Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

T >> The Marquis de Nadaillac >> Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

As in the Lake Stations, excavations of the TERREMARES have brought
to light numerous bones of domestic animals; but those of wild
creatures, such as bears, stags, roedeer, and boars, are even rarer
than in Switzerland. The inhabitants evidently had other resources
than hunting at their command, and though the processes they employed
were but elementary, they cultivated corn, beans, vines, and various
fruits. Though iron was still unknown, some bronze objects have been
found in certain TERREMARES, but these were only roughly melted
pieces of metal, showing no traces of having been either hammered
or soldered. Amongst the pottery found in the TERREMARES, we must
mention a number of small objects not unlike acorns in form, pierced
lengthwise, and decorated with incised lines, some straight, others
curved. Italian archaeologists call them FUSAIOLES, and Swiss savants,
who have found a great many in the lakes of their native country,
give them the name of PESONS DE FUSEAU. Both these names connect them
with the process of spinning; but their number renders this hypothesis
inadmissible, and when we give an account of the excavations carried
on at Hissarlik, under Dr. Schliemann, we shall be able to determine
their character (see Chapter VII.).

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.[126] 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.

In superintending the excavation of a TERREMARE at Toszig, in Hungary,
Pigorini,[127] was greatly struck by the resemblance between it and
similar erections in Italy, especially that of Casarolo. This is very
much in favor of the Itali having been the builders. But the objects
collected in some of the TERREMARES, those of Varano and Chierici
for instance, prove that they were inhabited from Neolithic times,
so that the Itali of Italy, if Itali they were, did but follow the
traditions of their predecessors. In spite, however, of zealous study,
all that relates to the origin of tribes and races remains involved
in the greatest obscurity, and we can but look to the future to supply
what the present altogether fails to give.

We have yet other tokens of the presence of the ancient races
who peopled Italy. Dr. Concezio Rosa[128] noticed in the Abruzzi
extensive black patches on the ground, which bore witness to the
former residence of men. The excavation of these FONDI DI CABANE, as
they are called, led to the finding of a great many stone knives and
scrapers with numerous bone stilettos and the bones of various animals,
all of them of species still living. Later, similar FONDI were found
between the Eastern Alps and Mount Gargano. In Reggio, at Rivaltella,
at Castelnuovo de Sotto, and at Calerno, they formed regular groups,
and from one of these stations more than one thousand worked flints
were collected. We mention them especially because they were of
lozenge (SELCI ROMBOIDALI) and half-lozenge (SEMI-ROMBI) shapes,
which are forms unknown in other districts.

With these flints were hand-made vases with handles, the clay unmixed
with sand or quartz and ornamented with lines, grooves, and raised
knobs. These vases differ greatly from those found in the TERREMARES;
are they then, as has been said, of earlier (late? It is impossible
to come to any decision on the point.

Before closing our account of prehistoric buildings surrounded by
water, we must say a few words on crannoges though there is the
greatest difference of opinion as to their date.

Crannoges are artificial islets raised above the level of certain lakes
in Ireland and Scotland[129] by means of a series of layers of earth
and stone, and strengthened by piles, some upright, others laid down
lengthwise. Wylde counted forty-six in Ireland in his time, some of
them of considerable extent. That of Ardkellin Lough (Roscommon) is
surrounded by a wall of dry stones resting on piles. In other places
have been found the remains of stockades very intelligently set up
in such a manner as to break the force of the shock of the water.

To add to the difficulties of dealing with the subject of crannoges,
they were successively occupied for many centuries. They are mentioned
in the most ancient Irish legends, and even in the sixteenth century
they served as refuges for the kings of the country in the constant
rebellions that took place. The objects taken from the lakes belong to
very different epochs, and it is impossible to say anything positive
as to the time of their construction.

