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In Algeria, we also meet with quadrangular pyramids called DJEDAS,
which measure as much as ninety feet on each face, but do not rise
more than three feet above the ground. The (lead were buried beneath
them in a crouching position. We know nothing either of the origin
of these djedas or of the date to which they belong.

The monuments of Tunisia were probably as numerous as those of
Algeria. We may note especially the vast area in Enfida, completely
covered with dolmens, one hundred of which are still standing, and in
excellent preservation, whilst the ruins of others strew the soil,
bringing up their original number to at least three thousand. Those
described by M. Girard de Rialle[158] are yet more interesting. Near
the village of Ellez, on the road from Kef to Kerouan, are some fifteen
covered avenues distributed without apparent order, and rising from
the midst of Roman ruins. The upright stones vary from about ten to
thirteen feet, and are surmounted by huge slabs. The chief dolmen
has within it as many as ten chambers.

There are also numerous tumuli in Syria. We have already alluded
to that of Sarepta; and there are others near Antioch and in the
plain of Beka, between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. Major Conder, who as
captain conducted the interesting campaign organized by the Palestine
Exploration Society in 1881 and 1882, speaks of the exploration of
the rude stone monuments as one of the most interesting features of
the surveys, and says: "The distribution of the centres where these
monuments occur in Syria, is a matter of no little importance ... no
dolmens, menhirs, or ancient circles have been discovered in Judaea,
and only one doubtful circle in Samaria. In Lower Galilee a single
dolmen has been found; in Upper Galilee four of moderate dimensions
are known. West of Tiberias is a circle, and between Tyre and Sidon
an enclosure of menhirs. At Tell el Kady, one of the Jordan sources,
a centre of basalt dolmens exists, and at Kefr Wal ... there is
another large centre. At Amman several fine dolmens and large menhirs
are known to exist ... it is doubtful, however, if all these examples
added together would equal the great fields of rude stone monuments to
be found in Moab, for it is calculated that seven hundred examples
were found by the surveyors in 1881.[159] There is one group of
dolmens at Ali Safat, in Palestine, in which the supports of the
table are pierced with an opening. This is a very interesting fact,
to which I have already alluded, and to which I shall have to refer
again. Another group of some twenty dolmens was discovered by M. de
Saulcy on the plateau of El Azemieh, one of which rises in the centre
of a belt of roughly sculptured upright stones; and yet a third group
is to be seen near Mount Nebo, which Major Conder thus describes:
"Here a well-defined dolmen was found northwest of the flat, ruined
cairn, which harks the summit of the ride. The cap-stone was very
thick, and its top is some five feet from the ground. The side-stones
were rudely piled, and none of the blocks were cut or shaped ... In
subsequent visits it was ascertained that on the south slope of the
mountain there is a circle about 250 feet in diameter, with a wall
of twelve feet thick, consisting of small stones piled up in a sort
of vellum."[160]

With regard to the megalithic monuments of India, we can only repeat
what we have already said. Colonel Meadows Taylor has counted 2,129
in the district of Bellary (Deccan) alone. Many legends are connected
with them which remind us of those of Europe, some attributing their
erection to dwarfs or rants, to fairies or to genii, whilst others
think they were the work of the Kauranas and Pandaves, the celebrated
families whose long struggle is described in the Mahabharata, and were
probably aboriginal races of the continent. The plain of Jellalabad and
of Nagpore, stud the valley of Cabul are literally strewn with these
monuments. They are not less numerous in the Presidency of Madras,
where they chiefly consist of subterranean chambers made of huge unhewn
stones or of dolmens above ground surrounded by one or more circles
of upright stones, such as are shorn in Fig. 65. Major Biddulph, when
he ascended the valleys of the Hindoo Koosh Mountains, was astonished
to see on every side megalithic monuments resembling those of his
own country, and, like them, the work of an unknown race.[161]

FIGURE 65

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 assigning 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 class them all together as masses 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 Berkshire, 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
Gloucestershire, contain side chambers, those of the former with a
covered passage between them, whilst in the latter the side chambers
are grouped round a central apartment. At New Grange, in Ireland, a
passage 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
Petit-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 illustration 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 spacious 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 associated 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 shores 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 compassion.

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 Wiltshire;
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 space between them, which was evidently intended
to serve the same purpose, or at least was in accordance with the
same superstition, 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 passing 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 coarse workmanship 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; shells
often brought from distant shores, glass beads, amber bowls, hatchets
and celts made of stone foreign to the country. Dr. Prunieres presented
to the French Association, 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 coarse 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 glass 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.

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