Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders

The most famous, however, of the Algerian sites is unquestionably that of Roknia. Here the tombs lie on the side of a steep hill. They consist of dolmens often surrounded by stone circles from 25 to 33 feet in diameter. The cover-slabs of the dolmens usually rest on single uprights, and never on built walls. Several of the graves excavated contained more than one body, one yielding as many as seven. It is remarkable that three of the skulls showed wounds, the dead having been apparently killed in battle. Several vases have been found and a few pieces of bronze.

We have seen that in some of the tombs of Bou Merzoug objects of iron were found. This makes it clear that some at least of the Algerian tombs belong to the iron age, i.e. that they are probably later than 1000 B.C., but beyond this we cannot go. The medal of Faustina sometimes quoted as evidence for a very late date proves nothing, as it is not stated to have been found in a tomb. There is no evidence to show how far back the graves go. It may be that, as MacIver and Wilkin suggest, the parts of the cemeteries excavated chance to be the latest. At Bou Merzoug the excavators worked chiefly among the graves on the plain and at the bottom of the hill. The more closely crowded graves which lie on the hill itself may well be older than these. In fact, all that may be said of the Algerian graves is that some are of the iron age, while others may be and probably are earlier.

In Tunis the dolmen is not uncommon, and several groups or cemeteries have been reported. Near Ellez occurs a type of corridor-tomb in which three dolmen-like chambers lie on either side of a central passage, and a seventh at the end opposite to the entrance. The whole is constructed of upright slabs of stone, and is surrounded by a circle formed in the same way.

Morocco, too, has its dolmens, especially in the district of Kabylia, while near Tangier there is a stone circle.

Off the north coast of Africa, and thus on the highway which leads from Africa to Europe, lie the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa. The latter is volcanic in origin, and its surface presents no opportunity for the building of megalithic monuments. Lampedusa, on the other hand, consists of limestone, which lies about in great blocks on its surface. On the slopes of the south coast there are several remains of megalithic construction, but they are too damaged to show much of their original form. However, on the north side of the island there are megalithic huts in a very fair state of preservation. They are oval in form and have in many cases a base course of orthostatic slabs.

Some miles to the north of Linosa lies the much larger volcanic island of Pantelleria, also a possession of Italy. Here megalithic remains both of dwellings and of tombs have been found. On the plateau of the Mursia are the remains of rectangular huts made of rough blocks of stone. These huts seemed to have formed a village, which was surrounded by a wall for purposes of defence. In the huts were found implements of obsidian and flat stones used for grinding.

The tombs of the people who inhabited this village are, unlike the houses, circular or elliptical in form. They are locally known as sesi. The smaller are of truncated conical shape, the circular chamber being entered by a low door and having a corbelled roof. In one of the sesi a skeleton was found buried in the contracted position. The finest of the tombs, known as the Sese Grande, elliptical in form (Fig. 20), has a major diameter of more than 60 feet, and rises in ridges, being domed at the top. It contains not one chamber, but twelve, each of which has a separate entrance from the outside of the sese. To judge by the remains found in the sesi they belong entirely to the neolithic period.

The island of Malta as seen to-day is an almost treeless, though not unfertile, stretch of rock, with a harbour on the north coast which must always make the place a necessary possession to the first sea power of Europe. Much of its soil is of comparatively modern creation, and four thousand years ago the island may well have had a forbidding aspect. This is perhaps the reason why the first great inroads of neolithic man into the Mediterranean left it quite untouched, although it lay directly in the path of tribes immigrating into Europe from Africa. The earliest neolithic remains of Italy, Crete, and the Ægean seem to have no parallel in Malta, and the first inhabitants of whom we find traces in the island were builders of megalithic monuments. Small as Malta is it contains some of the grandest and most important structures of this kind ever erected. The two greatest of these, the so-called "Phoenician temples" of Hagiar Kim and Mnaidra, were constructed on opposite sides of one of the southern

valleys, each within sight of the other and of the little rocky island of Filfla.

The temple of Mnaidra is the simpler of the two in plan (Fig. 21). It consists of two halves, the more northerly of which was almost certainly built later than the other. Each half consists of two elliptical chambers set one behind the other. The south half is the better preserved. It has a concave façade of large orthostatic slabs with horizontal blocks set in front of them to keep them in position. In the centre of this opens a short paved passage formed of fine upright slabs of stone, one of which is 13 feet in height. The first elliptical chamber (E) into which this passage leads us has a length of 45 feet. Its walls (Pl. III) consist of roughly squared orthostatic slabs over 6 feet in height, above which are several courses of horizontal blocks which carry the walls in places up to a height of nearly 14 feet. This combination of vertical and horizontal masonry is typical of all the Maltese temples. To the left of the entrance is a rectangular niche in the wall containing one of the remarkable trilithons (a) which form so striking a feature of Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim. It consists of a horizontal slab of stone nearly 10 feet in length, supported at its ends by two vertical slabs about 5 feet high. To the right of the entrance is a window-like opening (b, behind the seated figure in Pl. III) in one of the slabs of the wall, preceded by two steps and giving access to an irregular triangular space (F). In the north-west angle of this triangle is fixed a trilithon table (c) of the usual type, 32 inches high; at a like height above the table is fixed another horizontal slab which serves as a roof to the corner. The south corner of the triangle is shut off by a vertical slab, in which is cut a window 29 inches by 17. Through this is seen a shrine (?) consisting of a box (d) made of five well-cut slabs of stone, the front being open. The aperture by which F is entered was evidently intended to be closed with a slab of stone from the inside of F, for it was rebated on that side, and there are holes to be used in securing the slab. When the entrance was thus blocked F still communicated with E by means of a small rectangular window 16 inches by 12 in one of the adjacent slabs (visible in Pl. III).

