Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass.
- Victor Hehn
- Date:
- 1891
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![gondolas (Strabo, 1,1,6 : ^vKoirayiig o\i] icai diappvroc, ynpi'ipaig kcil nopd^doig odivo/xivi]) ; all the dwellings rested on piles (Vitruv. 2, 9, n : “ Est autein maxime id considerare Rave?inae, quod ibi omnia opera et publica et privata sub fundamentis ejusgeneris habentpalos ”), namely, of alder-wood, which was indestructible under ground ; the buildings themselves were of larch-wood, which was brought down the river Po, and was said to defy fire. Like Ravenna, Altinum was also nothing but an improved pile-village ; and the same art and habitude caused at first small settlements, and then the splendours of Venice, to rise in the lagoons at the mouth of the Brenta. Caesar found the banks of the Thames guarded by pointed stakes, and the same kind of stakes stuck in the river, covered by the water {De B. Gall., 12, 18: “ Ejusdemque generis sub aqua defixae slides fiumine tegebantur ”). It is not surprising that, among the remains of these edifices be- longing to the most different points of the Indo-European region, there should be found some that contain only stone tools. Though the immigrant shepherds were acquainted with metal in the form of copper, as is proved by comparing the Sansk. ayas, Zend, ayanh, Latin aes, Goth, ai‘2, Old Irish tarn for ham, they certainly did not manufacture it into tools, but used stone weapons ; this is confirmed, among other things, by words like hamar and salts (Grimm, “ Teut. Myth.,” 181). Then, according to their position in the long string of nations, the different races sooner or later received from the South knives and swords of bronze—that is, mixed copper and tin ; but it would be altogether contrary to experience and nature to suppose that this change took place suddenly. It must have been centuries before the stone axe gave way to the bronze knife in war and hunting, in the felling and splitting of trees, in the slaughtering of animals, etc., and at last became entirely obsolete. Custom, inherited skill and practice, the example of ancestors, myths and religious superstition, and the natural dulness of primitive folk, were all in favour of stone and bone implements ; and the few bronze swords that found their way into the interior must have been for a long time only toys and ornaments of single chiefs. When Caesar landed in Britain he found bronze and iron bars of a certain weight used instead of money (5, 12 : “ Utuntur aut aere aut taleis ferreis ad certum pondus examinatis pro nummo”)—that is, a period still surviving there, which was extinct in continental Gaul, where money had long been coined ; the island, though rich in tin and other metals, received its iron from abroad (aere utuntur importato) ; and the tribes in the interior, having for the most part no agriculture, feeding on flesh and milk, and clothed in skins, would probably make no use of metal. In the north of Ger- many and Slav-land the stone age reached far into really historical](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24874309_0445.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
