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 West Africa, races of
men are living in lake-dwellings built upon piles, and with a
range of implements and weapons strikingly like many of those
discovered in these ancient lake deposits of Switzerland.
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