Returning to the area E we find in the south-west wall an elaborate doorway (Pl. II, Fig. I, p. 82) leading to a rectangular room H. The doorway consists of two tall pillars with a great lintel laid across the top. The space between the pillars is closed by a fixed vertical slab in which is a window-like aperture similar to that which gives access to Room F. All the stones in this doorway are ornamented with pit-marks. The rectangular room H has niches in its walls to the north, south, and west. Each niche is formed by a pair of uprights with a block laid across the top. The west niche is occupied by a horizontal table or slab (e) supported at its centre by a stone pillar 39 inches in height, of circular section narrowing in the centre (visible through the doorway in Pl. II, Fig. I). The southern niche contains an ordinary trilithon table (f): the northern niche is damaged, but apparently held a table like that of the western.

The area I consists of only half an ellipse, the southern half being replaced by the area H, which we have already described. It has a rectangular niche to the west containing a fine trilithon with a cover-slab nearly 10 feet long.

The whole of the southern half of the Mnaidra temple is surrounded by a wall of huge rough blocks of stone, presenting a great contrast to the dressed slabs of which the inner walls are formed. They are placed alternately with their broad faces and their narrow edges outwards. The roughness of this enclosure wall gives the structure a remarkably wild and craggy appearance from a distance. The northern half of Mnaidra is clearly a later addition.

There is no doubt as to the way in which the areas were roofed. In the apse-like ends of the elliptical rooms the horizontal courses are corbelled, i.e. each course projects slightly forward over the last. Thus the space narrows as the walls rise, until the aperture is small enough to be roofed by great slabs laid across. The corbelling of the apse is just perceptible in Pl. III. Whether the roofing of the Mnaidra temple was ever complete it is impossible to say: in any case the system we have described could only be applied to the apsidal portions of the areas, and their centres must either have been open to the sky or roofed quite simply with slabs.

In the still more famous temple of Hagiar Kim we have a complicated building, in which the original plan has been much altered and enlarged. The main portion doubtless consisted originally of a curved façade and a pair of elliptical areas, the inner of which has been fitted with a second entrance to the north-west and completely remodelled at its south-west end. Four elliptical chambers, one of which is at a much higher level than the rest of the building, have been added. Here, too, as at Mnaidra, we find niches containing trilithon tables. In the first elliptical area, in which the apsidal ends are divided from the central space by means of walls of vertical slabs, a remarkable group of objects was found. In front of a well-cut vertical block stood what must be an altar, cut in one piece of stone. It is square in section except for the top, which is circular. On the four vertical edges are pilasters in relief, and in the front between these is cut in relief what looks like a plant growing out of a pot or box. To the left of the altar and the vertical slab behind were an upright stone with two hanging spirals cut on it in relief, and at its foot a horizontal slab. Both the altar and the carved stone are covered with small pit-marks.

In the outside wall of the building, quite unconnected with the interior, is a niche partly restored on old foundations, in which stands a rough stone pillar 6½ feet high. In front of this pillar is a vertical slab nearly 3 feet high, narrowing towards the base, and covered with pit-markings. This pillar can hardly be anything but a baetyl, or sacred stone.

The temple called the Gigantia, on the island of Gozo, is no less remarkable than the two which we have already described; in one place its wall is preserved up to a height of over 20 feet. The plan is similar to that of Mnaidra, though here the two halves seem to have been built at one and the same time. Several of the blocks show a design of spirals in relief, while on others there are the usual pit-markings. Another bears a figure of a fish or serpent. At the foot of one of the trilithons was found a baetyl 51 inches in height, now in the museum at Valletta.

That these three buildings were sanctuaries of some kind seems almost certain from their form and arrangement. We do not, however, know what was the exact nature of the worship carried on in them, though there can be no doubt that the stone tables supported by single pillars and the trilithons found in the niches played an important part in the ritual. Sir Arthur Evans in his famous article Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult has suggested that in Malta we have a cult similar to that seen in the Mycenæan world. This latter was an aneiconic worship developed out of the cult of the dead; in it the deity or hero was represented by a baetyl, i.e. a tree or pillar sometimes standing free, sometimes placed in a 'dolmen-like' cell or shrine, in which latter case the pillar often served to support the roof of the shrine. In Malta Sir Arthur Evans sees signs of a baetyl-worship very similar to this. Thus at Hagiar Kim we have a pillar still standing free in a niche, and another pillar, which, to judge from its shape, must have stood free, was found in the Gigantia. On the other hand, at Mnaidra we have pillars which support slabs in a cell or shrine, and at Cordin several small pillars were found which must originally have served a similar purpose.

