d, remains of former
habitations, and, in the midst of these, great numbers of relics,
exhibiting the grade of civilization which those lake-dwellers had
attained.

Here, too, were accumulated proofs of the upward tendency of the human
race. Implements of polished stone, bone, leather, pottery of various
grades, woven cloth, bones of several kinds of domestic animals, various
sorts of grain, bread which had been preserved by charring, and a
multitude of evidences of progress never found among the earlier, ruder
relics of civilization, showed yet more strongly that man had arrived
here at a still higher stage than his predecessor of the drift, cave,
and shell-heap periods, and had gone on from better to better.

Very striking evidences of this upward tendency were found in each class
of implements. As by comparing the chipped flint implements of the lower
and earlier strata in the cave period with those of the later and upper
strata we saw progress, so, in each of the periods of polished stone,
bronze, and iron, we see, by similar comparisons, a steady progress from
rude to perfected implements; and especially is this true in the
remains of the various lake-dwellings, for among these can be traced out
constant increase in the variety of animals domesticated, and gradual
improvements in means of subsistence and in ways of living.

Incidentally, too, a fact, at first sight of small account, but on
reflection exceedingly important, was revealed. The earlier bronze
implements were frequently found to imitate in various minor respects
implements of stone; in other words, forms were at first given to bronze
implements natural in working stone, but not natural in working bronze.
This showed the DIRECTION of the development--that it was upward from
stone to bronze, not downward from bronze to stone; that it was progress
rather than decline.

These investigations were supplemented by similar researches elsewhere.
In many other parts of the world it was found that lake-dwellers had
existed in different grades of civilization, but all within a certain
range, intermediate between the cave-dwellers and the historic period.
To explain this epoch of the lake-dwellers, history came in with the
account given by Herodotus of the lake-dwellings on Lake Prasias,
which gave protection from the armies of Persia. Still more important,
Comparative Ethnography showed that to-day, in various parts of the
world, especially in New Guinea and We