Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

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The site of the furnace in these forts is difficult to determine. It
was evidently not situated under any of the blocks, for the earthworks
on which they rest retain no traces of the action of fire. Nor was
it situated at the side, for the outer facings have retained alike
their original form and consistency. Nor can the furnace have been
lit on the blocks, as heat exercises its action by radiating in every
direction. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the fire was
spread with the aid of spaces left in the inside of the construction
at various points, for the vitrified mass is divided into blocks,
about nine and three fourths feet long, at very short distances from
each other.

These few examples will be enough to give some idea of the strange
vitrified forts. Many of them retain traces of Roman. occupation. The
Gueret Museum possesses a fragment from the Ribandelle walls in
which a Roman tile is completely imbedded; and M. Thuot picked up
other tiles in a similar condition amongst the ruins. This is a very
decided proof that the vitrification took place after the arrival
of the conquerors of Gaul. The weapons and tools discovered would
appear to confirm this idea, and to suggest similar explanations of
vitrification elsewhere. If so, we shall have. to admit that vitrified
forts date from the earliest centuries of the Christian era, and are
not prehistoric at all. We have, however, noticed them here on account
of the grave doubts in the matter, and because they furnish a striking
and valuable illustration of the relations existing from the most
remote tunes between widely separated races, and maintained until the
present time. In no other way can we account for the practice of the
extremely difficult and complicated operation of the vitrification
of bard rocks in districts so far apart as Norway and Scotland,
Germany and the midlands of France.

The more we think of the difficulties vitrification presents, the
greater is our astonishment. How was the fusion achieved of elements
so refractory alike in their structure and in the resistance offered
by accumulated masses of material? By what processes was heat brought
up to the 1300 degrees necessary for the fusion of granite? The
incineration and fusion of the materials of which the vitrified forts
are made, especially the granite ones of La Creuse and the Cotes du
Nord, bear witness, says Daubree, to a surprising skill and knowledge
of the management of fire in those who burned them, but these qualities
were manifested also in extremely ancient metallurgical operations. It
is quite impossible to suppose the vitrification to have been the
result of a conflagration. No fire, whether accidental or the work of
an incendiary, could be powerful enough to produce such results. The
use of petroleum in the most terrible conflagrations of our own time
-- those of the Commune in 1871, for instance -- did calcine and
disintegrate stone, but I know of no case of vitrification.

The Keramic Museum of Sevres contains several specimens which present
very notable differences to each other. Those from Chateau-Gontier
are formed of very close-grained quartzite granite of a greenish
color streaked with black. The conglomerate welding there together
is a vitrified scoria full of very small bubbles made by the escape
of gas which had not had sufficient strength to get out. The block
from Sainte-Suzanne (Mayenne) consists of quartz mixed with half
calcined grains of feldspar, bleached by the action of fused glass,
which once introduced filled up as it congealed all the vacant spaces
with a vitreous substance of light greenish-white color. The fractures
are green and bright, and are dotted with white points, which are all
that is left of the stones after their disintegration in the grip of
a heat that was alike intense and rapid in its action. The fragments
brought from Scotland differ from those just described. They consist
of small pieces of granite completely merged in a thick paste with
which they form the mass, the whole breaking together when it does
break; and the melted matter seldom has any bubbles in it.[243]

The process employed in cementing the materials of the vitrified
forts was then perfectly unique. The processes employed to obtain
the necessary heat varied according to circumstances and according
to the nature of the materials used. At Sainte-Suzanne and at La
Courbe marine salt was used as a flux. Captain Prevot[244] thinks
that the walls were smeared with a coating of clay, and that as in
the baking of bricks spaces were left between so as to produce more
intense heat. M. de Montaiglon is of opinion that the buildings were
in the first instance erected without the use of any calcareous or
argillaceous material, and that glass in a state of fusion was poured
over them afterwards, this glass consolidating them and forming with
them one indestructible mass. M. Thuot seems much disposed to share
this last opinion, but he thinks that some chemical materials such as
soda or potash were also used. Yet one other possible solution may
be mentioned, a solution which is becoming more and more generally
accepted, namely that the granite was not after all really melted,
but that the vitrification should either be attributed to the fusion
of the argillaceous mass, which has been subjected to an igneous
transformation, such as that which often takes place in furnaces for
baking bricks and in lime-kilns.[245]

Whatever explanation we may accept, however, the processes employed
certainly bear witness to a much more advanced state of civilization
than was acquired in the earliest ages of humanity. We have been
led by the great interest and mystery of the subject to dwell longer
on it than we intended, and we must hasten to return to prehistoric
times with a determination not to transgress again.

