Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
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The Marquis de Nadaillac >> Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
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FIGURE 58
Megalithic sepulchre at Acora (Peru).
In some cases the dolmen, which alone is visible from without, is
placed upon a mound, covering a hidden sepulchral chamber, whilst in
others the crypt is replaced by a simple stone cist, generally of
rectangular shape. We may mention in this connection the dolmen of
Bekour-Noz at St. Pierre Quiberon, which is remarkable for its great
size, and rises from the midst of a cemetery in which a great many
coffins have been found. The bones they contained were unfortunately
dispersed at the time of their discovery.
Dolmens are scattered about in great numbers in the Kouban
basin and all along the coasts of the Black Sea occupied by the
Tcherkesses. These curious vestiges of an unknown civilization are
still an unsolved enigma to us, as are those of Western Europe; they
are generally formed of four upright slabs surmounted by a fifth laid
horizontally, and one of the supporting slabs is nearly always pierced
with a small round or oval opening. Excavations have brought to light
arrow-heads, rings, and bronze spirals, but Chantre, an authority
of considerable weight, and who has moreover had the advantage of
actually seeing these megalithic monuments of the south of Russia,
attributes the objects found beneath them to secondary interments, and
does not hesitate in assigning the more ancient monuments themselves
to the Stone age. We must not omit to mention the dolmens found in
the southern portion of the island of Yezo (Japan),[139] nor that
described by Darwin at Puerto Deseado (Patagonia). They are both very
similar to those of Europe.
To resume, dolmens, called HUNENGRABER in Germany, STAZZONA in Corsica,
ANTAS in Portugal, and STENDOS in Sweden, have all alike one large flat
horizontal slab placed on two or more upright unhewn stones. This is
the one fixed rule; local circumstances, perhaps even the caprice of
the builders, decided the position and the mode of erection. Often,
as I have already remarked, dolmens are buried beneath tumuli, but
exceptions to this are numerous. General Faidherbe, after having
examined more than six thousand dolmens in Algeria, affirms that the
greater number have never been covered with earth.[140] In the Orkney
Islands there are more than one hundred dolmens without tumuli, and
Martinet failed to find any trace of mounds in Berry. In Scotland
and Brittany we find dolmens buried, not beneath mounds of earth,
but under accumulations of pebbles, called CAIRNS in Scotland and
GALGALS in Brittany. However minor details may vary, and they do vary
infinitely, one main idea everywhere dominated the builders, and that
was the desire to protect from all profanation the resting-place of
what had once been a human being.
Cromlechs are circles of upright stones often surrounding dolmens or
tumuli. Sometimes they form single circles, and at others two, three,
or even seven separate enclosures. They are common in Algeria, Sweden,
and Denmark, and in the last-named country two kinds are distinguished:
the LANGDYSSERS, which form an ellipse, and the RUNDYSSERS which
form a perfect circle. In other countries cromlechs are slot so
numerous; there are but few in France, of which we may name those of
Kergoman (Morbihan), Lestridion in Plomeur, and Landaondec in Crozon
(Finistere). The last-named, known its LE TEMPLE DES FAUX DIEUX,
is closed by a double row of small menhirs. In Italy, the only
cromlechs known are those of Sesto-Calende and those of the plateau
of Mallevalle near Ticino. One of the latter still retains in their
original position fifty-nine huge granite blocks, forming a circular
enceinte, a semicircle, and an entrance avenue. A few leagues from the
ancient Tyre can still be seen a circle of upright stones. Ouseley
describes another at Darab, in Persia; a missionary speaks of three
large circles at Khabb, in Arabia, which circles he compares with
those at Stonehenge; and Dr. Barth tells us of a cromlech between
Mourzouk and Ghat.
A kurgan, or tumulus, leaving been opened in the Kherson district,
three or four concentric circles were discovered beneath it,
surrounding a structure of considerable size.[141] The cromlech
of Anajapoura in Ceylon, probably, however, erected comparatively
recently, consists of fifty-two granite pillars, about thirteen feet
high, encircling a Buddhist temple. At Peshawur is another circle,
fourteen of the stones of which are still upright, whilst traces can
be made out of an outer enceinte of smaller stones; in Peru there
are several cromlechs, whilst others have been found at the foot of
Elephant Mount, in the desert plains of Australia. The last-named vary
from ten to one thousand feet in diameter, but excavations beneath
them have brought to light only a few human bones.
