Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples Part 11

Dolmen at Pallicondah, near Madras (India).

This is, of course, but a very rapid survey of the megalithic monuments of our globe. They are most of them either tombs intended to hold the bodies of the dead, or memorials set up in their honor. New facts are constantly coming to light in this connection, and we may add to what we have already said, that beneath the tumulus of Mugen, as in the Cabeco d'Aruda ( Portugal), there are numerous skeletons; sixty-two repose in the sepulchral chamber of Monastier (Lozere); the dolmen known as the Mas de l'Aveugle (Gard) covers a circular cavity in which fifteen corpses had been placed; that of La Mouline (Charente) also enclosed a number of skeletons, all in a crouching position, whilst above them were placed two clumsy vases, a pious offering to the unknown dead. The prehistoric cemetery of Maupas contains several crypts of irregular form, built of rubble stone, and surmounted by a huge stone which had become corroded by age. In these crypts, too, the dead were piled up on each other, and the relics found with them justify us in a.s.signing them to the Neolithic age. Beneath the dolmens of Port-Blanc (Morbihan) were two upper layers of dead, stretched out horizontally and separated by flat stones. In the Isle de Thinie (Morbihan) excavations have brought to light twenty-seven stone cists or coffins of different sizes, all intended to be used for burial. Beneath the menhirs of Finistere, cinders and stones charred by fire bear eloquent witness to the cremation of the dead. "Whenever a dolmen has been opened in Finistere," says Dr. Floquet, "cinders or bones have been picked up; why, then, should we not admit that all dolmens are tombs?" This is really a conclusion to which we are almost compelled to come, and the names handed down by popular tradition are, if need be, yet another proof of the same thing. One dolmen at Locmariaker, for instance, is known as LE TOMBEAU DU VIEILLARD, a covered avenue at Saint Gildas is LE CHAMP DU TOMBEAU, and farther on a pathway leading to a ruined megalith is known as the CHEMIN DU TOMBEAU. The Abbe Harvard speaks of a remarkable monolith known as LA PIERRE DU CHAMP DOLENT, and another CHAMP DOLENT is met with near Rheims, whilst a group of monuments near Trehontereuc is called the JARDIN DES TOMBES, and the upright stones of Auvergne are known by the characteristic name of the PLOUROUSES.

Whether we examine the megaliths of Germany or of Poland, the mounds of Ohio or of Kentucky, of Missouri or of Arkansas, it is ever the same thing; excavations bring to light striking proofs of their destination, and everywhere we are led to the same conclusions.

Archaeologists would certainly appear to have been justified in hoping that the tombs thus scattered about all over the world would yield such useful information as to lead to some final conclusions. Unfortunately, however, this has not been the case. Often all trace of burial has disappeared in successive displacements, and more often still, the home of the dead has been violated in the hope, which turned out to be imaginary, of finding treasures; whilst in other cases the earliest inhabitants of the tombs have been removed to make way for their successors, who in their turn were soon afterwards expelled. Victory and defeat were not over with life, but were met with yet again in the grave.

FIGURE 66

Dolmen at Maintenon, with a table about 19 1/2 feet long.

