Note 580 — Chapter X · —Man's Relation To The Water

Such pile dwellings, answering the primary need of protection, have had wide distribution, especially in the Tropics, and persist into our own times among retarded peoples living in small, isolated groups too weak for effective defence. They were numerous in the lakes of Switzerland580 and northern Italy down to the first century of our era, and existed later in slightly modified form in Ireland, Scotland, England and southern Wales.581 In ancient Ireland they were constructed on artificial islands, raised in shallow spots of lakes or morasses by means of fascines weighted down with gravel and clay, and moored to the bottom by stakes driven through the mass. Such groups of dwellings were called Crannogs; they existed in Ireland from the earliest historical period and continued in use down to the time of Queen Elizabeth. In the turbulent twelfth century, the warring lords of the soil adopted them as places of refuge and residence.582 Herodotus describes a pile village of the ancient Thracians in Lake Prasias near the Hellespont, built quite after the Swiss type, with trap doors in the floor for fishing or throwing out refuse. Its inhabitants escaped conquest by the Persians under King Darius, and avoided the fate of their fellow tribesmen on land, who were subdued and removed as colonists to Asia.583