A but found in Donegal may, however, date from an extremely remote
age.[130] It rested on a thick layer of sand brought front the
neighboring shore, and was covered over by a bed of peat slot
less than sixteen feet thick. Since the hilt was deserted by man
the peat had gradually accumulated till it had at last invaded the
dwelling itself. The but included a ground-floor, and one story about
twelve feet long by nine wide and four high. The walls consisted of
beams scarcely squared, joined together with wooden mortices and
pegs. The roof, which was probably flat, consisted of oak planks,
the spaces between which had been filled in with mortar made of
sand and grease. On the ground-floor lay several flint implements,
showing no signs of having been polished, a quartz wedge, and a
stone chisel, which had evidently seen long service. This chisel,
the discoverers say, corresponded exactly with the notches around the
mortices. A regular paved way, formed of sea-beach pebbles placed on
a foundation of interlaced branches, led up to a hearth made of flat
stones measuring some three feet every way. All about lay fragments
of charcoal and broken nuts, the latter partly burnt. Another but,
with an oak floor resting on four posts, has recently been discovered
in County Fermanagh, beneath a deposit of peat about twenty feet
thick. No trace of metal has been found in either of these Irish buts,
and the thickness of the peat beneath which they lay is another proof
of their great antiquity. One serious objection, however, is this:
Were the Irish sufficiently advanced in prehistoric times to be able
to erect dwellings implying so considerable an amount of civilization?

Crannoges are met with in Scotland as well as in Ireland, and
excavations in Loch Lee have enabled explorers to make out their
mode of construction. The Lake Dwellers began by piling up a number
of trunks of trees in the shallower waters of a lake. They then
strengthened these trunks with branches or beams about which the
mud collected till the whole formed an islet. All about this islet,
beneath the waters of the lake, were found various objects in stone,
wood, and horn, as well as some canoes several feet long. Similar
crannoges are to be seen on the lakes of Kincardine and Forfar,
which Troyon thinks date from the Stone age.[131] If he be right,
and we should not like to make any assertion one way or the other, the
bronze objects and the enamelled glass bowls found near these dwellings
prove that they were occupied by several successive generations.

It is probable that Lake dwellings were also used in Asia and in
Africa from prehistoric times. History tells us that the inhabitants
of Phasis, the Mingrelians of the present day, lived in reed huts
on the water, and that they went from one islet to another in canoes
hollowed out of the trunks of oak-trees. A bas-relief from the palace
of Sennacherib, preserved in the British Museum, represents warriors
fighting on artificial islands made of large reeds. But here w e
enter the domain of history, and we must return to Neolithic times,
and speak of the habitations built of more durable materials and the
ruins of which are still standing.

It is impossible to say with any certainty to what period the most
ancient of these structures belong. It is probable that man early
learned to pile up stones, binding them together at first with clay,
and then with some stronger cements. The BURGHS of Scotland, the
NURHAGS of the island of Sardinia, the TALAYOTI of the Balearic Isles,
the CASTELLIERI of Istria, are all ancient witnesses of the modes of
building employed in the most remote ages.

BURGHS, BROCKS, or BROUGHS are numerous in Scotland,[132] and also in
the islands of the Atlantic. For a long time they were supposed to be
of Scandinavian origin, but Sir J. Lubbock[133] remarks With reason
that no building at all like them exists in Norway or in Denmark, and
it is difficult to admit the idea that the Scandinavians set up in
the islands tributary to them buildings which were unknown to their
own mainland. We are therefore disposed to think that these curious
structures, which were inhabited until the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries of the Christian era, are of much earlier date than the
first invasion by the Northmen, and that the burgh still standing
on the little island of Moussa, one of the Shetlands, is one of the
best examples that we can quote. A tower, forty-one feet high, rises
on the borders of the sea. The walls are of unhewn stones, piled up
without cement, and they form two circles, separated by a passage
four feet wide. In each story are a series of very small openings,
intended to admit air and light to the cell-like rooms inside, and
to a staircase that leads to the top of the tower. The only way into
this burgh is through a door only seven. feet high, and so narrow
that it is impossible for two people to go in abreast.

The regularity of the building of this burgh, and the architectural
knowledge. it implies, prevent our ascribing it either to the
Stone or even to the Bronze age; but we find in Scotland itself
more ancient examples, if we may so express ourselves, of domestic
architecture. These examples are subterranean dwellings, made of
rough-hewn stones of considerable size, laid down in regular courses,
to which the names of EARTH-HOUSES, PICTS' HOUSES, and WEEMS have been
given. The walls converge towards the centre, leaving an opening at
the top, which was covered in with large flat stones. These dwellings
are certainly of earlier date than the burghs, and the discovery of
a PICTS' HOUSE actually beneath the ruins of a burgh enables us to
speak with certainty on this point.