It has been well pointed out by Fergusson, in his "Rude Stone Monuments," that the megalithic architecture of the remote past is a thing altogether apart; its special form indicating now the tendencies of a race or group of races of mankind, now the particular degree of civilization attained by a race at a certain period of its development. A cursory view of these monuments as a whole would lead us to cla.s.s them all together as ma.s.ses of rough, scarcely hewn stones piled up without cement, and almost always without ornamentation. In studying them one by one, however, we find, in spite of their undeniable family likeness, if we may use such a term, that it is quite easy to snake out certain differences, the result of the peculiar genius of the race by whom they were erected, or of the nature of the materials the builders had at their disposal. To take a case in point: Cromlechs are most numerous in England, and dolmens in France, and in both these countries we meet with a form of dolmen (Fig. 66) such as is rarely set up in other districts; one of the extremities of the table resting on the ground, and the other opt two supporting stones. In Scandinavia the supports are erratic blocks, in India fragments of the rocks in the neighborhood, in Algeria and the south of France buildings in courses are often met with; in Brittany the monuments of Mane-er-H'roek and Mane-Lud are paved with large stones. The ground from which rises the dolmen of Caranda, near Fere in Tardenois (Aisne), is covered with slabs, and the opening is closed with a flat stone resting on two lintels. We cannot speak of Caranda without referring to the discoveries and magnificent publications of M. F. Moreau, thanks to whom the daily life of the Gauls, Gallo-Romans, and Merovingians is brought vividly before us. To return, however to our monuments: As we have seen, the crypt was in many cases divided into two or more sepulchral chambers by walls made of stones. We find this arrangement at Gavr'innis, at Gamat (Lot), at Alt-Sammit in Mecklenburg, in Wayland Smith's cave in Berks.h.i.+re, and in a great many monuments in Scandinavia. M. du Chatellier speaks of several megalithic monuments in Finistere, including a central dolmen and several lateral chambers. The chambered graves at Park Cwn in Wales, and at Uley in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, contain side chambers, those of the former with a covered pa.s.sage between them, whilst in the latter the side chambers are grouped round a central apartment. At New Grange, in Ireland, a pa.s.sage more than ninety-two feet long leads to a double chamber of cruciform shape, with a roof of converging stones. Yet another fine example of a similar kind is that of Maeshow in the Orkney Islands. The tomb of Vaureal (Seine-et-Oise) contains three crypts of different sizes. The long barrow of Moustoir-Carnac contained four separate chambers, the western one of which is a dolmen of the kind known as GROTTES DES FEES, and is supposed to be much older than the rest of the group. A central circular chamber, with walls of upright stones, has a roof in which an attempt has been made to form a kind of dome, the stones of which project and overlap each other, marking, clumsy as is the construction, a considerable advance on anything previously accomplished, and adding considerably to the solidity of the monument.

An examination of the megalithic monuments still standing enables us to judge of the difficulties with which their builders had to contend, bearing in mind the primitive nature of their tools. We have already given the dimensions of the stones forming the alignments at Carnac. Those at Avebury vary in height from about fourteen to sixteen feet, and in the Deccan is a tumulus surrounded by fifty-six blocks of granite of an even greater size. One of the slabs of the Pedra-dos-Muros (Portugal) is remarkable for its size; and the length of the table of a dolmen on the road from Loudun to Fontevrault is more than seventy-two feet long; that of the dolmen of Tiaret (Algeria) is some seventy-five feet long by a width of nearly twenty-six feet and a thickness of nine and a half feet. This extremely heavy block rests on supports rising more than thirty-nine feet from the ground.[162]

Stone as well as wood can be much more easily cut in one direction than in any other. Men early learnt to recognize this peculiarity, and to take advantage of it in attacking rock. With their stone hammers they struck in straight lines, always aiming at the same points, and then, probably with the help of a fierce file, they succeeded in breaking off fragments. They also employed wedges of wood, which they drove into natural or artificial fissures, pouring water on to this wedge again and again. The wood became swollen with the damp, and in course of time a block of stone would be detached. Neither time nor sinewy arms were wanting, and Fergusson has remarked that any one who has seen the ease with which Chinese coolies transport the largest monoliths for considerable distances, will not look upon the difficulties of transport as insurmountable. A more serious difficulty would be the placing of the table of the dolmen on the supports, which are often raised to a great height above the ground. It is supposed that earth was piled up against the jambs so as to form an inclined plane, up which the table was slid into place with levers and rollers of the most primitive form, such as were in use in the most remote antiquity. Sometimes the way in which these stones are balanced is perfectly marvellous. The Martine stone, near Livernon (Lot), for instance, is the shape of a boat, and the slightest touch is enough to make it rock on its two supports. That of Castle Wellan (Fig. 55) rests on three stones pointed at the top, and some of the trilithons of India are of even more remarkable construction.

