The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-11-28
{ TIE ORIGIN OF TIE
 GREEK TEMPLES Its Architecture From the Pile Houses of the Lake
 Dwellers. COLUMNS AND BASES Interesting Evolution From Early Greek
 Building.

That the Doric temple of ancient Greece derived its form from the still more ancient pile-dwelling inhabited , by the lake-dwellers of central Eu- rope. is an interesting theory advanc- ed by Dr. Paul Sarasin of the Berlin
 anthropological society, in recent issue of the Zeitschrift fur Ethnolo- gie. Our quotations, below, are from a review by Prof Alexander r Cham berlain of Clark university, in the Popular Science Monthly. It has been suggested more than once that the Greek temple, once regarded as abso- lutely unique and original, is really a glorified imitation of some previously existing wooden structure. According to Prof Fuchs, this Is the house of the rich cattle breeders of the central European plateau. Prof. Chamber ! lain, while entertaining no doubt that the marble temple had a wooden pro- totype, inclines rather to the less local theory advanced by Sarasin, which he sets forth as follows:
 According to Sarasin, the Greek temple with columns is highly idealized and conventionalized express sion of the original pile-dwelling the columns are the piles, the orna- mented superstructure the dwelling fixed upon them, the triglyphs the window-strips, the metope the parti- ton, etc. In order to fully appre- ciate the merits of Sarasin's theory one must bring up before the mind the wooden forerhnner of the Doric peripteros: The columns were wooden pillars, the architreves wooden beams, the triplyphs wooden strips, the me topes boards with carved ornament; the wooden roof was covered with mud-thatch, and the wooden ridge ended in a bird made of cut boards (the acroterion).' Reducing the height of the columns little, and increasing somewhat that of the superstructure, one has a building strikingly similar to Gin many respects identical with) the pile-dwelling. The figures of the temple of Roseidon at Paestum and a pile dwelling in central Celebes show this very clearly. And it should be said that the pile-dwellings of In- donesia, occurring on land as well as in water, represent better pile dwelling period than the 'reconstruct- ed lake-dwellings of Switzerland. During the later stone age and the bronze age, Dr. Sarasin things, more over pile-dwellings of a sort compar- able with those to be met with in Celebes were found over a considera- ble portion of Europe, not merely in lakes, rivers, etc., but also In swamps and on the dry land. .. In Greece and many other parts of the then known world, the original human dwelling was the house on piles, which therefore, was also the first dwelling of the gods, and the first temple-the orthodox temple, as Sarasin phrases it was a pile-dwelling. In very in- genious fashion Sarasin shows how the peculiarities of the various por- lions of the Greek temple can be de- yeloped from the pile-dwelling.
 The basis of the Ionic and Corin- thian columns, Prof. Sarasin thinks, is to be seen in the stones placed under the piles to prevent decay. The so- called echinus, the lower, round DOT ton of the capital, corresponds to a similar disk of stone or wood placed on the piles as a protection against rats, etc. The abacus is a rest-piece for the beams, on the middle of the disk. The so-called proto-Doric col umns of Egypt, which lack the echin- us, go back, Sarasin suggests to pile dwelling without such protective disks. The perpendicularity of Ionic and Corinthian columns, as well as the slight upper inclination of the Doric,. are referred to the various conditions