In Ireland similar proofs have been found of the great antiquity of
roan. More than one hundred towers have been found in that country,
all built of large stones, and varying in height from seventy to one
hundred and thirty feet, with a diameter of from eight to fifteen
feet. The most diverse origins have been attributed to these towers,
from prehistoric times to the centuries immediately preceding
the Christian era; from the time of the Druids to that of the
Friars. According to the point of view of different archaeologists,
they have been called temples of the sun, hermitages, phallic
monuments, or signal towers.

We meet with a similar problem in considering the NURHAGS, as in
considering the burghs. They have been justly called a page of
history, written all over the surface of Sardinia by an unknown
people. Count Albert de la Marmora counted three thousand of them a
few years ago, and more recent explorers tell us that this number is
greatly exceeded. Like the burghs, which they strangely resemble, the
NURHAGS are conical towers with very thick walls made of huge stones,
some Hewn, others in their natural state, arranged in regular courses
without mortar. On entering one of them we find ourselves in a vaulted
room, which looks exactly like one half of an egg in shape. In the
upper stories are two, and sometimes three rooms, one above the
other, to which access is gained by steps cut in the walls. The
whole structure is crowned by a terrace (Fig. 53). We must add that
the entrance to the NURHAG is through an opening on a level with the
ground, and so low that one can only go in by crawling on the stomach.

Many conjectures have been made as to the use of these towers. Were
they temples in which to worship, or trophies of victory? Their number
is against either of these hypotheses. Were they then habitations or
towers of observation? Not the former certainly, for no one could live
between walls sixteen or twenty-two feet thick, shut out from air and
light. Some travellers think they were tombs, but excavations have
brought to light no bones or sepulchral relics. We can compare them
to nothing but the Towers of Silence, on which the Parsees expose
their dead to the birds of heaven, which are ever ready rapidly to
acquit themselves of their melancholy functions.

FIGURE 53

Nurhag at Santa Barbara (Sardinia).

The origin of the NURHAGS is as uncertain as their use. Diodorus
Siculus considered them very ancient, and one fact has come to
light in our day which enables us to arrive at a somewhat more exact
decision. The island of Sardinia was taken by the Romans from the
Carthaginians in 238 B.C., and an aqueduct, the ruins of which can
still be seen, was built by the conquerors on the foundations of an
ancient NURHAG, so that the latter must belong to an earlier (late
than the third century before our era. Fergusson, who speaks with
authority on everything relating to the monuments of the Stone age,
assigns the NURHAGS to the mystic times of the Trojan War. In all
probability they were built by an invading people. La Marmora thinks
these invaders were the Libyans; M. de Rougemont, in his history of the
Bronze age, says that the curved vault is the characteristic feature
of Pelasgian architecture, which is often confounded with that of
the Phoenicians. Although any final conclusion would be premature,
we ourselves think that the builders of the NURHAGS belonged to
the great stream of emigration from the East, the course of which
is marked by megalithic monuments in so many parts of the world. In
some instances, NURHAGS were surrounded by cromlechs, of which most
of the stones have now been thrown down. Some of these stones bore
prominences resembling the breasts of a woman.

The accumulations of earth and rubbish about the NURHAGS are, some
of them, from six to ten feet high. In the lower deposits have been
found coarse pottery, with no attempt at ornamentation, fragments
of flint, and obsidian hatchets of black basalt, or porphyry of the
Palaeolithic type, arrow-head, flint knives, stones used in slings,
and numerous shells; whilst in the upper deposits were picked up
black pottery and fragments of bronze belonging to the transition
period between the Stone and Metal ages.

All over the island of Sardinia, side by side with the NURHAGS, rise
tombs to which have been given the name of SEPOLTURE DEI GIGANTI. They
are from thirty-two to thirty-nine feet long by a nearly equal width,
and are built,. some of huge slabs of stone, some of stones of smaller
size. They are in every case surmounted by a pediment, formed of a
single block, and often covered with sculptures dating from different
epochs. These sepulchres are certainly of later date than the NURHAGS,
and in them have been found numerous implements of bronze, but none
of stone.

