Megalithic Monuments

Megalithic Monuments Megalithic monuments are perhaps the most interesting of all the witnesses of the remote past, into the history of which we are now inquiring, and of which so little is known. From the shores of the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains, from the frontiers of Russia to the Pacific Ocean, from the steppes of Siberia to the plains of Hindustan, we see rising before us monuments of the same characteristic form, built in the same manner. This is a very important fact in the history of humanity, and of which it is difficult to exaggerate the importance. What is the age of all these monuments? Were they all erected by one race, which has thus carried on its traditions front one generation to another? Were they the temples of the gods of this race, or the tombs of their ancestors? Did the people who set them up come from the East, or did they come from the North, on their way to the warmer regions of the South? These and many other questions are eagerly discussed, but in the present state of our knowledge not one of them call be answered in a perfectly satisfactory manner. Scire ignorare magna scientia, said an ancient philosopher, and this is a truth which we must often repeat when we are dealing with prehistoric times.page 175 Under the name of megalithic monuments we include tumuli, dolmens, cromlechs, menhirs, and covered avenues. It may at first sight appear strange to include tumuli amongst stone monuments, but they almost always enclose a dolmen, a cist, or a crypt communicating with the outside by a covered passage. The excavation of more than four hundred tumuli in England has brought to light now, a stone coffer made of a number of stones set edgeways and called a kistvaen: now of a, tomb hollowed out beneath the surface of the ground, and enclosed by huge blocks of stone.1 Mounds are as numerous in Portugal as tumuli in England, and the fact that they are of low height has led to their being called mamoas or maminhas, which signifies little mounds. In Poland, tumuli consist of piles of massive stones; beneath each is a cist made of four large slabs, and containing as many as eight or ten urns full of calcined bones. The excavation of a tumulus in the plain of Tarbes brought to light an enormous block of granite resting on blocks of quartz. The spaces between these blocks were filled in with rubble made of small stones cemented into one mass with clay. Edwin-Harness Mound, near Liberty (Ohio), is 160 feet long by eighty or ninety wide, and thirteen to eighteen high in the middle. It contained a dozen sepulchral chambers. More rarely tumuli are merely artificial mounds of earth, sometimes rising to a great height. Those of North America are the most remarkable known. That of Cahokia is now ninety-one feet high,2 and was formerly page 177surmounted by a low pyramid, now destroyed. Its base measures 560 feet by 720, the platform at the top is 146 feet by 310 feet wide, and it has been estimated that twenty-five million cubic feet of earth were used in its construction. Major Pearse mentions a tumulus near Nagpore, which is 3,900 feet in circumference, and 174 feet high. Another between Tyre and Sarepta, is 130 feet high by 650 in diameter. It has never been excavated.3 The dolmen type of monument is a rectangle of u hewn upright stones covered over with a slab laid across them; this slab being the largest block of stone that could be found in the neighborhood or obtained by the builders. Dolmens are generally found either on the top of a natural or an artificial mound, in the middle of a plain, or on the banks of a watercourse. We must mention, amongst others, those in Persia, which are some 7,000 page 178feet high and from twenty-one to twenty-six feet long by six wide; that near Mykenæ, that of Aumède-Bas, excavated by Dr. Prunières; that of New Grange, in Ireland, surmounted by a cromlech of stones of considerable size, many of them brought from a distance; that of Hellstone, near Dorchester, consisting of nine upright stones supporting a table more than twenty- seven and a half feet in circumference, seven feet wide and two and a half thick. The dolmens near Saturnia, one of the most ancient Etruscan towns, include a quadrangular room, sunk some feet into the earth, and having walls made of blocks of stone and a roof of a couple of large slabs, sloped slightly to let the rain run off. We give illustrations of the dolmens of Castle Wellan in Ireland (Fig. 55), of Coreoro near Plouharnel (Morbihan) (Fig. 56), of Arrayolos in Portugal (Fig. 57), and Acora in Peru (Fig. 58), which will enable the reader to judge of the different modes of construction employed in building these megalithic monuments. In some cases the dolmen, which alone is visible from without, is placed upon a mound, covering a hidden page 179sepulchral 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),4 nor that described by Darwin at Puerto Deseado (Patagonia). They are both very similar to those of Europe. To resume, dolmens, called Hünengräber in Germany, stazzona in Corsica, antas in Portugal, and stendos in Sweden, have all alike one large flat horizontal slab page 180placed 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.5 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 (Finistère). The last-named, known its le temple des faux dieux, is closed by a double row of small menhirs. In Italy, the only page 181cromlechs 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 Ghât. 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.6 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 22½ feet high, flanked on the west by a group of menhirs, and surrounded by an enceinte of upright stones which now page 182number 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.7 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.8 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 ... - tailieumienphi.vn