Note 17 — Chapter IV · Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, “Terremares,” Crannoges, Burghs, “Nurhags,” “Talayoti,” and “Truddhi.”

At Castione, near the town of Parma, and in several other parts of the provinces of Parma and Reggio, terremares have been discovered rising from the midst of vast rectangular basins artificially hollowed out. Some have concluded from this that the terremarecolli as the inhabitants of the terremares have been called, were descended from the people who built the pile dwellings of Switzerland, and that, faithful to the traditions of their race, they hollowed out ponds in default of natural lakes. If this were so, Italy must have been peopled with a race that came over the Alps.17 Who or what this race was can only be matter of conjecture. It cannot, however, have been the Ligures, a branch of the great Iberian family, who were totally ignorant of culture, and to whom the builders of the most ancient of the terremares were certainly superior; nor can it have been the Etruscans, for all relics of that race, which are moreover easily recognizable, were found quite apart from the deep deposits containing the terremares. Many indications point to the conclusion that when the Celts came down into Italy their knowledge of metallurgy was already more advanced than that of the builders of the terremares. We are therefore disposed to think with Heilbig, that the terremarecolli were the Itali, of Arian race, who were the ancestors of the Sabini, Umbri, Osci, and Latins. In the great migrations of races, the Itali bad separated themselves from their brethren the Pelasgi, who had remained in Epirus, and, continuing their march, they peopled Switzerland and crossed the Alps, settling down in the fertile plains watered by the Po, where it is easy even now to prove their presence.