We have seen that the highest rank we can assign to Paleolithic man in the scale of civilization is Upper Savagism. But when Neolithic man appeared, he was in the middle status of Barbarism. The time, therefore, between the disappearance of Paleolithic man and the arrival of Neolithic man was long enough to enable primitive man to pass one entire ethnical period, that of Lower Barbarism. But this requires a very long period of time, probably several times as long as the entire series of years since Civilization first appeared, which is supposed to be in the neighborhood of five thousand years ago.5
We must now turn our attention to Neolithic man himself and learn what we can of his culture, and discover, if possible, what race it was that spread over Europe after it had been for so long a time an uninhabitable country. A few remarks by way of introduction will not be considered amiss.
We are learning that tribal organization, implying communism in living, is characteristic of prehistoric people.6 Tribal organization sufficed to advance man to the very confines of civilization. We have no doubt but that this was the state of society amongst the Neolithic people. But this implies living in communities or villages. We need not picture to ourselves a country dotted with houses, the abodes of single families; such did not exist, but here and there were fortified villages.
Still another consequence follows from this tribal state of society. There was no such thing as a strong central government. Each tribe obeyed its own chief, and a state of war nearly always existed between different tribes. Such we know was the state of things among the Indian tribes of America. Travelers tell us that it is so to-day in Africa. Each tribe stood ready to defend itself or to make war on its neighbors. One great point, therefore, in constructing a village, was to secure a place that could be easily defended.
Bearing these principles in mind, let us see what we can learn of their habitations. Owing to a protracted drouth, the water in the Swiss lakes was unusually low in the Winter of 1854, and the inhabitants of Meilen, on the Lake Zürich, took advantage of this state of affairs to throw up embankments some distance out from the old shore, and thus gain a strip of land along the coast. In carrying out this design, they found in the mud at the bottom of the lake a number of piles, some thrown down and others upright, fragments of rough pottery, bone and stone instruments, and various other relics.