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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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 associated 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 shells 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 workmanship,
and under those of the Caucasus were picked up blue-glass 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 Noricum 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 Hellenes
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
association 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 Cumberland, 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
shield 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 glass 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, shells 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 associated 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 Gloucestershire, some coins of the
time of the sons of Constantine; at Mining-Low (Derbyshire), beneath
a kistvaen surrounded by a cromlech, some medals of Valentinianus;
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 gods;
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 Khassias 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 shores of the Godavery 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 shores 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 pass 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 passes 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.
We may add that the distances between what we may call megalithic zones
is considerable. We meet, for instance, with dolmens in Circassia and
in the Crimea, but there are no others nearer than the Baltic. There
are none in the districts peopled by the Belgae, from the Drenthe
to the borders of Normandy, nor are there any in the valleys of the
Rhine or of the Scheldt. There are but a few in Italy or in Greece,
where Pelasgic buildings were early erected, and bore witness to
a more advanced civilization. We meet with them again, however,
in Palestine, but we must traverse many miles before we find other
examples at Peshawur and in the valley of Cabul. It is difficult to
overrate the importance of these facts, or to explain these gaps. Are
they, however, so complete as has been supposed? The few travellers who
have crossed Afghanistan and Daghestan have seen tumuli which may have
served as points of union between the monuments of India and those of
the Caucasus. The megalithic monuments of Palestine and of Arabia may
yet be found to be linked with those of Algeria, by examples in the
little known regions between the Nile and the Regency of Tripoli. If
our ignorance forbids us to assert anything on this point, it equally
forbids our denying anything with any confidence. We may also add
one general remark: the countries where megalithic monuments are
found, abound in granite, in sandstone, and in flint, whilst other
districts have only very friable limestones; and, their monuments,
if they were ever erected, would have been more easily destroyed,
the very ruins disappearing and leaving no trace.
It has been said, moreover, that the mode of construction of the
dolmens, and we hate ourselves made the same remark, is far from being
the same everywhere. The dolmens of Brittany have sepulchral chambers
with long passages leading to them; those of the neighborhood of
Paris have wide covered avenues with a very short entrance lobby. In
the south of France we see nothing but rectangular compartments
formed of four or five colossal stones. All this is true enough;
but if we examine our old cathedrals of comparatively modern date,
the common origin of which is never disputed, we note differences
no less remarkable. On the other hand it is urged that if megalithic
monuments were all erected by one race, the objects they contain would
certainly resemble each other to a great extent. But even this is not
the case. The hatchets so numerous in the west of France are rare in
the south; those from the Algerian monuments are always of coarse
workmanship, whilst those of Denmark are highly finished. We might
multiply instances, but as a matter of fact do we not see the same
kind of thing in the present day, in spite of our railways and other
modes of rapid communication, and the perpetual intermarrying of modern
peoples? Compare the ornaments of Normandy with those of the Basque
provinces, those of Brittany with those of Burgundy, and surely the
differences between them will be found to be as great as we note in
the weapons and ornaments of the builders of the megalithic monuments.
To sum up: according to the opinion of many eminent savants, numerous
races have been in the habit of raising megalithic monuments, the
form of which varies AD INFINITUM according to the genius or the
circumstances of each race, and according to the nature of the soil or
of the material at the disposal of the builders. All, however, belong
to one general type, and bear witness to one general influence, which
extended throughout the whole world at a certain epoch. M. Cazalis de
Fondouce, from whom I borrow these last observations, would probably
find it as difficult to say how a general influence was extended to
races of which he denies the common parentage, and the relations and
contemporaneity he can but guess at, as I myself should -- granting
the contrary hypothesis -- to explain how a people could wander about
the world in incessant migrations without modifying its own habits or
communicating to others its rites and its mode of erecting monuments.
We cannot, however, fail to recognize the evidence of facts. We can
understand how men were everywhere impelled to raise mounds above
the bodies of their ancestors, to perpetuate their memory or to
enclose their mortal remains between flat stones to save them from
being crushed by the weight of earth above them. We may even, by
straining a point, admit the idea that a large cist developed into a
dolmen, but when in districts separated by enormous distances we see
monuments with the wall pierced with a circular opening or combining
an interior crypt with an external mound and dolmen, it is impossible
to look upon these close resemblances as the result of an accidental
coincidence, and equally impossible to fail to conclude that the men
whose funeral rites were remarkable for such close similarity belonged
to the same race.