At Mzora, in Morocco, the traveller will notice a mound of elliptical
shape, some 21 or 22 1/2 feet high, flanked on the west by a group
of menhirs, and surrounded by an enceinte of upright stones which
now number about forty. In 1831, there were still ninety, and on
the south side were noticed two round pillars parallel with each
other, which probably formed an entrance.[142] This group evidently
originally formed the centre of a series of megalithic monuments, for
on the north and southwest some fifty monoliths can still be made out,
some still erect, others fallen.[143]
It was in Great Britain, however, that cromlechs appear to have
reached their highest development. That of Salkeld in Cumberland
includes sixty-seven menhirs; that near Loch Stemster in Caithness,
thirty-three, whilst in Westmoreland, LONG MEG AND HER DAUGHTERS are
still the objects of superstitious reverence. The remains at Avebury
are among the most remarkable prehistoric monuments still extant,
and evidently originally formed part of a most important group. This
group had an outer rampart of earth, with a ditch on the inner side,
within which was a circle of upright stones, probably numbering as many
as one hundred. Within this circle were two others of smaller size,
each in its turn enclosing yet another circle of upright stones. In
the middle of one of these inner circles, that on the north, was a
dolmen, whilst that on the south enclosed in the centre but a single
upright menhir. The stones used in constructing these various groups
were all such as are still to be found on the Wiltshire downs. From
the southeastern portion of the extensive earthen rampart, a stone
avenue extended for a considerable distance in a perfectly straight
line, and is still known as Kennet's Avenue, on account of its leading
to the village of Kennet. The remains on Hakpen Hill and on Silbury
Hill are all supposed to have been originally connected with those
at Avebury. The remains at Hakpen consist of relics of two circles,
one about 140 feet in diameter, the other not more than forty. About
eighty yards from the inner circle was found a double row of skeletons,
all with the feet pointing towards the centre. Silbury Hill is itself
an artificial conical mound, the largest in England, 170 feet high,
on which were originally no less than 650 upright stones, of which
only twenty are still standing, surrounded by a trench. In the centre
of the circle of stones a single menhir of great height still remains
with three others sloped so as to form a kind of crypt.
The megalithic monuments of Stonehenge, which are probably better known
than any others in the world, are perhaps also the most curious. The
group is supposed to have originally consisted of an outer stone
concentric circle some one hundred feet in diameter, formed by thirty
piers of solid masonry, of which about twenty can still be made out,
some few standing, others lying broken upon the ground. This outer
circle enclosed a second of similar shape but lesser diameter, within
which again were taro elliptic circles, the outer consisting of ten or
twelve sandstone blocks some twenty-two feet high, standing in pairs,
each pair united by a slab laid horizontally across, so as to form
a trilithon. The inner ellipse was formed by nineteen upright masses
of granite, within which was the famous slab of blue marble, by many
supposed to have been an altar. The pillars and lintels of the outer
portico, and those of the trilithons, are fitted together with the
greatest skill, with tenons and mortices, a remarkable exception
to the general rule with megalithic monuments. Everywhere in the
neighborhood of Stonehenge, as far as the eye can reach, are tumuli,
all nearly equidistant from the principal group of monuments, a fact
which has led many archaeologists, including Henry Martin, to look
upon. Stonehenge as a temple surrounded by a necropolis. Excavations
at Stonehenge have yielded a few human bones which have escaped the
flames, with some stone and bronze weapons.
The megalithic monuments of Ireland are not less important, and
a recent survey has reported no less than 276 still standing.[144]
The cromlechs of Moytura[145] are supposed to commemorate the fearful
combats which took place between the FIRBOLGS, or Belgae as they are
called by Irish antiquaries, and the Tuatha de Dananns, when the
plains of Sligo and Meath were dyed with blood, before the former
were vanquished and retired to Arran. There are still no less than
fourteen dolmens and thirty-nine cromlechs. The bones picked up beneath
the stone circles, which keep alive the memory of these sanguinary
conflicts, are those of the warriors who fell on the battlefield,
but the story of how they met their fate belongs rather to history
than to the subject we are considering. It is the same with the two
huge monoliths of Cornwall. which commemorate a battle between the
Welsh King Howel Dha and the Saxon Athelstane, as well as with the
cromlechs of Ostrogothland, where, in 736, took place the battle in
which the old King Harold Hildebrand was overcome and killed by his
nephew, Sigurd-Ring. A group of forty-four circles also marks the site
of the celebrated combat of 1030, in which Knut the Great defied Olaf
the patron saint of Norway. We may also name in this connection the
twenty circles of stone erected at Upland in memory of the massacre
of the Danish prince, Magnus Henricksson, in 1161. Yet another group
of circles marks the spot where, about 1150, the Swedish heroine,
Blenda, overcame King Sweyne Grate. We might easily multiply instances
of the erection in historic times of similar monuments, but we have
said enough to show that the megalithic form was by no means confined
to prehistoric days.