Fortifications are a proof of combined action leading to a common
end; they imply social organization, chiefs to command, workmen to
obey. A recent discovery enables us to form a very accurate picture of
prehistoric men gathered together not only for purposes of defence,
but in a society already rich, industrious, and, if we may so speak,
learning to cultivate the arts of peace.

The AEgean Sea has ever been the theatre of igneous phenomena,
and the three little islands of Thera, Therasia, and Aspronisi,
which shut in the Bay of Santorin, are built up chiefly of volcanic
materials.[246] In 1573 an eruptive cone suddenly appeared; in
1707 the inhabitants of Santorin saw rise up a short distance from
their shores a rock that increased in size for several days and
then suddenly split up. This splitting up was succeeded by a great
eruption of incandescent materials; an eruption which lasted for
no less than five years, forming at the end of that time an island
some 400 feet high by 3,279 feet in circumference. In 1866, after
many violent shocks of earthquake, the ground was rent asunder on
this island and masses of volcanic matter were belched forth, whilst
on the other side of the island the soil sank to such a degree that
canoes were used to get to houses which but the day before were nine
feet above the sea-level. This eruption went on until 1870, and the
quantity of scoriae vomited forth during its continuance welded three
islets, which had hitherto been separate, to the principal island,
of which they now form part. On entering the Bay of Santorin we see on
every side banks of lava, beds of scoriae, and piles of cinders of a
purplish-gray color rising in cliffs to a height of more than 1,312
feet. All these materials are the result of innumerable eruptions,
and the central crater of the volcano is probably situated about
the middle of the bay. It is supposed that at one time a conical
mountain, from 1,958 to 2,600 feet high, rose where soundings now
give a depth of water of over 1,300 feet. A sudden break up of the
mountain probably produced this abyss, and formidable eruptions have
led to the pouring forth of immense quantities of pumice-stone. The
three islets mentioned above would be the remains of the old central
cone, and a bed of pumice-stone from 98 to 131 feet thick is spread
over the whole of their surface, telling of a violent cataclysm of
which neither history nor tradition has preserved the memory.

The letters of Pliny the Younger[247] say that the eruption of
Vesuvius which caused the destruction of Portici lasted five days,
and we know that the houses are covered with a uniformly distributed
bed of pumice-stone some thirteen feet thick, and of cinders about
three feet thick. Everything points to the conclusion that a very
similar catastrophe overtook Santorin; there too whole villages were
buried beneath cinders, stones, and molten lava, belched forth by a
volcano in action; there too men were the witnesses and the victims
of the eruption, as is proved by an accidental circumstance which
took place some twenty-three years after.[248]

The removal of the POUZZOLANA, so called after the volcanic ashes of
Pozzuoli in Italy for the works on the Isthmus of Suez, necessitated
important excavations, and the cuttings revealed the existence of
dwellings which had been bidden away from the light of day for many
centuries. The masses of rubbish hiding these prehistoric ruins
were some sixty-five feet high, and consisted chiefly of volcanic
ashes piled up, for some accidental reason, in comparatively modern
times. Beneath the POUZZOLANA a thin layer of humus contains fragments
of pottery of Hellenic origin; which marks the close of the historic
period, and covers over the mass of pumiceous tufa vomited out by
the volcano. It was in this tufa, which is eight feet thick, that the
first signs of buildings were discovered. Further excavation brought
to light two houses with doors, windows, and bearing walls. In one of
these houses there were five different rooms. Other discoveries rapidly
succeeded each other, alike in the island of Therasia and at Acrotiri,
the principal island, which has given its name to the group. The plan
of these houses is an irregular parallelogram, the angles of which are
rounded and the sides more or less curved. This arrangement differs
greatly from that adopted in Greece as well as from that in use at
Therasia after the time of the volcanic eruptions. The houses too are
quite different in their mode of construction. The walls consist of
great blocks of lava placed one above the other, without any trace
of cement or of lime, and are merely kept in place by a reddish
earth mixed with chopped straw or marine algae. Large branches of
olive or cypress trees, still with the bark on, are imbedded in the
masonry. These pieces of wood, the size of which varies considerably,
were probably added to give the necessary solidity to the walls in the
numerous earthquakes, the disastrous effects of which were only too
well known to the ancient inhabitants of Santorin. It is curious and
interesting to note the use of the same expedient among the inhabitants
of the islands of the Archipelago who are still exposed to the same
danger. The doors and windows are clumsily arched, and the roof seems
to have been a low vault. It was made of stones and coated with clay
and supported by the trunks of olive trees, the charred remains of
which lay upon the floors of the crushed homes. These trunks show
no sign of having been touched with metal tools; not a metal nail
or clamp has been found, and we cannot but conclude that the remains
belong to the age when stone alone was employed.

