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.

The Swiss lake-dwellings seem first to have attracted attention
during the dry winter of 1853-54, when the lakes and rivers sank
lower than had ever been previously known, and when the inhabitants
of Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, resolved to raise the level of
some ground and turn it into land, by throwing mud upon it obtained
by dredging in the adjoining shallow water. During these dredging
operations they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven
into the bed of the lake, and among them a great many hammers,
axes, celts, and other instruments. All these belonged to the stone
period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of thin brass wire,