Although, as a general rule, megalithic monuments are without ornamentation, there are a good many exceptions in the case of dolmens made of very hard granite, on which numerous carvings and engravings have been made. It is, however, impossible to decipher any but a very few of these signs, whether circles, disks, dots, tooth or leaf mouldings, spirals, serpentine lines, lozenges, or strip.

M. du Chatellier describes at Commana (Finistere) an entrance gallery loaded with carvings, and the walls of one of the Deux-Sevres monuments have on them some very rough representations of the human figure cut in INTAGLIO, whilst various megaliths of Ireland are adorned with circles, spirals, stars, etc. One of the supports of the dolmen of Pet.i.t-Mont-en-Arzon has on it a representation of two human feet in relief; that of Couedic in Lockmikel-Baden is paired with flat stones covered with engravings. On the granite ceiling of the crypt beneath the dolmen of the Merchants, or as it is called in Brittany the DOL VARCHANT, is engraved the figure of a large animal supposed to have been a horse, but the head of which was unfortunately broken off at some remote date.[163] We often meet with representations of hammers, sometimes with and sometimes without handle. We give an ill.u.s.tration of one of the walls of the Mane-Lud monument (Fig. 67), which will enable the reader to judge of the general character of these engravings.

FIGURE 67

Part of the Mane-Lud dolmen.

The monument of the Isle of Gavr'innis, of which we have already spoken, is the most remarkable of any for the richness of its decoration. It includes a gallery, consisting of forty-nine blocks of granite and two of quartz, leading to a s.p.a.cious apartment. These blocks were brought from a distance, and the fact that the little arm of the sea separating the island from the mainland was crossed, proves that the men who built the monument owned boats strong enough to carry heavy loads. Excavations carried on in 1884 brought to light a pavement consisting of ten large slabs of granite, and beneath this pavement was found a kind of crypt at least three feet deep, the lower part of the lateral menhirs forming the walls. We must add, however, that Dr. de Closmadeuc, and his opinion should carry weight, thinks that when the Gavr'innis monument was erected the island was connected with the mainland. Three of the supports, forming the walls of the crypt, and all those of the gallery are covered with chevrons or zig-zag ornaments, circles, lozenges, and scrolls of which Fig. 68 will give some idea, and which Merimee compares to the tatooing of the inhabitants of New Zealand. Megalithic monuments of Ireland and certain stones in Northumberland are ornamented in a manner resembling the Gavr'innis engraving, similar designs being produced by similar means, and although the engravings of Morbihan are generally more clearly cut and distinct, Ave note in all alike the same absence of regularity, the same roughness of execution, the same strange types, the same disorder in the arrangement of the signs, and the same care to preserve the surface of the block in its natural condition.

FIGURE 68

Sculptures on the menhirs of the covered avenue of Gavr'innis.

There has been a good deal of discussion about the orientation of megalithic monuments, and the truth on that point once ascertained, some light might be thrown on the aim of the builders. It is evident, however, that there never was any general system of orientation. The dolmens of Morbihan, it is true, nearly all face the east, doubtless in homage to the sun rising in its splendor; but this is not the case in Finistere, and the dolmens of Kervinion and Kervardel, for instance, are set due north and south. Leaving Brittany, we are told by the Rev. W. Lukis that the position of the megalithic monuments of England varies considerably: most of the dolmens of Berry, Poitou, Aveyron, and the island of Bornholm, face west; and those of Algeria are set southwest, and northeast, so that it is really impossible to come to any final conclusion.

Some of the megalithic monuments already noticed have a peculiarity to which we must refer here on account of its importance. One of the supports, in nearly every case that which closes the entrance, is pierced with a circular opening. Sometimes, however, the opening is elliptical or square.

FIGURE 69

Dolmen with opening (India).