There can hardly be any doubt that Sir Arthur Evans is right in seeing in the Maltese temples signs of a baetylic worship. But is he right in his further assertion that the cult was a cult of the dead? Albert Mayr assumes that he is, and endeavours to show that the 'dolmen-like' cells in the niches are not altars, but stereotyped representations of the dolmen-tombs of the heroes worshipped. He thinks that the slabs which cover them are too large for altar-tables, and that the niches in which they stand are too narrow and inaccessible to have been the scene of sacrificial rites. Neither of these arguments has much force, nor is it easy to see how the cells are derived from dolmens. The fact is that the word 'dolmen-like,' which has become current coin in archæological phraseology, is a question-begging epithet. The Maltese cells are not like dolmens at all, they are either trilithons or tables resting on a pillar. They are always open to the front, and instead of the rough unhewn block which should cover a dolmen they are roofed with a well-squared slab. If the pillar which supports the slab is, like the free-standing pillars, a baetyl, the slab is probably a mere roof to cover and protect it; if not, the slab is almost certainly a table.

At the same time, although we may not accept the hypothesis that the cell is derived from a dolmen, Sir Arthur Evans may still be right in supposing the worship to have originated in a cult of the dead. But he was almost certainly wrong, as recent excavation has shown, in supposing that the cells were the actual burial place of the deified heroes.

A number of statuettes were found at Hagiar Kim, two of which are of pottery and the rest of limestone. One figure represents a woman standing, but in the rest she is seated on a rather low stool with her feet tucked under her. There is no sign of clothing, except on one figure which shows a long shirt and a plain bodice with very low neck. All these statuettes are characterized by what is known as steatopygy, that is, the over-development of the fat which lies on and behind the hips and thighs.

Steatopygous figures have been found in many places, viz. France, Malta, Crete, the Cyclades, Greece, Thessaly, Servia, Transylvania, Poland, Egypt, and the Italian colony of Eritrea on the Red Sea. The French examples are from caves of the palæolithic period; the rest mainly belong to the neolithic and bronze ages. Various reasons have been given for the abnormal appearance of these figures. In the first place it has been suggested that they represent women of a steatopygous type, like the modern Bushwomen, and that this race was in early days widely diffused in the Mediterranean and in South Europe. Another hypothesis is that they represent not a truly steatopygous type of women, but only an abnormally fat type. A third suggestion is that they portray the generative aspect of nature in the form of a pregnant goddess.

Naturally there are considerable local differences in the shapes of the figures from the various countries we have enumerated, and it may be that no single hypothesis will explain them all.

There are other megalithic buildings in Malta besides the three which we have discussed, but none of them call for more than passing mention. On the heights of Cordin or Corradino, overlooking the Grand Harbour of Valletta, there are no less than three groups, all of which have been lately excavated. In all three we see signs of the typical arrangement of elliptical areas one behind another, and in the finest of the three the curved façade and the paved court which lies before it are still preserved.

It was for a long time believed that there were no dolmens in Malta. Professor Tagliaferro has been able to upset this belief by discovering two, one near Musta and the other near Siggewi. It is hardly credible that these are the only two dolmens which ever existed in Malta. More will no doubt yet be found, especially in the wild north-west corner of the isle.

The megalithic builders of Malta did not confine their achievements to structures above ground, they could also work with equal facility below. In the village of Casal Paula, which lies about a mile from the head of the Grand Harbour of Valletta, is a wonderful complex of subterranean chambers known as the Hypogeum of Halsaflieni, which may justly be considered as one of the wonders of the world.

The chambers, which seem to follow no definite plan, are excavated in the soft limestone and arranged in two storeys connected by a staircase, part of which still remains in place. The finest rooms are in the upper storey. The largest is circular, and contains in its walls a series of false doors and windows. It is in this room that the remarkable nature of the work in the hypogeum is most apparent. On entering it one sees at once that the intention of the original excavator was to produce in solid rock underground a copy of a megalithic structure above ground. Thus the walls curve slightly inwards towards the top as do those of the apses of Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim, and the ceiling is cut to represent a roof of great blocks laid across from wall to wall with a space left open in the centre where the width would be too great for the length of the stones. The treatment of the doors and windows recalls at once that of the temples above ground. The mason was not content, when he needed a door, to cut a rectangular opening in the rock; he must represent in high relief the monolithic side-posts and lintel which were the great features of the megalithic 'temples' of Malta. Nor has he failed in his intention, for, as one moves from room to room in the hypogeum, one certainly has the feeling of being in a building constructed of separate blocks and not merely cut in the solid rock. No description can do justice to the grace of the curves and the flow of the line in the circular chamber and in the passage beyond it, and we have here the work of an architect who felt the æsthetic effect of every line he traced.

Behind the circular chamber and across the passage just referred to lies a small room which, rightly or wrongly, has been called the 'Holy of Holies,' the idea being that it formed a kind of inner sanctuary to the chamber. It contains a rough shelf cut in the wall, and in the centre of this a shallow circular pit. It has been suggested that this pit was made to hold the base of the cult-object, whether it was a baetyl or an idol. This, however, is a mere conjecture. In the passage just outside the door of this room are two small circular pits about 6 inches in diameter and the same distance apart. They connect with one another below, and are closed with tightly fitting limestone plugs. In one of them was found a cow's horn. Their purpose is unknown, but similar pairs of pits occur elsewhere at Halsaflieni.