The inside walls were not glazed or decorated in any way, except in
one instance, that of a house at Acrotiri, from which the rubbish has
been cleared away, revealing on the walls a layer of lime on which
was some colored ornamentation which still retained an extraordinary
brilliancy when it was discovered.

In all the houses and in every room of each were found beneath the
tufa burying them masses of lava and volcanic scoriae, forming a
most eloquent witness of the cause of their destruction. Near one
of the houses of Therasia is a little cylindrical structure, about
three feet high; which cannot have been a well, as it rests directly
on impermeable lava, and was certainly not a cistern, as it is too
small for that. May it, as some think, have been an altar? We cannot
tell, and though the religious sentiment was probably no more absent
among these primitive races than it is among the barbarous peoples
of our own day, it does not do to express an opinion in the absence
of positive proof.

Successive excavations have yielded a number of objects which throw a
new light upon the manners and customs of the inhabitants. Terra-cotta
vases are more numerous than anything else (Fig. 88), and among
them preponderate large yellow vessels capable of holding about one
hundred quarts. Most of them have a clumsy brim, and a rough attempt
has been made at ornamentation by the potter with his fingers on
the damp clay. Other vases of finer clay, colored red or yellow,
are covered with ornaments and graceful arabesques; the garlands of
fruit and flowers are often of remarkably beautiful workmanship. Cups
with well-shaped rounded handles, made of some kind of red ferruginous
earth, others of gray material, were picked up in all the houses. These
various vessels were used for many different purposes; some to cook
food, the marks of the hearth being still on them, whilst others
retained some of the chopped straw with which the domestic animals
had evidently been fed. The most curious of all are those which are
supposed to represent a woman; the front part projecting and surmounted
by a narrow neck bent backwards, with two brown prominences supposed
to stand for breasts, and dots round the upper part representing
a necklace, while ear-rings are indicated by elliptical bands of
different colors. We shall have to refer again to these curious vases
when we speak of the discoveries made at Troy; we need only add now
that the pottery found at Santorin differs completely, alike in form
and ornamentation, from the Greek, Phoenician, and Etruscan specimens,
of which the museums of Europe contain so many. They are evidently
therefore not of foreign origin, but of native manufacture. The
absence of clay in the island of Santorin has thrown some doubt
on this, however, but the researches of M. Fouque have revealed the
former existence of a large valley, at the base of the principal cone,
which valley ran down to the sea-shore near the island of Aspronisi;
and in which probably was found the clay which the potters of the
district soon learned to turn to account.

FIGURE 88

Vases found at Santorin.

With these vases were found some troughs for holding crushed grain, and
lava discs very much like those still in use among the weavers of the
Archipelago to stretch the woof of their tissues; skilfully graduated
lava weights, the correlation of which is very evident, as they weigh
8, 24, and 96 ounces; a flint arrow-head and a saw of the same material
with regular teeth; together with a great variety of other objects,
including many obsidian arrows and knives, reminding us in their
shape of those characteristic of the Stone age in North Europe.