We meet with dolmens thus distinguished in India (Fig. 69), in Sweden, in Algeria, in France, and in Palestine, where they are often a.s.sociated with sepulchral niches hewn out of the rock and also pierced with an opening corresponding with that of the entrance. In Alemtejo (Spain), square openings occur. West of Karleby in Sweden, is a sepulchral chamber about twenty-nine feet long, made of slabs set upright, all those facing south being pierced with a nearly circular opening; and on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea dolmens made of four upright stones surmounted by a slab, have, in every case, one of the uprights pierced with an artificial opening about six inches in diameter. These dolmens are said by the country people to have been set up by a race of giants who built them as shelters for a dwarf people on whom they had compa.s.sion.

FIGURE 70

Dolmen near Trie (Oise).

In France, dolmens with openings are so numerous that it is difficult to make a selection. That known as La Justice, near Beaumont-sur-Oise, consists of a small vestibule and a very long mortuary chamber, separated by a slab pierced with a round opening. We must also mention the megalithic monument of Villers-Saint-Sepulchre at Trie (Oise) (Fig. 70), that of Grand-Mont, with many of those of Morbihan, of which that of Kerlescant has an oval opening; the covered avenue of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, originally erected at the confluence of the Seine and Oise, and now set up exactly as it was found at Saint Germain, has an oval opening, and presents the exceptional feature, of which I know no other instance, of having a stone for closing the opening if necessary; the covered avenue of Bellehaye in Normandy, reproduced with precision at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, which was closed by a transverse stone with an opening some inches in diameter.

Of English examples we may mention the dolmens of Rodmarten and Avening; Merimee quotes several megalithic monuments in Wilts.h.i.+re; and Sir J. Simpson, the well-known and oft-described KIT'S COTTY HOUSE, which is nothing more than a dolmen with an opening. HOLED STONES, as they are called, are numerous in Cornwall, the size of the opening varying considerably; that at Men-an-Tol, for instance, is more than a foot in diameter, whilst others are but a few inches long. At Orry's Grave, in the Isle of Man, two large stones are so placed as to leave a circular s.p.a.ce between them, which was evidently intended to serve the same purpose, or at least was in accordance with the same superst.i.tion, as were similar characteristics elsewhere. Setting aside the interminable legends connected with dolmens having openings, there is no doubt that this peculiarity of structure, which we meet with in India as in Scandinavia, in the Caucasus as in France, shows that the builders of all of them were impelled by a similar idea. These openings are too small to allow of the introduction of other corpses, or to afford to the living a refuge in the home of the dead; they could but have served for the pa.s.sing in of food, of which a supply was so often left for the departed; or yet another interpretation is possible: they may have been left for the soul or the spirit to leave its earthly prison and take flight for those happy regions in which all races more or less believe, and to which belief these openings may be witnessed to the present day. M. Cartailhac, however, hazards yet another explanation, and suggests that the megalithic monuments were intended for the interment of whole families, and that the bodies were not introduced into the tombs until all the flesh was gone, when the skeletons might have been slipped through the openings left for that purpose. The repeated disturbances of the remains in the graves have unfortunately often entirely dispersed all the human bones.

It was in Brittany that the art of erecting dolmens reached its fullest development, and it is there that the relics found in the tombs are of the most important character. Nowhere do we find weapons more carefully preserved, more delicately finished ornaments of a more remarkable kind. The Museum of Vannes, where most of the valuable objects found in the excavations are preserved, possesses quartzite, fibrolite, diorite, and even nephrite and jadeite hatchets, some of which materials are not native to Europe; as well as amber beads and a necklace of calaite, that precious stone described by Pliny, and which long remained unknown after his time.