In two of the largest chambers in the hypogeum the roof and walls are still decorated with designs in red paint. The patterns consist of graceful combinations of curved lines and spirals. Many other rooms, including the circular chamber, were originally painted with designs in red, which have now almost wholly disappeared.

Many of the chambers are extremely small, too small for an adult even to stand upright in them, and their entrances are merely windows, perhaps a foot square and well above the ground.

What then was the purpose of this wonderful complex of rooms? Before attempting to answer this question we must consider what has been found in them. When the museum authorities first took over the hypogeum practically all the chambers were filled to within a short distance of their roofs with a mass of reddish soil, which proved to contain the remains of thousands of human skeletons. In other words, Halsaflieni was used as a burial place, though this may not have been its original purpose. The bones lay for the most part in disorder, and so thickly that in a space of about 4 cubic yards lay the remains of no less than 120 individuals. One skeleton, however, was found intact, lying on the right side in the crouched position, i.e. with arms and knees bent up.

With the bones were found enormous quantities of pottery and other objects, buried with the dead as provision for the next world. The pottery is rough in comparison with the fine painted wares of Crete, but it is extremely varied in its decoration. One particularly fine bowl shows a series of animals which have been identified by Professor Tagliaferro as the long-horned buffalo, an animal which once existed on the northern coasts of Africa. Ornaments of all kinds were common, and include beads, pendants, and conical buttons of stone and shell. The most remarkable of all are a large number of model celts made of jadeite and other hard stones. These are of the same shape as the stone axes used by neolithic man, but they are far too small ever to have been used, and they must therefore have been models hung round the neck as amulets. Each is provided with a small hole for this purpose. The popularity of the axe-amulet makes it probable that the axe had some religious significance.

Finally Halsaflieni has yielded several steatopygous figurines. Some of these resemble those of Hagiar Kim, but two are of rather different type. Each of these represents a female lying on a rather low couch. In the better preserved of the two she lies on her right side, her head on a small uncomfortable-looking pillow. The upper part of her body is naked, but from the waist downwards she is clad in a flounced skirt which reaches to the ankles. The other figurine is very similar, but the woman here is face downwards on the couch.

The bodies themselves were so damaged with damp that only ten skulls could be saved whole. These, however, afford very valuable anthropological evidence. They have been carefully measured by Dr. Zammit, and they prove to belong to a long-headed (dolichocephalic) type usual among the neolithic races of the Mediterranean.

We have still to discuss the purpose of this great complex of underground chambers and passages. It is quite clear that its eventual fate was to be used as a burial place for thousands of individuals, but it is far from certain that this was the purpose for which it was built. The existence of the central chamber, with its careful work and laborious imitation of an open-air 'temple,' is against this interpretation. It has therefore been suggested that the hypogeum was meant for a burial place, and that the central chamber was the chapel or sanctuary in which the funeral rites were performed, after which the body was buried in one of the smaller rooms. This, however, does not explain the presence of burials in the chapel itself, and it is far more likely that it was only after Halsaflieni had ceased to be used for its original purpose that it was seized upon as a convenient place for burial.

The question of the date of the Maltese megalithic buildings is a difficult one. It is true that no metal has been found in them, and that we can therefore speak of them as belonging to the neolithic age. But the neolithic age of Malta need not be parallel in date with that of Crete for example. It is extremely probable that Malta lay outside the main currents of civilization, and that flint continued to be used there long after copper had been adopted by her more fortunate neighbours.

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CHAPTER VIII

In Asia megalithic monuments are not infrequent. We first find them in Syria, they have been reported from Persia, and in Central and South India they exist in large numbers. Corridor-tombs occur in Japan, but they are late in date, and there is no evidence to show whether they are connected with those of India or not.

Syria is comparatively rich in megalithic monuments, but it is remarkable that almost all of them lie to the east of the Jordan. Thus while there are hundreds of dolmens in the country of Pera and in Ammon and Moab, very few have been found in Galilee, and only one in Judæa, despite careful search. There is, however, a circle of stones west of Tiberias, and an enclosure of menhirs between Tyre and Sidon. According to Perrot and Chipiez some of the Moabite monuments are very similar in type to the Giants' Tombs of Sardinia. Others are simple dolmens. In a good example at Ala Safat (Fig. 22) the floor of the tomb is formed by a single flat slab of stone. The great cover-slab rests on two long blocks, one on either side, placed on edge. The narrow ends are closed up with smaller slabs, one of which, that which faces north, has a small hole pierced in it. A similar closure slab with a hole is also found in certain rock-tombs quite close to this dolmen. Apparently none of these dolmens have been systematically excavated, and nothing is known of their date.

