HKB
mounds are burnt pieces of wood and some charred substance referred by Dr. Forchhammer to the Zostera marina, a sea plant which was perhaps used in the production of salt.
What may be the antiquity of the earliest human remains preserved in the Danish peat cannot be estimated in centuries with any approach to accuracy. In the first place, in going back to the bronze age, we already find ourselves beyond the reach of history or even of tradition. In the time of the Romans the Danish Isles were covered, as now, with magnificent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this tree flourish more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen centuries seem to have done little or nothing towards modifying the character of the forest vegetation. Yet in the antecedent bronze period there were no beech trees, or at most but a few stragglers, the country being then covered with oak. In the age of stone again, the Scotch fir prevailed, and already there were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. How many generations of each species of tree flourished in succession before the pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by the beech, can be but vaguely conjectured, but the minimum of time required for the formation of so much peat must, according to the estimate of Steenstrup and other good authorities, have amounted to at least 4000 years; and there is nothing in the observed rate of the growth of peat opposed to the conclusion that the number of centuries may not have been four times as great, even though the signs of Man's existence have not yet been traced down to the lowest or amorphous stratum. As to the "kitchen-middens," they correspond in date to the older portion of the peaty record, or to the earliest part of the age of stone as known in Denmark.
ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS, BUILT ON PILES.
In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient wooden piles are observed at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes projecting slightly above it. These have evidently once supported villages, nearly all of them of unknown date, but the most ancient of which certainly belonged to the age of stone, for hundreds of implements resembling those of the Danish shell-mounds and peat-mosses have been dredged up from the mud into which the piles were driven.
The earliest historical account of such habitations is that given by Herodotus of a Thracian tribe, who dwelt, in the year 520 B.C., in Prasias, a small mountain-lake of Paeonia, now part of modern Roumelia.*
(* Herodotus lib. 5 cap. 16. Rediscovered by M. de Ville "Natural History Review" volume 2 1862 page 486.)
Their habitations were constructed on platforms raised above the lake, and resting on piles. They were connected with the shore by a narrow causeway of similar formation. Such platforms must have been of considerable extent, for the Paeonians lived there with their families and horses. Their food consisted largely of the fish which the lake produced in abundance.
In rude and unsettled times, such insular sites afforded safe retreats, all communication with the mainland being cut off, except by boats, or by such wooden bridges as could be easily removed.