What then was this race? Are these monuments witnesses of the great
Aryan immigration which was for so long supposed to have spread
from India over the continents of Asia and Europe, and of which
the Indo-European languages were said to preserve the memory? Or is
it really the fact that a relationship of language does not imply
a relationship of race? Were the builders of the dolmens Celts or
Gauls, Ligures or Cymri? was Henry Martin right in ascribing to
the Cimerii of Scandinavia the erection in the Bronze age of the
megaliths of Ireland? Was it the Turanians, with their worship of
ancestor's, their respect for the tombs of their forefather's, and
their desire to perpetuate their memory to eternity, who set up the
dolmens of Brittany? Was it not perhaps rather the Iberians, whose
descendants still people Spain and the north of Africa? According
to Maury, the distribution of the megalithic monuments of Europe
marks the last refuge of vanquished Neolithic races, fleeing before
their conquerors. All these hypotheses are plausible, all can be
defended by arguments, the weight of which it is impossible to deny,
but none are capable of conclusive proof, none can finally convince
the student.[168]
An old Welsh poet, referring to the long barrows of his native land,
says that they are altogether inexplicable, and that it is impossible
to decide who set them up or who is buried beneath them. And surely
this ancient bard[169] is right even now. Vainly do we question these
silent witnesses of the remote past. They give us no answer, and we
can but repeat here what we said at the beginning of this inquiry:
Human science is powerless to lift the veil biding the early history
of humanity. Will it ever be so? Or will the day yet dawn when the
veil will be rent asunder at last? Time alone can solve this question,
which is one of those secrets of the future as difficult to fathom
as those of the past.
CHAPTER VI
Industry, Commerce, and Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and
Trepanation.
When we consider the discoveries connected with the Stone age as a
whole, we are struck with the immense numbers of weapons of every
kind and of every variety of form found in different regions of the
globe. The Roman domination extended over a great part of the Old
World, and it lasted for many centuries. Everywhere this people,
illustrious amongst the nations, has left tokens of its power and of
its industry. Roman weapons, jewelry, and coins occupy considerable
spaces in our museums; but numerous as are these relics of the Romans,
they are far inferior in number to the objects dating from prehistoric
times, and flints worked by the hand of man have been picked up by
thousands in the last few years, forming incontestable witnesses of
the rapid growth of a large population.
One important point remains obscure. Schmerling has excavated fifty
caves in Belgium, and only found human relics in two or three of them;
and of six hundred explored by Lund in Brazil, only six contained human
bones. Similar results were obtained in the excavations of the mounds
of North America, as well as in the caves of France. M. Hamy, in a
book published a few years ago, only mentions twelve finds of human
bones, which could, without any doubt, be dated from Palaeolithic
times. True, this number has been added to by recent discoveries,
but it is still quite insignificant. It is the same thing with the
kitchen-middings and the Lake settlements. This paucity of actual
human remains forms a gap in the evidence relating to prehistoric man,
which disturbances and displacements do not sufficiently account for,
and to which we shall refer again when speaking of prehistoric tombs.
Worked flints are generally found in numbers in one place, probably
formerly a station or centre of human habitation. Men were beginning to
form themselves into societies, and the dwellings, first of the family
and then of the tribe, rapidly gathered together near some river rich
in fish, or some forest stocked with game affording plenty of food
easily obtained. The caves also afford proofs of the number of men
who inhabited them. In one alone, near Cracow, Ossowski discovered
876 bone implements, more than 3,000 flint objects, and thousands
of fragments of pottery. From the Veyrier cave, near Mount Saleve,
were taken nearly 1,000 stone implements; from those of Petit Morin,
2,000 arrow-heads; from that of Cottes, on the banks of the Gartampe,
more than 264 pounds' weight of flints, some of the Mousterien and
others of the Madeleine type, mixed with the bones of the rhinoceros,
and of several large beasts of prey of indeterminate. species. The
Abbe Ducrost picked up 4,000 flints in one dwelling alone at Solutre,
where the soil is calcareous and flint is not native, so that it must
have been brought from a distance. More than 8,000 different objects
were taken from the fine Neolithic station of Ors in the isle of
Oleron; 12,000 chips of stone, bearing marks of human workmanship,
were picked up in the Thayngen Cave, and more than 80,000 in the
different caves of Belgium. The shelter of Chaleux alone yielded 30,000
pieces of stone, at every stage of workmanship, from the waste of the
manufactory to the highly finished implement. Other explorers have
been no less fortunate. The Marquis of Wavrin found in the environs
of Grez no less than 60,000 worked stones belonging to no less than
thirty different types, chiefly arrow-heads, some triangular, others
almond-shaped, others again cutting transversely, some with and some
without feathers, some stalked, others not; in a word, arrows of every
known type. Nothing but an actual visit to the Royal Museum of Brussels
can give any idea of the importance of the discoveries made in Belgium.
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