Hatchets or celts are more numerous than any other objects found beneath dolmens of Brittany. A report, read by M. R. Galles to the Societe Polymathique of Morbihan, enumerates the objects found with the dead beneath the dolmen of Saint-Michel. This report is a regular inventory, in which figure eleven jade celts of great elegance of form and varying from about three and a half to sixteen inches, two larger celts of coa.r.s.e workmans.h.i.+p both broken, twenty-six small fibrolite celts with sharp edges, nine pendants, more than one hundred jasper beads which had been part of a necklace, and lastly an ivory ring. Other megalithic monuments were not less rich in relics. Thirty hatchets were picked up at Tumiac; more than a hundred, nearly all of tremolite, at Mane-er-H'roek; which were remarkable for their regularity of form, their polish, and the variety of their colors. They seldom bear any traces of having been used, and in many cases they appear to have been intentionally broken, probably in conformity with some funereal rite. Finistere, though not so rich as Morbihan, furnished an important contingent. The excavations of the Kerhue-Bras tumulus brought to light a sepulchral chamber which contained thirty-three arrow-beads. Beneath other dolmens were picked up a number of little plaques of slate, all pierced with holes; one of these pieces of slate, which was oblong in form, bore on it a representation of a sun with rays surrounded by ornaments not easy to make out. The Breton megalithic monuments also contained numerous fragments of pottery, some of which had formed part of vases without stands, such as those found at Santorin and at Troy.

In other parts of France, similar discoveries have been made; sh.e.l.ls often brought from distant sh.o.r.es, gla.s.s beads, amber bowls, hatchets and celts made of stone foreign to the country. Dr. Prunieres presented to the French a.s.sociation, when it met at Bordeaux, a collection of weapons and ornaments which came from the megalithic monuments of Lozere. M. Cartailhac described at the Prehistoric Congress of Copenhagen the dolmen of Grailhe (Gard). A skeleton was found beneath it crouching in a corner; whilst round about it lay a knife, a flint arrow-head, a vase of coa.r.s.e pottery, and in the earth forming the tumulus were picked up twenty arrow-heads, a hatchet of chloromelanite, with numerous beads and fragments of pottery. Were these offerings to the dead, or to the infernal deities, given to them in the hope of propitiating them in favor of the deceased? Beneath the megalith of Saint Jean d'Alcas were found beads of blue gla.s.s and of enamel which Dr. Prunieres, having compared with those in the Campana collection in the Louvre, thinks are of Phoenician origin. The tumuli of the Pyrenees have yielded calaite beads of the shape of small cylinders pierced with holes; and the dolmen of Breton (Tarn-et-Garonne) eight hundred and thirty-two necklace beads, some of the shape of a heart. Beneath the Vaureal dolmen were found five skulls in a row, and near one of them, that of a woman, lay a necklace made of round bits of bone and slate, on which hung a little jadeite hatchet as an amulet. These human relics were also accompanied by a fibrolite celt, numerous little worked flints, and some fragments of pottery. This arrangement of skulls in a tomb is very rare, and the only thing I can compare it to is the row of five horses' heads placed at the end of the entrance gallery of Mane-Lud.

At Alt-Sammit (Mecklenburg), were round stone hatchets, flint knives, fragments of pottery covered with strive and ornaments; at Tenarlo (Holland), urns and amber beads. At Ancress in the island of Jersey, we find a regular necropolis dating from Neolithic times, and one hundred vases or urns of different forms were collected. In the Long Barrow of West Kennet, too, were found numerous fragments of pottery, and with these fragments boars' tusks longer than those of the boar of the present clay, the bones of sheep, goats, roedeer, pigs, and of a large species of ox, all of which are probably relics of a funeral feast. At a little distance from West Kennet the Rev. Doyen Merewether found several flint implements. Here too, then, as elsewhere, the home of the living was side by side with the resting-place of the (lead.

Beneath the dolmens of West Gothland have been found polished stone weapons and tools a.s.sociated with the bones of domestic animals, in many cases bearing traces of the work of the hand of man. At Olleria, in the kingdom of Valencia, at Xeres de la Frontera, we find diorite hatchets, and in Algeria vases filled with the sh.e.l.ls of land mollusca. In every clime we meet with tokens of the respect in which the dead were held.