FIGURE 54

"Talayoti" at Trepuco (Minorca).

The TALAYOTI, of which one hundred and fifty are still standing in
the island of Minorca, are circular or elliptical truncated cones,
built of huge unhewn stones, laid one on the other without cement
(Fig. 54). The most remarkable of all of them, that at Torello, near
Mahon, is thirty-three feet high. In many cases there are two stone,
one placed upright, the other across it, in front of the TALAYOTI. The
meaning of these biliths is unknown.

Yet another series of cyclopean monuments are known under the name
of NANETAS, and are not unlike overturned boats. Seven such NANETAS
are still to be seen in the Balearic Isles. The one which is best
preserved consists of large unhewn stones of rectangular shape,
enclosing an inner chamber about six feet in width. The roof having
fallen in, its height cannot be exactly determined; we only know that
the lateral walls are some forty-five feet high.

In Algeria also have been preserved some towers built of stones
without cement. Some of them are square (BASINA) and surmounted by
a small dolmen, others are round (CHOUCHET) and closed at the top by
a large slab of stone, as in the NURHAGS we have just described.

It is difficult to bring this account to a close without mentioning
the TRUDDHI and the SPECCHIE of Otranto.[134] A TRUDDHI is a massive
conical tower consisting of a heap of scarcely hewn stones piled up
without cement and with an exterior facing. Inside is a round room,
the roof of which is formed by a series of circular courses of stone
projecting one beyond the other. Sometimes a second chamber rises
above the first, which IS reached by steps cut in the facing, which
steps also lead to the platform on the top of the tower. Thousands of
TRUDDHI are to be seen in Italy; they date from every epoch, and the
people of Lecce and Bari continue to erect them as did their fathers
before them. Side by side with the TRUDDHI rise the SPECCHIE, which
are conical masses of stone, of greater height and probably of more
ancient date than the towers. Lenormant thinks they were used to live
in; but his opinion has been much questioned, and it is necessary to
speak on this point with great reserve.

The CASTELLIERI of Istria, which the Slavonian peasants call STARIGRAD,
are as yet but little known. Doubtless an examination of them will
bring out their resemblance to the NURHAGS and TALAYOTI. They are,
however, more than mere towers, forming regular ENCEINTES between walls
formed of two facings of dry stones, the space between which is filled
in with smaller stones. There are fifteen of these CASTELLIERI in the
district of Albona, a little town on the southeast of Trieste. They
were at first attributed to the Roman epoch, but later researches
relegate them rather to prehistoric times, and the discovery near
them of numerous stone implements rather tends to support this latter
opinion, but it must not be considered conclusive.

Perhaps we ought also to connect with the earliest ages of humanity
the stations recently discovered in Spain by MM. Siret.[135] These
were evidently centres of population, surrounded by walls of a
very primitive description. We shall have to refer again to these
discoveries; we will only add now that in the black earth forming
the soil were found worked flints, polished diorite hatchets, pierced
shells, with various pieces of pottery, and mills for grinding corn. So
far, however though many of the stations have been explored, no trace
has been found of the use of metals.

A vast period of time, countless centuries, indeed, have passed
away since the close of the Paleolithic epoch. The burghs, NURHAGS,
and CASTELLIERI show the progress of civilization, and at the same
time prove that this progress extended throughout Europe, and that
at a time not so very far removed from our own. The close resemblance
between buildings of different dates enables us to speak with certainty
of the connection between the races which succeeded each other in
Europe. The importance of these conclusions is very great, and will
be brought out still more in our study of megalithic monuments.

CHAPTER V

Megalithic Monuments.

Megalithic monuments are perhaps the most interesting of all the
witnesses of the remote past, into the history of which we are now
inquiring, and of which so little is known. From the shores of the
Atlantic to the Ural Mountains, from the frontiers of Russia to the
Pacific Ocean, from the steppes of Siberia to the plains of Hindustan,
we see rising before us monuments of the same characteristic form,
built in the same manner. This is a very important fact in the history
of humanity, and of which it is difficult to exaggerate the importance.

