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considered in this work as posterior to the deluge mentioned by Moses."*

But the most important fact relating to this primitive population of Europe is, that whatever be the exact date at which they lived, they belonged to the Celtic race. Dr. Keller, than whom there is no higher authority on the subject, remarks as follows:

"It is very evident that the earliest founders came into Middle Europe as a pastoral people, and possessed the most important domestic animals, such as the dog, the cow, the sheep, the goat, and the horse. All these animals have their origin not in Europe, but in Asia, and were brought here by the settlers through all their long wanderings from the east. They understood agriculture, and cultivated grains (wheat and barley), also flax - plants which, in like manner, they did not meet with in Europe, but brought with them out of Asia, or received them by commerce from the south." (p. 310.)

"It has already been remarked, that on comparing the implements of stone and bronze from the lake dwellings with those of the Swiss museums, some of which were found in graves and tumuli, and others met with by chance in the fields, we are not able to discover the smallest difference, either in material, form, or ornamentation, and we consequently consider ourselves authorized in ascrib

* Quoted in Appendix to "The Lake Dwellings," by Dr. Keller, p. 14.

ing all these specimens, which appear to have come from the same factories to the industry of one and the same people. The identity of the inhabitants of the main land and those of the lake dwellings appears still more striking if we compare the settlements founded by both classes of the people as well as their whole arrangement." (p. 311.)

"In the very same graves and tumuli, implements of stone and bone, precisely alike in form, have been found lying together, and the same remark will apply in other graves to implements of bronze and iron. The products of the potter's art, also, are seen with all their characteristic peculiarities, through all the stages of their development, and form links in the outward phenomena of the different periods." (p. 312.)

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Knowing that history makes no mention of any other people but the Celts, who, in the very earliest ages, possessed the middle of Europe, and, in the later times, received their civilization from the Romans, we believe that it would be contrary to all the facts adduced, to arrive at any conclusion but this that the builders of the lake dwellings were a branch of the Celtic population of Switzerland, but that the earlier settlements belong to the prehistoric period, and had already fallen into decay before the Celts took their place in the history of Europe." (p. 313.)*

As to who the people of these earlier settlements

* The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and other Parts of Europe, by Dr. Ferdinand Keller, Pres. Antiq. Assoc. of Zurich. Translated by John Edward Lee, F. S. A., F. G. S., etc.

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were, Dr. Keller remarks, in a section entitled

Origin and Age of the Iron Implements of Marin,” "We can not refrain from once more repeating what we have stated in the previous parts of this volume. There can be no doubt that from the earliest ages the above mentioned country, and also the land beyond the Jura, was inhabited by races of a Celtic origin." (p. 262.) *

I am not aware that this author has assigned, even by conjecture, any specific date to the relics which he describes, other than "a very high antiquity." (p. 292.)

M. Troyon's opinion is that "the population of the first period were a primitive people, perhaps belonging to a Finnish or Iberian race, which came out of Asia several thousand years before our era, and, following the course of the Rhone, or the Rhine, wandered into the valleys of the Alps."†

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If these opinions may be accepted,—and I know of none more probable, or freer from objections, go to confirm, rather than to weaken, the scriptural chronology as to the antiquity of man. These primitive people were a branch of the great Indo-European family, the origin of which was in Asia, as was that of the domestic animals they brought with them. As to the "several thousand years before * Appendix N. † Appendix to Lake Dwellings, p. 395.

our era," one or two thousand are sufficient to meet all the exigencies of the case.

In view, then, of all the facts adduced by geology, we are warranted, I think, in the following definite conclusion, viz., that in order to account for every case of the existence of human relics in Western Europe, whether bones, implements, or dwellings, whether in caves or French drift, we do not need an antiquity of more than six or eight centuries before Christ, while we may go back twenty centuries and be still more than a thousand years distant from the Noachian deluge- a time sufficient to permit man to wander a long way, and do a great many things.

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