Johannes Äppli, elementary school teacher and local historian, may have rubbed his eyes in disbelief when strange things appeared in Obermeilen on Lake Zurich in the winter of 1853/54. The water level was historically low, excavation work in a black layer of mud revealed (objects made of?) bones, Pottery shards, polished stones and hundreds of rotten wood piles stuck in the ground. Äppli immediately reported these “antiquities” to the Antiquarian Society in Zurich.

Their president, Ferdinand Keller, recognized them as tools made in ancient times. He had seen and described similar stone axes before, on Lake Biel. Shortly thereafter, in the first articles in the local Zurich newspaper and in the society’s first pile dwelling report, one could read: “In the lake bed abandoned by water, remnants of human activity have been preserved, which are suitable for shedding unexpected light on the earliest condition of the inhabitants of our region.” (Keller 1854)

The ancient historian Herodotus had already vividly described the pile dwellings in Lake Prasias in Thrace. travel report by the sailor Dumont d’Urville about houses on stilts in the Bay of Doreh (New Guinea) gave an idea about the construction of the dwellings in the lake. These descriptions stimulated the imagination of all history enthusiasts. he discovery of prehistoric water settlements was the top topic in the weekly magazines and in the bourgeois salons. Onlookers gathered at the excavation sites. Searching for artifacts on the shores became a popular pastime. The history of humanity no longer began with the Bible or in ancient Rome, but suddenly on our own doorstep and for everyone to see: in the lake. The “pile dwelling fever” broke out.

Dumont D’URVILLE, navigator, 1833
“Each village consists of 8 to 15 houses, built on stilts.”

Herodotus, greek historian, around 450 BC
“Those Peonians who live on pile dwellings on Lake Prasias in Macedonia, when they first build them, drive piles into the ground and fasten the planks laid over them to one another. A single narrow bridge leads from the shore to the scaffolding … … So that the children do not fall into the water, they are fastened at the foot with a rope. …“