This respect is really very remarkable. The builders of the dolmens did not hesitate to sacrifice their most precious objects, their richest ornaments, their hatchets and precious stones brought from a distance by their tribe in their long migrations. No one would dream of robbing the sacred collection. Our own contemporaries, however civilized we may flatter ourselves by considering them, would not prove themselves as disinterested.

Hatchets, pottery, and personal ornaments of stone bone, etc., are not the only artificial objects found beneath the megalithic monuments. Metals, too, have been discovered, and M. Piette in one of his excavations, came across a plate formed of very thin layers of gold leaf welded together by hammering; and in several parts of the south of France have been found olives made of gold and pierced lengthwise. The dolmen of Carnouet in Brittany, insignificant as it appears and containing but one small sepulchral chamber with no gallery of access or lateral crypts, beneath a tumulus about thirteen feet high by some eighty-five in diameter, and which was left untouched until our own day, actually contained a golden necklace weighing over seven ounces; in the crypt of the Castellet monument was found a golden plaque and a golden bead; whilst the Ors dolmen in the isle of Oleron concealed a nugget which had been rolled into the shape of a bead probably after having been beaten thin with a hammer. At Plouharnel, two golden amulets were found beneath a triple dolmen, and M. du Chatellier, in excavating beneath a megalithic monument in Finistere, found a magnificent chain of gold. A somewhat similar chain was taken from the Leys dolmen near Inverness, and in 1842 Lord Albert Cunningham picked up at New Grange (Ireland) two necklaces, a brooch, and a ring, all of gold.

More than a hundred megalithic monuments of France have been found to contain bronze, and this number would be more than doubled if we counted the finds in tombs not connected with megaliths, such as those of Aveyron and Lozere, where a few bits of bronze were found mixed with numerous stone objects. One fifth of the weapons, especially the swords and daggers found beneath the dolmens, are of bronze. At Kerhue in Finistere, a number of bronze swords were arranged in a circle round a little heap of cinders and black earth, relics, probably, of the cremation of the dead, in honor of whom the tumulus had been erected.

Beneath the dolmens of Roknia (Algeria) were found thirteen bronze ornaments, and two in silver gilt of very superior workmans.h.i.+p, and under those of the Caucasus were picked up blue-gla.s.s beads, arrow-heads, and bronze rings; but M. Chantre, who is an authority in the matter, thinks these objects date from interments subsequent to the erection of the dolmens.

Iron was much more rarely used than bronze in the greater part of Europe. It was not even known in Scandinavia before the Christian era. In Germany, Pannonia, and Noric.u.m its use dates from the sixth or seventh century B.C. Beneath the mounds of Central America we find but a few fragments of meteoric iron, the rarity of which made them extremely valuable; on the other hand iron was known to the h.e.l.lenes as long ago as the fourteenth century B.C., and it had been employed in Egypt for many centuries prior to that time. The most ancient sepulchres of Malabar contain iron tridents, and Genesius dates their use from before the deluge. It is therefore surprising to find that some races remained for an illimitable time ignorant of the way to procure a metal of such great utility.

Iron was not used in Brittany until towards the close of the period during which megalithic monuments were erected. Stone, bronze, and iron were found together in the Nignol tomb at Carnac, which dates from the time when cremation was already practised. We find the same a.s.sociation of different materials in the Rocher dolmen.

In the British Isles, especially in Scotland and in Ireland, bronze and iron objects are more numerous than in France. At Aspatria, near St. Bees in c.u.mberland, a cist was discovered containing the skeleton of a man measuring seven feet from the crown of the head to the feet. Near the giant lay numerous valuable objects, including an iron sword inlaid with silver, a gold buckle, the fragments of a s.h.i.+eld and of a battle-axe, and the iron bit of a snaffle bridle. The great cairn of Dowth, in Ireland, contained iron knives and rings mixed with bone needles, copper pins, and gla.s.s and amber beads, all showing rapid progress in the industrial arts. The remarkable cairns near Lough Crew (Ireland), which were untouched and indeed unknown to archaeologists until 1863, were found to contain, amongst many other interesting objects, numerous human bones, fragments of pottery, sh.e.l.ls of marine mollusca, 4,884 bone implements, and seven pieces of iron very much oxidized. The tumuli of the Grand Duchy of Posen and those of Prussia cover kistvaens containing funeral vases, weapons, and silver and gold ornaments.