Menhirs properly so called, also known as LECHS in Brittany, are
in reality isolated monoliths or single upright stones, often of
considerable size. One of the best known is that of Locmariaker
(Fig. 59) which was nearly seventy feet high.[146] It was still
standing in 1659, but is now overturned and broken into four
pieces. The flat stone resting on one portion of it is known
as Caesar's table. On some menhirs, notably on Sweno's pillar in
Scotland, a cross has been cut on one side, showing either that this
form of monument was early adopted by Christians, or more probably,
that it was adapted to their use after having long previously been
a relic of prehistoric times. On the other side of Sweno's pillar is
a bas-relief of fairly good execution.
In some cases menhirs mark the site of a tomb, and sometimes, as is
the case with the obelisks of Egypt, they commemorate some happy
event. A standing stone in Scotland preserves the memory of the
battle of Largs, which took place in the thirteenth century, and a
piously preserved legend tells how the menhir of Aberlemmo was set
up in honor of a victory over the Danes in the tenth century.
FIGURE 59
The great broken menhir of Locmariaker, with Caesar's table.
Some archaeologists in view of the shape of certain menhirs and
the superstitions connected with then, think they must be phallic
monuments. Menhirs in France are quoted in this connection, cut into
the form of the phallus; and the same form occurs in some menhirs near
Saphos, in the island of Cyprus,[147] and in others found amongst the
ruins of Uxmal, in Yucatan. Herodotus relates that Sesostris caused
toy be set up, in countries he conquered, monoliths bearing in relief
representations of the female sexual organs. These are, however,
but exceptions, isolated facts, and it would certainly never do to
argue from them that menhirs were connected with the worship of the
generative flowers of nature.
It is extremely difficult to get at the statistics of menhirs. A
great many have been overthrown, and yet more have disappeared
altogether. Probably, besides the alignments or stone avenues, there
are not more than twenty still standing.[148] One thing is certain,
the monolithic form of monument has always had a great attraction
for the human race, and we meet with it in Egypt, Assyria, Persia,
and Mexico, as well as in England and Brittany. The historian speaks
of such monuments in the earliest of existing records; Homer refers
to them in the Iliad,[149] and in the Bible we find it related that
the Lord ordered Joshua to set up twelve stones in memory of the
crossing of the Jordan by the Israelites.[150]
Alignments are groups of menhirs set up in one or wore rows. Sometimes
large slabs are laid across them, when they arc, called covered
avenues. One such alignment at Saint Pantaleon (Saone et Loire)
consists of twenty menhirs. The menhirs of El Wad, in Algeria, form
long avenues, running front west to east. The Arabs call them ESSENAM,
and according to tradition they were erected in fulfillment of a vow
made in the hope of arresting the march of an enemy. The tumulus of
Run-Aour (Finistere) has two avenues running at right angles to one
another.[151] This disposition, which is very rare, also occurs at
Karleby, in Sweden, and by a remarkable coincidence the length of the
avenues (about thirty-nine and fifty-five feet), is the same in both
cases. Sometimes such avenues form communications between several
dolmens, leading us to suppose that near the chief slept the members
of his family or his favorite companions.
The covered avenues are often built beneath masses of earth, and the
inner rooms became regular hypogea, These hypogea, or subterranean
chambers, are very common near Paris, and we may mention amongst
many others those of Meudon, Argenteuil, Conflans-Sainte-Honorine,
Marly, Chamant, La Justice, and Compans. The tombs of Denmark,
the GANG GRABEN of Nilsson, show an arrangement somewhat similar,
a vast subterranean chamber being reached by a passage ending in
a small stone cist. The tumulus of Dissignac, near Saint-Nazaire
(Fig. 60), shows this strange arrangement of two galleries running
parallel with each other at a distance of about eighteen feet. The
walls and ceilings are made of slab, anti the interstices are filled
in with flints. These galleries are some thirty feet long, and their
height insensibly increases from about three to nine feet.
FIGURE 60
Covered avenue of Dissignac (Loire-Inferieur); view of the chamber
at the end of the north gallery.