Menhirs, too, are not wanting in Syria. Perrot and Chipiez figure an example from Gebel-Mousa in Moab which is quite unworked, except for a shallow furrow across the centre of the face. In many cases the menhir is surrounded by one or more rows of stones. Thus at Der Ghuzaleh a menhir about 3 feet in height is set in the centre of what when complete must have been a rectangle. In other cases the enclosure was elliptical or circular in form. In an example at Minieh the menhir stands in the centre of a double (in part triple) circle of stones, on which abuts an elliptical enclosure. In some cases the circle has no proper entrance, in others it has a door consisting of a large slab resting on two others. The largest of the circles attains a diameter of 600 feet, and has a double line of stones.

Within these circles and near them are found large numbers of monuments consisting each of a large flat slab resting on two others. On the upper surface of the top slab are often seen a number of basin-shaped holes, sometimes connected by furrows. Many of the slabs are slightly slanting, and it has been suggested that the series of holes and furrows was intended for the pouring a libation of some kind. In a monument of this type at Ammân the cover-slab slopes considerably; the upper part of its surface is a network of small channels converging on a hole 11 inches deep about the centre of the slab. Here, again, no excavations have been carried out, and we do not even know what was the purpose of these structures. It is, however, probable that these trilithons were not, like the dolmens, tombs, but served some religious purpose, possibly connected with the worship of the menhirs.

In the Jaulân, where the rock consists of a slabby type of basalt, there are many dolmens of fine appearance. They often lie east and west, and are often broader at the west end. Many are surrounded by a double circle of stones. In one of them two copper rings were found. At Ain Dakkar more than 160 dolmen-tombs are visible from a single spot. They are built on circular terraces of earth and stones about 3 feet high. The Arabs call them Graves of the Children of Israel. Most of them lie east and west, and are broader at the west. In the eastern slab there is often a hole about 2 feet in diameter. Near Tsîl are several corridor-tombs of simple type. Each consists of a long rectangular chamber with only one cover-slab, that being at the west end. In a well-known example of this type at Kosseir there is a hole in one of the two uprights which support the cover.

These examples will serve to show the importance and variety of the Syrian monuments. They present analogies with those of many parts of the megalithic area, and we therefore await anxiously the publication of Mackenzie's promised article on his own explorations in this district.

The central and southern parts of India afford numerous examples of dolmens. They are to be found in almost all parts of Lower India from the Nerbudda River to Cape Comorin. In the Nilgiri hills there are stone circles and dolmens, and numbers of dolmens are said to exist in the Neermul jungle in Central India. In the collectorate of Bellary dolmens and other monuments to the number of 2129 have been recorded. Others occur in the principality of Sorapoor and near Vellore in the Madras presidency. These latter appear to be of two types, either with three supports only or with four supports, one of which is pierced with a circular hole. Of the 2200 dolmens known in the Deccan, half are of this pierced type. They are known to the natives as "dwarfs' houses." One only had a pair of uprights outside the pierced stone, thus forming a sort of portico to the dolmen. Near Chittore in North Arcot there is said to be a square mile of ground covered with these monuments. In them were found human remains in sarcophagi, and fragments of black pottery. Several of the Indian dolmens are said to have contained objects of iron. Occasionally the dolmen is surrounded by a double circle of stones or covered with a cairn. The Deccan, in addition to its numerous dolmens, possesses also megalithic monuments of another type. They consist each of two rows, each of thirteen unworked stones set as close together as possible, in front of which is a row of three stones, each about 4 feet high, not let into the ground. The planted stones were whitewashed, and each was marked with a large spot of red paint with black in the centre. These stones seem to have been in use in modern times. Colonel Forbes Leslie thinks that a cock had been sacrificed on one of the three stones which lie in front of the double row, but there seems to be no certain evidence for this. It is, however, very probable that these alignements had some religious signification, and the same is no doubt true of certain small circles of small stones, also found in the Deccan.

The modern inhabitants of the Khasi Hills in India still make use of megalithic monuments. They set up a group of an odd number of menhirs, 3, 5, 7, 9, or 11, and in front of these two structures of dolmen form. These are raised in honour of some important member of the tribe who has died, and whose spirit is thought to have done some good to the tribe. If the benefits continue it is usual to increase the number of menhirs.

The earliest burials in Japan are marked by simple mounds of earth. It was not until the beginning of the iron age that megalithic tombs came into use. The true dolmen is not found in Japan, and all the known graves are corridor-tombs covered with a mound. They are of four types. First, we have a simple corridor with no separate chamber; secondly, a corridor broadening out at one side near the end; thirdly, a true chamber with a corridor of access; and fourthly, a type in which the corridor is preceded by an antechamber. All four types occur in rough unworked stone, roofed with huge slabs, but a few examples of the third type are made of well-cut and dressed blocks. The mounds are usually conical, though some are of a complex form shortly to be described. Some of these contain stone sarcophagi. The bodies were never cremated, but the bones are so damaged that it is impossible to say what the most usual position was. Objects of bronze and iron together with pottery and ornaments were found in the tombs.

The more important tombs are of a more complicated type. They seem to have contained the remains of emperors and their families. They consist each of a circular mound, to which is added on one side another mound of trapezoidal form. The megalithic tomb-chamber or the sarcophagus which sometimes replaces it lies in the circular part of the mound. The total axial length of the basis of the whole mound is in a typical case—that of Nara (Yamato)—674 feet, the diameter of the round end being 420 feet. The mounds have in most cases terraced sides, and are surrounded by a moat. In early times it seems to have been the custom to slay or bury alive the servants of the emperor on his mound, but this was given up about the beginning of the Christian era.

