The discovery having attracted attention, explorations were made at
other places, and it was shortly found that there was scarcely a lake
in Switzerland which did not yield similar evidence of the existence
of an ancient Lacustrine or Lake-dwelling population. Numbers of
their tools and implements were brought to light--stone axes and
saws, flint arrowheads, bone needles, and such like--mixed with the
bones of wild animals slain in the chase; pieces of old boats,
portions of twisted branches, bark, and rough planking, of which
their dwellings had been formed, the latter still bearing the marks
of the rude tools by which they had been laboriously cut. In the most
ancient, or lowest series of deposits, no traces of metal, either of
bronze or iron, were discovered; and it is most probable that these
lake-dwellers lived in as primitive a state as the South Sea
islanders discovered by Captain Cook, and that the huts over the
water in which they lived resembled those found in Papua and Borneo,
and the islands of the Salomon group, to this day.

These aboriginal Swiss lake-dwellers seem to have been succeeded by a
race of men using tools, implements, and ornaments of bronze. In some
places the remains of this bronze period directly overlay those of the
stone period, showing the latter to have been the most ancient; but in
others, the village sites are altogether distinct. The articles with
which the metal implements are intermixed, show that considerable
progress had been made in the useful arts. The potter's wheel had been
introduced. Agriculture had begun, and wild animals had given place to
tame ones. The abundance of bronze also shows that commerce must have
existed to a certain extent; for tin, which enters into its
composition, is a comparatively rare metal, and must necessarily have
been imported from other European countries.