We're first
discovered AT Meilen. on the lake of
Zurich, in 1929. and more fully re-
vealed in lS53-54; and how the world
at large shut its eyes, almost. To the
great contribution made 10 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 gratified to see
some shrewd Yankee following our
line clear back 10 Orgetorix, the
youngest offspring of our Celtic grand
fathers of the lake dwellers.
If our American tourist win take a
little more time, jump on the cars. and
ride out to Robenhansen. on the lake of
Pfaf1ikon. he will there witness with his
own ewes the turf beds and the lake
stone. Robenhausen is a town of the
stone-age period. 1t was perhaps
twelve hundred feet square. standing
on a platform built on hundred
thousand piles driven into the bottom
of the shallow lake. about three hum
I dred yards from the shore. Like all
the other Swiss lake towns it was con-
neeted with the land by long bridge.
also built on piles OF course the
I visitor now will see little except
I chopped-of piles sticking in the peat,
and among them the debris of the vii.
I lagos that have gone TO ruin. Roben-
4 hansen had been partly burned down
and built up again on the same site, but
7 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 OF
the probable age of these lake dwell
/ ings is by estimating the centuries re-
qnired for peat beds to form. Reck-
oned in this manner. the age of the first
+ town built at the bottom of Roben-
hansen must be prodigious-
In these lake villages once lived 8
/ people as much civilized. possibly, as
are the Mexicans of to-day. They
titled the soil. they dwelt in houses,
I of luxury. aud traded more or less with
other countries. OF them there are no
written annuals. History stops stock
still with Switzerland only sixty years
i farther back than the birth of Christ
The nearest reference there is in history
to these Swiss lake dwellefs is where
Caesar tells how quarter of million
armed Helvetians, under Divico. burned
+ down their homes and marched into
Gaul. Caesar himself. after grea
battling. defeated them. aud drove
them back into their own country.
There is now much reason to believe
that these Helvetians were the last OF
the lake dweIlers. 1t is known that
most of the lake villages were de-
stroyed by fire, and it is altogether
probable that when Cesar 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.-S. II. N
Byers. IN Hdrper's Magazine.