These imperial double mounds seem to begin about two centuries before the Christian era, and to continue for five or six centuries after it. Many of them can be definitely assigned to their owners, and others are attributed by tradition. Thus a rather small mound at the foot of Mount Unebi (Yamato) is considered to be the burial place of the Emperor Jimmu, the founder of the Imperial dynasty, and annual ceremonies are performed before it.

The Japanese Emperors are still buried in terraced mounds, and in the group of huge stone blocks which have been placed on the mound of the Emperor Komei, who died in 1866, we may be tempted to see a survival of the ancient megalithic chamber.

These early corridor-tombs are evidently not the work of the Ainu, the aborigines of Japan, but of the Japanese invaders who conquered them. These latter do not seem to have brought the idea of megalithic building with them, as their earlier tombs are simple mounds. As no dolmen has yet been found in Japan we cannot at present derive the corridor-tomb there from it. It is, however, worthy of mention that true dolmens occur as near as Corea, though none have been reported from China.

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CHAPTER IX

With what purpose were the megalithic monuments erected? The most simple example, the menhir or upright stone, may have served many purposes. In discussing the temples of Malta we saw reason for believing that the megalithic peoples were in the habit of worshipping great stones as such. Other stones, not actually worshipped, may mark the scene of some great event. Jacob commemorated a dream by setting up the stone which had served him as a pillow, and Samuel, victorious over the Philistines, set up twelve stones, and called the place "Stones of Deliverance." Others again perhaps stood in a spot devoted to some particular national or religious ceremony. Thus the Angami of the present day in Assam set up stones in commemoration of their village feasts. It seems clear from the excavations that the menhirs do not mark the place of burials, though they may in some cases have been raised in honour of the dead.

The question of the purpose of stone circles has already been dealt with in connection with those of Great Britain. Alignements are more difficult to explain, for, from their form, they cannot have served as temples in the sense of meeting-places for worship. Yet they must surely have been connected with religion in some way or other. Possibly they were not constructed once and for all, but the stones were added gradually, each marking some event or the performance of some periodic ceremony, or even the death of some great chief. The so-called "Canaanite High Place" recently found at Gezer consists of a line of ten menhirs running north and south, together with a large block in which was a socket for an idol or other object of worship. Several bodies of children found near it have suggested that the monument was a place of sacrifice.

Other megalithic structures can be definitely classed as dwellings or tombs, as we have seen in our separate treatment of them. It is not improbable that, if we are right in considering the dolmen as the most primitive form of megalithic monument, megalithic architecture was funerary in origin. Yet, as we find it in its great diffusion, it provides homes for the living as well as for the dead. In their original home, perhaps in Africa, the megalithic race may have lived in huts of wattle or skins, but after their migration the need of protection in a hostile country and the exigencies of a colder climate may have forced them to employ stone for their dwellings. In any case, in megalithic architecture as seen in Europe the tomb and the dwelling types are considerably intermixed, and may have reacted on one another. This, however, does not justify the assertion so often made that the megalithic tomb was a conscious imitation of the hut. It is true that some peoples make the home of their dead to resemble that of the living. Among certain tribes of Greenland it is usual to leave the dead man seated in his hut by way of burial. But such a conception does not exist among all peoples, and to say that the dolmen is an imitation in stone of a hut is the purest conjecture. Still more improbable is Montelius's idea that the corridor-tomb imitates a dwelling. It is true that the Eskimos have a type of hut which is entered by a low passage often 30 feet in length, but for one who believes as Montelius does that the corridor-tomb is southern or eastern in origin such a derivation is impossible, for this type of house is essentially northern, its aim being to exclude the icy winds. In the south it would be intolerably close, and its low passage besides serving no purpose would be inconvenient.

There is really no reason to derive either the dolmen or the corridor-tomb from dwellings at all. Granted the use of huge stones, both are purely natural forms, and the presence of the corridor in the latter is dictated by necessity. The problem was how to cover a large tomb-chamber with a mound and to leave it still accessible for later interments, and the obvious solution was to add a covered passage leading out to the edge of the mound.

A remarkable feature of the megalithic tombs is the occurrence in many of them of a small round or rectangular hole in one of the walls, usually an end-wall, more rarely a partition-wall between two chambers. Occasionally the hole was formed by placing side by side two upright blocks each with a semicircular notch in its edge. Tombs with a holed block or blocks occur in England, instances being the barrows of Avening and Rodmarton, King Orry's Grave in the Isle of Man, Lanyon Quoit in Cornwall, and Plas Newydd in Wales, which has two holes. There are also examples in Ireland, France, Belgium, Central Germany, and Scandinavia, where they are common. Passing further afield we find holes in the Giants' Graves of Sardinia, and in Syria, the Caucasus, and India, where half the dolmens in the Deccan are of this type. The holes are usually too small to allow of the passage of a human body. It has been suggested that they served as an outlet for the soul of the deceased, or in some cases as a means of passing in food to him.