What is the age of all these monuments? Were they all erected by one
race, which has thus carried on its traditions front one generation to
another? Were they the temples of the gods of this race, or the tombs
of their ancestors? Did the people who set them up come from the East,
or did they come from the North, on their way to the warmer regions
of the South? These and many other questions are eagerly discussed,
but in the present state of our knowledge not one of them call be
answered in a perfectly satisfactory manner. SCIRE IGNORARE MAGNA
SCIENTIA, said an ancient philosopher, and this is a truth which we
must often repeat when we are dealing with prehistoric times.

FIGURE 55

Dolmen of Castle Wellan (Ireland).

Under the name of megalithic monuments we include TUMULI, DOLMENS,
CROMLECHS, MENHIRS, and COVERED AVENUES. It may at first sight appear
strange to include tumuli amongst stone monuments, but they almost
always enclose a dolmen, a cist, or a crypt communicating with the
outside by a covered passage. The excavation of more than four hundred
tumuli in England has brought to light now, a stone coffer made of a
number of stones set edgeways and called a KISTVAEN: now of a, tomb
hollowed out beneath the surface of the ground, and enclosed by huge
blocks of stone.[136] Mounds are as numerous in Portugal as tumuli in
England, and the fact that they are of low height has led to their
being called MAMOAS or MAMINHAS, which signifies little mounds. In
Poland, tumuli consist of piles of massive stones; beneath each is
a cist made of four large slabs, and containing as many as eight
or ten urns full of calcined bones. The excavation of a tumulus in
the plain of Tarbes brought to light an enormous block of granite
resting on blocks of quartz. The spaces between these blocks were
filled in with rubble made of small stones cemented into one mass
with clay. Edwin-Harness Mound, near Liberty (Ohio), is 160 feet
long by eighty or ninety wide, and thirteen to eighteen high in the
middle. It contained a dozen sepulchral chambers.

FIGURE 56

The large dolmen of Coreoro, near Plouharnel.

More rarely tumuli are merely artificial mounds of earth, sometimes
rising to a great height. Those of North America are the most
remarkable known. That of Cahokia is now ninety-one feet high,[137]
and was formerly surmounted by a low pyramid, now destroyed. Its base
measures 560 feet by 720, the platform at the top is 146 feet by 310
feet wide, and it has been estimated that twenty-five million cubic
feet of earth were used in its construction. Major Pearse mentions a
tumulus near Nagpore, which is 3,900 feet in circumference, and 174
feet high. Another between Tyre and Sarepta, is 130 feet high by 650
in diameter. It has never been excavated.[138]

FIGURE 57

Dolmen of Arrayolos (Portugal).

The dolmen type of monument is a rectangle of u hewn upright stones
covered over with a slab laid across them; this slab being the largest
block of stone that could be found in the neighborhood or obtained
by the builders.

Dolmens are generally found either on the top of a natural or an
artificial mound, in the middle of a plain, or on the banks of
a watercourse. We must mention, amongst others, those in Persia,
which are some 7,000 feet high and from twenty-one to twenty-six feet
long by six wide; that near Mykenae, that of Aumede-Bas, excavated
by Dr. Prunieres; that of New Grange, in Ireland, surmounted by a
cromlech of stones of considerable size, many of them brought from
a distance; that of Hellstone, near Dorchester, consisting of nine
upright stones supporting a table more than twenty-seven and a half
feet in circumference, seven feet wide and two and a half thick. The
dolmens near Saturnia, one of the most ancient Etruscan towns, include
a quadrangular room, sunk some feet into the earth, and having walls
made of blocks of stone and a roof of a couple of large slabs, sloped
slightly to let the rain run off. We give illustrations of the dolmens
of Castle Wellan in Ireland (Fig. 55), of Coreoro near Plouharnel
(Morbihan) (Fig. 56), of Arrayolos in Portugal (Fig. 57), and Acora in
Peru (Fig. 58), which will enable the reader to judge of the different
modes of construction employed in building these megalithic monuments.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23