Archaeologically, they all belong to the Bronze Age; they seem, further, to be the work of a race distinct from any previous dwellers in North Italy, which had probably just moved south from the Danubian plains.

At some time or other this race had dwelt in lake-villages.

They were now settled on dry ground and far away from lakes--one of their hamlets is high in the Apennines, nearly 1,900 ft.

above the sea.

But they still kept in the Terremare the lacustrine fashion of their former homes.
The nature of these strange villages can best be explained by an account of the best-known and the largest example of them (fig.