We are altogether in the dark as to the date or the use of the various objects found in these tombs, and the coins bearing dates which are often a.s.sociated with them, do not seem to help us much, belonging as they doubtless do to a much later period than the erection of the monuments. We may, however, mention that near the surface of the mound of Mane-er-H'roek eleven medals of Roman emperors from Tiberius to Trajan were found; whilst under the tumulus of Rosmeur, on the Penmarch Point (Finistere), were various Roman coins; at Bergous in Locmariaker, at Mane-Rutual, and at other places in Brittany, coins of the earliest Christian emperors; at Uley, in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, some coins of the time of the sons of Constantine; at Mining-Low (Derbys.h.i.+re), beneath a kistvaen surrounded by a cromlech, some medals of Valentinia.n.u.s; at Galley-Low, with a magnificent gold necklace set with garnets, a coin of Honorius, but as these last were found at the outer edge of the mound there are doubts as to the time of their deposition; these doubts were, however, to some extent set at rest by the finding of a coin of Geta beneath the monument itself. We might multiply instances of similar finds, but I will only mention one more, the discovery under some Scotch barrows of silver necklaces and coins of the Caliphs of Bagdad, bearing date from 88 887 to 945 A.D.

This last discovery confirms what I have already said, that the introduction of the coins was of much later date than the erection of the monument. Another fact adds weight to this decision. The most ancient Gallic coins date from about three centuries before our era, and the earliest British from a century earlier than that. How is it that excavations have brought to light no specimens of either? The Romans successively occupied all the countries of which we have just spoken; the tombs themselves bear witness to their conquests; and it is to the violation of the tombs, the displacements, and secondary interments that we owe the introduction of coins, pottery, and bricks that undoubtedly date from the Roman period, and were probably placed beside their dead by the Roman legionaries.

Whatever may be the difficulties, however, we are already able to come to certain definite conclusions. We cannot connect the megalithic monuments with any one of the ancient religions known. They were certainly not set up in honor of Odin or of Osiris, of Astarte or of Athene, the Phoenician or the Egyptian, the Greek or the Roman G.o.ds; their erection seems to have had but one end in view, to do honor to the dead. Beneath none of them do we find the remains either of the cave-bear or of the reindeer, still less of the mammoth or of the rhinoceros; whereas we do constantly meet with the bones of animals characteristic of Neolithic times. It is therefore to that period that we must attribute the more ancient of these mysterious monuments. And the setting up of such memorials continued throughout the intermediate time between the Stone and Bronze ages, and through the Bronze and Iron periods. It was, indeed, still practised now and then in the earlier centuries of the Christian era. More than that, such monuments are even now occasionally erected. The Kha.s.sias of India make cromlechs of large, flat unhewn stones, some six to seven feet high, and the Angami-Nagas of the extreme north of British India set up extensive alignments of menhirs, similar to those of France. Inscriptions in the old Irish cipher writing, known as ogham, prove that megalithic monuments were erected in Ireland after the time of St. Patrick; and, as we have already remarked, some of the Breton menhirs are surrounded by crosses. In India, too, we find the symbol of the Christian faith, and in 1867, were discovered on the sh.o.r.es of the G.o.davery between Hyderabad and Nagpore, a few dolmens made of four upright stones surmounted by one or two slabs of sandstone, and encircling a cross which is said to date from the same age as the dolmens themselves. We must add, however, that the most competent archaeologists are of opinion that this form of the cross was not introduced into India until about the sixth or seventh century of our era. Probably the erection of megalithic monuments was not discontinued in England or in France until towards the eighth or ninth century after Christ; and the menhirs set up later in Scotland and in Scandinavia prove how fondly the people of those countries clung to ancient traditions. These rude stone monuments were handed down from one race to another, from invaders to invaded, from conquered to conquerors.