Attention has been frequently drawn to curious round pits so often found on the stones of dolmens and usually known as cup-markings. They vary in diameter from about two to four inches, and are occasionally connected by a series of narrow grooves in the stone. They vary considerably in number, sometimes there are few, sometimes many. They occur nearly always on the upper surface of the cover-slab, very rarely on its under surface or on the side-walls.

Some have attempted to show that these pits are purely natural and not artificial. It has been suggested, for instance, that they are simply the casts of a species of fossil sea-urchin which has weathered out from the surface of the stone. This explanation may be true in some cases, but it will not serve in all, for the 'cups' are sometimes arranged in such regular order that their artificial origin is palpable. These markings are found on dolmens and corridor-tombs in Palestine, North Africa, Corsica, France, Germany, Scandinavia, and Great Britain. In Wales there is a fine example of a dolmen with pits at Clynnog Fawr, while in Cornwall we may instance the monument called "The Three Brothers of Grugith" near Meneage.

There is no clue to the purpose of these pits. Some have thought that they were made to hold the blood of sacrifice which was poured over the slab, and from some such idea may have arisen some of the legends of human victims which still cling round the dolmens. Others have opposed to this the fact that the pits sometimes occur on vertical walls or under the cover-slabs, and have preferred to see in them some totemistic signification or some expression of star-worship. It is possible that we have to deal with a complex and not a simple phenomenon, and that the pits were not all made to serve a single purpose. Those which cover some of the finest stones at Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim are certainly meant to be ornamental, though there may be in them a reminiscence of some religious tradition. In any case, it is worth while to remember that cup-markings also occur on natural rocks and boulders in Switzerland, Scandinavia, Great Britain (where there is a good example near Ilkley in Yorkshire), near Como in Italy, and in Germany, Russia, and India.

Of the builders of the megalithic monuments themselves we cannot expect to know very much, especially while their origin remains veiled in obscurity. Yet there are a few facts which stand out clearly. We even know something about their appearance, for the skulls found in the megalithic tombs have in many cases been subjected to careful examination and measurement. Into the detail of these measurements we cannot enter here; suffice it to say that the most important of them are the maximum length of the skull from front to back and its maximum breadth, both measures, of course, being taken in a straight line with a pair of callipers, and not round the contour of the skull. If we now divide the maximum breadth by the maximum length and multiply the result by 100 we get what is known as the cephalic index of the skull. Thus if a skull has a length of 180 millimetres and a breadth of 135, its cephalic index is 135/180 X 100, i.e. 75. It is clear that in a roundish type of head the breadth will be greater in proportion to the length than in a narrow elliptical type. Thus in a broad head the cephalic index is high, while in a narrow head it is low. The former is called brachycephalic (short-headed), and the latter dolichocephalic (long-headed).

This index is now accepted by most anthropologists as a useful criterion of race, though, of course, there are other characteristics which must often be taken into account, such as the height and breadth of the face, the cubic capacity of the skull and its general contour. At any rate, if we can show that the skulls of the megalithic tombs conform to a single type in respect of their index we shall have a presumption, though not a certainty, that they belong to a single race.

For Africa the evidence consists in a group of twenty skulls from dolmen-tombs giving cephalic indices which range from 70.5 to 84.4. The average index is 75.27, and the majority of the indices lay within a few units of that number. Ten skulls from Halsaflieni in Malta have cephalic indices running from 66 to 75.1, the average being 71.84. Of a series of 44 skulls from the rock-tombs of the Petit Morin in France, 12 had an index of over 80, 22 were between 75 and 80, and 10 were below 75. But in the dolmens of Lozère distinctly broad skulls were frequent. A series of British neolithic skulls, mostly from barrows, ran from 67 to 77.

The builders of the megalithic monuments thus belonged in the main to a fairly dolichocephalic race or races, for the large majority of the skulls measured are of a long-headed type. There are, however, in various localities, especially in France, occasional anomalous types of skull which are distinctly brachycephalic, and show that contamination of some kind was taking or had taken place.

Of the state of civilization to which the builders of the megalithic monuments had attained, and of the social condition in which they lived, there is something to be gathered. It is clear in the first place from the evidence of the Maltese buildings that they were a pastoral people who domesticated the ox, the sheep, the pig, and the goat, upon whose flesh they partly lived. Shellfish also formed a part of their diet, and the shells when emptied of their contents were occasionally pierced to be used as pendants or to form necklaces or bracelets.

Whether these people were agricultural is a question more difficult to answer. It is true that flat stones have been found, on which some kind of cereal was ground up with the aid of round pebbles, but the grain for which these primitive mills were used may have been wild and not cultivated. No grain of any kind has been found in the Maltese settlements.

The megalithic race do not seem to have been great traders. This is remarkably exemplified in Malta, where there is not a trace of connection with the wonderful civilization which must have been flourishing so near at hand in Crete and the Ægean at the time when the megalithic temples were built. The island seems to have been entirely self-sufficing, except for the importation of obsidian, probably from the neighbouring island of Linosa. Of copper, which wide trade would have introduced, there is no sign.