We must also mention the Cueva de Mengal, near the village of
Antequera, in the province of Malaga (Fig. 61) Twenty stones form
the walls of the crypt, five blocks of remarkable size serve as a
roof, and to ensure solidity three pillars are set upright inside
of the junction of the roof blocks. The crypt is some seventy-nine
feet long, its greatest width is about nineteen feet, and its height
varies from about eight to nine feet. The length of the Pastora room,
near Seville is about eighty-seven feet, but its height is not to
be compared with that of the one at Antequera. The square crypt at
Pastora is very interesting. One of the roof stones having been broken,
it has been strengthened by the addition of an inside pillar.[152]
FIGURE 61
Covered avenue near Antequera.
At Gavr'innis, the length of the passage leading to the crypt exceeds
forty-two feet (Fig. 62), and the Long Barrow of West Kennet is
more than seventy-three feet long by a width in some parts exceeding
thirty-two feet. In the Long Barrows of Littleton, Nempnitt, and Uley,
the crypt is reached by an avenue, the entrance of which is closed by
a trilithon, and a similar arrangement is met with in many megalithic
monuments of Scania. The sepulchral chambers of oval shape, such as
that met with in the island of Moen, were surmounted by a tumulus some
100 yds. in circumference; twelve unhewn stones formed the walls, and
five large blocks the roof. In removing the earth from the Moen tomb,
the bones of several human individuals were found; and a skeleton,
doubtless that of the chief, lay stretched out in the middle of the
chamber, whilst the bones of the others had evidently been ranged
against the walls either in a sitting or crouching position. With
the bones were found a flint hatchet, which appeared never to have
been used, a number of balls of amber, and several vases of different
shapes.
FIGURE 62
Ground plan of the Gavr'innis monument.
The megalithic monuments of Mecklenburg are supposed to date from
Neolithic times, and are constructed in two very different ways. The
HUNENGRABER, formed of huge blocks of granite set up at right angles
to each other, resemble the covered avenues of France and elsewhere;
in the so-called RIESENBETTEN, or giant's beds, on the contrary,
the sepulchral chamber is merely sunk in the ground.
We must also mention the so-called GROTTE DES FEES, or fairy grotto,
forming part of so many of the megalithic monuments of Provence. This
fairy grotto includes an open-air gallery cut in the mountain limestone
and roofed in with huge flat stones. This gallery leads to a sepulchral
chamber not less than seventy-nine feet long.
The stones used for the covered avenue of Mureaux (Seine et Oise)
carne from the other side of the Seine, so that the builders must have
crossed the river in a raft. Excavations have brought to light several
skeletons that had been buried without any attempt at orientation,
the bores of which were still in their natural position. The objects
found in this tomb were very numerous mid belonged to the Neolithic
period.[153]
We have now specified the chief forms and modes of arrangement of
megalithic monuments, and must add that they are often found in
juxtaposition. At Mane-Lud, for instance, on a rocky platform which
had been artificially smoothed, and which is some 246 feet long by
162 in area, we find at the eastern extremity an avenue of upright
stones, on the west a dolmen, and in the centre a crypt surmounted by a
conical pile of stones. Between the cone and the avenue the ground is
covered with an artificial paving of small stones cemented together,
and known in France as a NAPPE PIERREUSE, and amongst the stones
forming this paving were found quantities of charcoal and bones of
animals. The megalith was completely buried beneath a mound of earth,
or rather of dried mud, the amount of which was estimated at more than
37,986 cubic feet. At Lestridiou (Finistere), a cromlech forms the
starting-point of an alignment formed of seven rows of small menhirs,
the mean height of which above the ground does not exceed three feet;
and these alignments lead up to two covered avenues and a central
dolmen. In other cases, in England and the land of Moab for instance,
alignments simply lead to cromlechs; whilst in some few cases, as
at Stennis (Fig. 63), the menhirs are scattered about a plain in
great numbers, with nothing either in their form or their position,
or in the traditions relating to them, to throw the slightest light
on their origin.
FIGURE 63
Monoliths at Stennis, in the Orkney, Islands.
One of the most important monuments that have come down to us is that
of Carnac. The alignments of Menec, Kermario, and Kerlescant include
1,771 menhirs, of which 675 are still standing. The alignments of
Erdeven, which succeed those of Carnac, extend for a length of more
than a mile and a half. They originally included 1,030 menhirs,
of which 288 are still extant.
The archaeologists of Brittany, carried away perhaps by their
patriotic enthusiasm, claim that when these monuments were intact
they included two thousand menhirs. What is really certain, however,
is that a definite plan was evidently followed, the distances
between the alignments tallying exactly; the menhirs being set up
in straight parallel lines gradually decreasing in size towards
the east. Excavations near them have brought to light fragments of
charcoal, masses of cinders, chips of silicate of flint, with numerous
fragments of pottery, and tools made of quartzite, granite, schist,
and diorite, similar to those met with under all the other megaliths
of Morbihan. This is yet another proof, if such were needed, that
they were all the work of the same race and all probably date from
the same period.
