greatly modify our ideas of the
probable age of the Swiss lake villages, and should induce the
greatest caution in claiming any special antiquity for particular
classes of implements.

One of the most remarkable discoveries of modern times is that of the
site of ancient Troy by Dr. Schliemann, and it affords clear and
decisive evidence as to the historic value of the ages to which we
have referred.

Troy was destroyed by the Greeks perhaps about 1300 B.C., and we know
from Homer that this was in what for the Greeks and Trojans may
properly be termed the copper age, weapons and armor of that metal
being in common use, and also the mode of burial by cremation. We may
well suppose that at that early date the stone age was still in full
force in Northern Europe and Asia, and in the mountains of
Switzerland; and as the tin mines of England had not yet been reached,
bronze was scarce and dear even in Eastern Europe and Asia. Now
Schliemann has disinterred the undoubted Trojan Ilium on the hill of
Hissarlik; but he finds it to be only one of several buried cities,
and the succession of strata will be most clearly seen in the section
on the following page, compiled from his clear and circumstantial
descriptions. It is needless to say that this presents a succession of
the stone age to one of comparatively high civilization. It also forms
an epitome of that of the whole East, and of primitive man in general,
in some very important respects. We have first, at a date probably
coeval with that of the earliest monarchies of Assyria and Egypt, a
primitive people whose arts and mode of life remind us strongly of the
American Toltecans and Peruvians.[123] Schliemann supposes them to
have been Aryan, but they were more probably of Turanian race. They
must have occupied the site for a very long time. They were succeeded
by a more cultivated people of fine physical organization, yet
possibly still Turanians or primitive Aryans, who by trade or plunder
had accumulated large stores of metallic wealth, and had made advances
in the arts of life placing them on a level with the early Phoenicians
and Egyptians, with whom they probably had intercourse. These

=====================================================================
|Surface. |
| |
|Fifth stratum to 6-1/2 feet. |The Greek Ilium, with buildings
| |and objects of art characteristic