Lake Dwellings

“The earliest account of lake dwellings is to be found in Herodotus, who describes a Thracian tribe living, in 520 B.C., in a small mountain lake of what is now Rumelia. The custom of constructing these habitations has come down to the present day. The fisherman of Lake Prasias, near Salonica, still inhabit wooden cottages built over the water, as the Thracian tribes did, and in the East Indies the practice of building lake settlements is very common. The lake dwellings proper of Switzerland came to light during the winter months of 1853-1854, when the water of the lakes fell much below its ordinary level. Dr. Keller, who first described these lake dwellings, says that the main platform was made of round timbers, rarely of split boards, covered with a bed of mud; the walls and sides were in great measure of interlaced branches, the interstices filled with moss, and daubed with clay. In his opinion, all the evidence goes to show they were rectangular in shape. It is probable that the huts were thatched, and the parts used as dormitories strewn with straw or hay."—(Charles Leonard-Stuart, 1911)

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