Two rings of gold beaten very thin, and a little copper saw with no
trace of any alloy, are, so far, the only metal objects found in the
excavations. The origin of the former, moreover, is very uncertain,
and there has been much discussion as to where the rings came from. In
spite, however, of all the gaps in the evidence about them, there
remains no doubt that the inhabitants of Santorin were farther advanced
in civilization than the Lake dwellers of Switzerland, the builders
of the TERREMARE of Italy, or the Iberians of the south of Spain,
who were very probably their contemporaries; and we cannot refrain
from expressing our admiration of the wonderful progress made by the
inhabitants of the little group of volcanic islands under notice.

Before the catastrophe which overwhelmed them, Santorin was covered
with comfortable and solidly built houses. Men knew how to till the
ground, and gathered in crops of cereals, among which barley was
the most abundant, then millet, lentils, peas, coriander, and anise;
they had learned to domesticate animals, as is proved beyond a doubt
by the number of bones of sheep and goats; they kept dogs to guard
their flocks, and horses to aid in agricultural work; they knew how
to weave stuffs, to grind grain, to extract the oil from olives, and
even to make cheese, if we may give that name to the pasty white stuff
found at the bottom of a vase by Dr. Nomicos. They were acquainted
with the arch, and they used durable and brilliant colors. The copper
saw is an example of the first efforts of the natives at metallurgy;
the gold and obsidian which were foreign to the island bear witness
to commercial relations with people at a distance. They loved art,
as proved by the shape of their vases and the ornamentation on many
of them, which is really often worthy of the best days of Greece. All
around we see signs appearing as it were suddenly of a civilization,
the origin and tendencies of which are alike still unknown.

But one human skeleton has so far been found in Santorin, and that
is of an inhabitant who had evidently been overtaken in his flight
and crushed beneath the burning scoriae from the volcano. This man
was of medium height, and is supposed to have been between forty and
forty-eight years old. The bones of the pelvis are firmly consolidated,
and the teeth are worn with mastication.

Let us endeavor to guess at the period when the people of Santorin
lived. De Longperier tells us that vases similar to those left by
them are represented on the tomb of Rekmara amongst the presents
offered to Thothmes III., who lived in the eighth century B.C.,
but if so the people of Santorin appear to have borrowed nothing in
their intercourse with Egypt. The first invasion of Greece by the
Phoenicians is supposed to have been in the fifteenth century B.C.,
but the buildings, the pottery, and the various implements of Therasia
and Acrotiri differ essentially from those of the Phoenicians, who,
moreover, from the earliest times, used metals. Must we not therefore
conclude that the catastrophe which overwhelmed Santorin took place
before the fifteenth century B.C.? Conjectures as to the date of the
fatal eruption, however plausible, are of no use in anything relating
to the origin of the people, or the time of their first occupation
of the island. On these points all is still hopeless confusion, and
we must wait for further discoveries before we can hope to come to
any conclusions in the matter.

We have gone back to the very earliest days of man upon the earth;
we have shown that he was the contemporary of the mammoth and
the rhinoceros, of the cave-lion and the cave-bear; we have seen
him crouching in the deep recesses of his cave and fighting the
battle of life with no weapon but a few scarcely sharpened flints,
leading an existence infinitely more wretched than the animals about
him. Not without emotion have we watched our remote ancestors in their
ceaseless struggle for existence; not without emotion have we seen them
gradually growing in intelligence and energy, and attaining by slow
degrees to a certain amount of civilization. Santorin is a striking
and brilliant proof of their progress, and we shall appreciate this
progress yet more when we have examined the ruins piled up on the hill
of Hissarlik. There we shall close this portion of our work, for from
the time when the buildings of which these remains were the relics
met their doom, the use of metals, copper, bronze, gold, silver, and
iron became general. History began to be written, and it is her task
to tell us of the migrations of races, the early efforts of historic,
races, the foundation of empires. In a word, the prehistoric age was
over; that of self-conscious portraiture was now to begin.

A few years ago I was on the ancient Hellespont and my
fellow-travellers, grouped about the deck of our vessel, were trying
to make out on the receding coast of Asia the sites of Troy and of
the tumuli which were then still supposed to have been the tombs of
Achilles, Patrokles, and Hector, but which are now, thanks to the
able researches of Dr. Schliemann, known to belong to a comparatively
modern epoch. The streams, bearing the ever memorable names of Simois
and Scamander, were also eagerly pointed out by the watchers, recalling
the words of Lamartine:

Le nautonnier voguant sur les flots du Bosphore
Des yeux cherchait encore
Le palais de Priam et les tours d'Ilium.