The number of megalithic monuments in the world is simply
incalculable. M. A. Bertrand estimates the total number in France
as 2,582, distributed in 66 departments and 1,200 communes. They are
most numerous of all in Brittany; there are 491 in the Cotes-du-Nord,
530 in Ille-et-Vilaine. I am not sure of the number in Morbihan,
but I know it is very considerable. The commission appointed at
the instigation of Henry Martin decided that there were as many
as 6,310 megaliths in France, but then amongst these were included
polishing stones and cup-shaped stones, with other similar relics of
the remote past. Lastly, a report recently presented to the Chamber
of Deputies by M. A. Proust estimates at 419 the number of groups
classed by government. In other countries these numbers are greatly
exceeded. There are 2,000 megaliths in the Orkney Islands and a
great many in the extreme north of Scania, and in Otranto in the
southern extremity of Europe, where they resemble the PEDRAS FITTAS
of Sardinia. Pallas, and after him, Haxthausen, tells us that there
are thousands of kurganes in the steppes of Central and Southern
Russia.[154] These kurganes are cromlechs, tombs surmounted by upright
stones, square or conical hypogea, all scattered about without any
apparent system, surmounted by roughly sculptured female busts, known
amongst the common people as KAMENA BABA, or stone women. Tumuli,
too, abound on the shores of the Irtisch and of the Yenisei, mute
witnesses to the former presence of a vanished race of which we
know neither the ancestors nor the descendants. These monuments are,
however, by some attributed to the Tchoudes, a people who came from
the Altai Mountains. The Esthonians, the Ogris or Ulgres, the Finns,
and perhaps even the Celts, are supposed to be branches of the same
ethnological tree. This is however quite a recent idea, and at best
but a mere hypothesis.[155]
Algeria presents a vast field for research, and it is easy to find
dolmens and cromlechs, such as that shown in Fig. 64, which are
sepulchres with a central dolmen surrounded by a double or triple
enceinte of monoliths driven into the ground. These monuments, much
as they differ in form and arrangement, are undoubtedly the work of
one strong and powerful race that dominated the whole of the north
of Africa; and are represented in historic times by the Berbers,
and at the present clay by the Kabyles.
FIGURE 64
Cromlech near Bone (Algeria).
Although a very great many of them have been destroyed, the French
possessions in Algeria are still as rich in monuments of this kind
as any of the countries of Europe. On Mount Redgel-Safia six hundred
dolmens have been made out, with stone tables resting on walls of
dry stones and frequently surrounded by cromlechs. Dr. Weisgerber
has recently announced the discovery in the valley of Ain-Massin,
on the vest of Mzab,) of a cromlech consisting of a number of
concentric circles of large stones set upon an elliptical tumulus,
more than fifty-four square yards in area. Quite close is a workshop
of flint weapons, probably in use at the time of the erection of the
megaliths.[156] In Midjana, the number of megaliths exceeds 10,000,
and General Faidherbe counted more than 2,000 in the necropolis of
Mazela, and a yet larger number in that of Roknia. "At Bou-Merzoug,"
says M. Feraud,[157] "in a radius of three leagues, on the mountain as
well as on the plain, the whole country about the springs is covered
with monuments of the Celtic form, such as dolmens, demi-dolmens,
menhirs, avenues, and tumuli. In a word, there are to be found examples
of nearly every type known in Europe. For fear of being taxed with
exaggeration, I will not fix the number, but I can certify that I saw
and examined more than a thousand in the three days of exploration, on
the mountain itself, and on the declivities wherever it was possible
to place them. All the monuments are surrounded with a more or less
complete enceinte of large stones. sometimes set up in a circle,
sometimes in a square, In some cases the living rock forms hart of
the enceinte, which has been completed with the help of other blocks
frolic elsewhere. It is often difficult to decide where the monument
end, and the rock begins. When the escarpment was too abrupt, it
was levelled with the aid of a kind of retaining wall, which forms a
terrace round the dolmen. The dolmens in the plain seem to have been
constructed with even greater care. The enceintes are wider and the
slabs of the tables larger." Megalithic monuments are met with even
in the desert. A pyramid built of stones without mortar rises up in
the districts inhabited by the Touaregs; and quite near to it are
four or five tombs surrounded by standing stones.
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