We must not, however, omit to mention one serious objection. Roman historians, exact as is their description of Gaul, Britannia, and Germania, are silent as to stone monuments. Tacitus does not refer to Stonehenge or to Avebury. Caesar was present at the naval battle between his own fleet and that of the Veneti, in the Gulf of Morbihan, and if the megalithic monuments of Carnac were then there, would they not have arrested the attention of the great captain? This silence is the more inexplicable as one of the earliest geographers mentions the stone of Iapygia; Ptolemy speaks of a similar stone on the sh.o.r.es of the ocean; Strabo, of a group of dolmens near Cape Cuneus; Quintus Curtius, of an important alignment in Bactriana; Pliny, who mentions a leaning pillar in Asia Minor, says nothing of the megalithic monuments of Gaul, which he crossed several times. Moreover, Ausonius, Sidonius, Appollinaris, and Fortunatus, who are so eager to glorify their own land, maintain a similar silence with regard to these structures. Sulpicius, Severus, and Gregory of Tours, old chroniclers of French history, also pa.s.s them over without a word. More than that, Madame de Sevigne, who was stopping at Auray in 1689, and visited its environs, writes to her daughter of all she has seen and done, without alluding to the alignments of Carnac, or of Erdeven, which were, of course, much more complete in her day than in ours. In fact, they are mentioned for the first time by Sauvagere, in his "Recueil des Antiquites de la Gaule," in which he attributes them to the Romans. We may therefore, perhaps, conclude that these decayed and clumsy-looking monuments were despised for generations, no one realizing their importance or caring to penetrate their secrets.

If need were, we have yet other proofs of their extreme antiquity. In excavating an alignment in the district occupied by the Kermario group, a Roman encampment was discovered. The enceinte is represented by a long wall about six feet thick, and propped up against this wall were found a number of flat stones blackened with smoke, on which the legionaries doubtless cooked their food. In some instances these hearths were made on an overturned menhir, and other menhirs, which had belonged to the alignment, were fitted into the walls. A Roman road pa.s.ses near Avebury, and, contrary to their general custom, the haughty conquerors had turned aside to avoid the tumulus. These are decisive proofs that in France and England at least the megalithic monuments were erected before the advent of the Romans.

Difficult as it is to come to any definite conclusion as to the age of the monuments, it is yet more difficult to ascertain to what race their builders belonged. In the first place we ask: Are they all the work of one race? The contrary, earnestly maintained by M. de Mortillet, has long been the general opinion. M. Worsaae declared, at the Brussels Congress,[164] that the dolmens were erected by different peoples; M. Cazalis de Fondouce,[165] M. Broca,[166] and M. Cartailhac,[167]

share this belief. "Are not the monuments of huge stones," says M. Fondouce, "the product of a progressive civilization growing by degrees, rather than the work of a single people maintaining their own manners and customs in the midst of the old primitive populations they visited, without borrowing anything from their hosts?" To Broca, the resemblance between the dolmens of Europe, Africa, and even of America proves but one thing

the similarity of the aspirations and powers of all men. Everywhere, and at every time, men have aimed, in their monuments, not only at durability, but at the expression of force and of power. It was with this end in view that they erected menhirs and selected enormous stones for their megalithic monuments. The dolmen, which looks like an architectural building, is but a modification of primitive tombs. The cave-man first turned to account natural or artificial rock shelters, and when they were not to be had, he imitated them in such materials as he had at his disposal. Hence we have crypts, kistvaens, and dolmens; and the resemblance between them proves nothing as to the parentage of their builders.