Great indeed is the privilege of genius, immortalizing all that it
touches; for it must be pointed out that Troy was never an important
town, and the war in which it disappeared was in reality but one of
the incessant struggles between the petty princes of Greece and Asia.

When I visited the East, scholars were not at all agreed as to the
site of the town which was so long besieged by the Greeks; and certain
sceptical spirits even went so far as to deny that there ever was
such a person as Homer at all, or that if there were, he wrote the
epic poem which has borne his . name so long. Tradition, however, was
pretty constant in pointing to the hill of Hissarlik as the site on
which Troy was built. Strabo was quite an exception in relegating the
town to the lower end of the bay; where the miserable little village
of Akshi-koi now stands. In 1788 a new idea was started; Lechevalier in
his account of his journey in Troas claims to have recognized the site
of Troy at Bunarbashi. At that time erudition was not very profound,
and Lechevalier's site was accepted; indeed it was long maintained,
and quite recently it has been defended by Perrot. But the nineteenth
century is more exacting; the most plausible hypotheses are not enough
without facts to support them, and excavations at Akshi-koi and at
Bunarbashi show that there never was a town on either of these sites.

Excavations on the hill of Hissarlik, begun by Dr. Schliemann in 1871,
and carried on under his superintendence for more than ten years, have,
on the contrary, yielded most definite, satisfactory, and conclusive
results. At a depth of fifty-two feet the diggers came to the virgin
soil, a very hard conchiferous limestone. The immense masses of DEBRIS
of which the embankment is made up date front different epochs; we have
before us, if we may use such an expression, a perpendicular Pentapolis
or series of five ancient cities one above the other. One town was
destroyed by assault and by fire; another rapidly rose from its ruins,
built with stones taken front the midst of those very remains. The
study of the piled-up rubbish enables us to build up again a picture
of the remote past with all its vicissitudes, and Virchow may well
say that the hill of Hissarlik will for ever be considered one of
the best authenticated witnesses of the progress of civilization.[249]

The first layer of rubbish rests on the rock itself, and may very
well have belonged to the town built by Dardanus, of which Tlepolemus
relates the destruction by his grandfather Hercules.[250] According to
the Homeric story six generations, and according to generally accepted
modern calculations two centuries, separate Dardanus from Priam. If
therefore we accept 1200 B.C. as the date of the Trojan war, the town
built by Dardanus would date from 1400 B.C., and we should. possess
data, if not absolutely certain, at least approximately so.[251]

There remain but a few relics of the buildings erected by the first
inhabitants of the bill of Hissarlik, which relics consist of great
blocks of irregular size, with remains of bearing walls composed of
small stones cemented together with clay and faced with a glaze which
has withstood the wear and tear of centuries.

The second town, which would appear to have been that described in the
Iliad, was probably built by a race foreign to those who erected the
first. The hill, which was to become the Acropolis of the new town,
was surrounded by the new-comers with a wall several feet thick, of
which the foundations consisted of unhewn stones; whilst the upper
part was made of artificially baked bricks, the baking having been
done after they were put in place, by large fires lit in vacant places
left at regular intervals; an arrangement recalling what we have said
in speaking of vitrified forts.[252] It is also interesting to note
a similar mode of construction at Aztalan in Wisconsin in structures
which probably date from the time of the Mound Builders. The walls
at Hissarlik were protected by re-entering angles and projecting
forts. The interior of the ENCEINTE was reached by three doors, and
it is still easy to make out the ruins of the different buildings. A
room sixty-five feet long by thirty-two wide is surrounded by very
thick walls, and towards the southeast is a square vestibule, opening
into the room by a large door.[253] These, Dr. Schliemann thinks,
were the NAOS and PRONAOS of a temple dedicated to the tutelary gods
of the town. Quite close to them is another building with similar
dispositions; a square vestibule giving access to a large room,
which in its turn leads to a smaller apartment. These two buildings,
which are reached through a PROPYLAEUM, are the only ones of which
the explorers have been able to make out the measurements with any
exactitude.

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