Some writers, however, have argued the existence of extensive trade-relations from the occurrence of a peculiar kind of turquoise called callaïs in some of the megalithic monuments of France and Portugal. The rarity of this stone has inclined some archæologists to attribute it to a single source, while some have gone so far as to consider it eastern in origin. For the last theory there is no evidence whatsoever. No natural deposit of callaïs is known, but it is highly probable that the sources of the megalithic examples lay in France or Portugal.

It would of course be foolish to suppose that the megalithic people received none of the products of other countries, especially at a time when the discovery of copper was giving a great impetus to trade. No doubt they enjoyed the benefits of that kind of slow filtering trade which a primitive tribe, even if it had wished, could hardly have avoided, but they were not a great trading nation as were the Cretans of the Middle and Late Minoan Periods, or the Egyptians of the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties. We know nothing of their political conditions, of the groups into which they were divided, or the centres from which they were governed. That there were strong centres of government is, however, clear from the very existence of such huge monuments, many of which must have required the combined and organized labour of large armies of workers, in the gathering of which the state was doubtless strongly backed by religion.

We have seen that the megalithic peoples frequently dwelt in huts of great stones. Yet in the majority of cases their huts must have been, like those of most primitive races, of perishable material, such as wood, wattle, skins, turf, and clay. As for their form there was probably a continual conflict between the round and the rectangular plan, just as there was in the stone examples. Which form prevailed in any particular district was probably determined almost by accident. Thus in Sardinia the round type was mostly kept for the huts and nuraghi, while the rectangular was reserved for the dolmens and Giants' Graves. Even here the confusion between the two types is shown by the fact that near Birori there are two dolmens with a round plan. Again, in Pantelleria the huts of the Mursia are rectangular, while the sesi, which are tombs, are roughly circular. It is therefore probable that the round and rectangular types of building were both in use among the megalithic people before they spread over Europe.

Within their huts these people led a life of the simplest description. Their weapons and tools, though occasionally of copper, were for the most part of stone. Flint was the most usual material. In Scandinavia it was often polished, but elsewhere it was merely flaked. The implements made from it were of simple types, knives, borers, scrapers, lanceheads, and more rarely arrowheads. Many of these were quite roughly made, no more flaking being done than was absolutely necessary to produce the essential form, and the work being, when possible, confined to one face of the flint.

In the Mediterranean obsidian, a volcanic rock, occasionally took the place of flint, especially in Sardinia and Pantelleria. Axes or celts were often made of flint in Scandinavia and North Germany, but elsewhere other stones, such as jade, jadeite, and diorite were commonly used.

We can only guess at the way in which the megalithic people were clothed. No doubt the skins of the animals they domesticated and of those they hunted provided them with some form of covering, at any rate in countries where it was needed. Possibly they spun wool or flax into a thread, for at Halsaflieni two objects were found which look like spindle-whorls, and others occur on sites which are almost certainly to be attributed to the megalithic people. There is, however, nothing to show that they wove the thread into stuffs.

The love of personal decoration was highly developed among them, and all branches of nature were called upon to minister to their desire for ornament. Shells, pierced and strung separately or in masses, were perhaps their favourite adornment, but close on these follow beads and pendants of almost every conceivable substance, bone, horn, stone, clay, nuts, beans, copper, and occasionally gold.

One small object assumes a great importance on account of its wide distribution. This is the conical button with two converging holes in its base to pass the thread through. This little object, which may have served exactly the purpose of the modern button, occurs in several parts of the megalithic area. There are examples in Malta made of stone and shell. Elsewhere it is most usually of bone. It occurs in Sardinia, in France, in the rock-tombs of Gard, and in the corridor and rock-tombs of Lozère and Ardèche, in Portugal in the allée couverte of Monte Abrahaõ, in Bohuslän (Sweden), and at Carrowmore in Ireland. Outside the megalithic area it has been found in two of the Swiss lake-dwellings and in Italy.

The pottery of the megalithic people was of a simple type. It was all made by hand, the potter's wheel being still unknown to the makers. Pottery with painted designs does not occur outside Sicily, except for a few poor and late examples in Malta. The best vases were of fairly purified clay, moderately well fired, and having a polished surface, usually of a darkish colour. On this surface were often incised ornamental designs, varying both in type and in the skill with which they were engraved. As a rule the schemes were rectilinear, more rarely they were carried out in curves. Sardinia furnishes some fine examples of rectilinear work, while the best of the curved designs are found in Malta, where elaborate conventional and even naturalistic patterns are traced out with wonderful freedom and steadiness of hand.

The pottery of the megalithic area is not all alike; it would be surprising if it were. Even supposing that the invaders brought with them a single definite style of pottery-making this would rapidly become modified by local conditions and by the already existing pottery industry of the country, often, no doubt, superior to that of the new-comers. Nevertheless, there are a few points of similarity between the pottery of various parts of the megalithic area. The most remarkable example is the bell-shaped cup, which occurs in Denmark, England, France, Spain, Sardinia, and possibly Malta (the specimen is too broken for certainty). Outside the area it is found in Bohemia, Hungary, and North Italy. Here, as in the case of the conical button, we cannot argue that the form was actually introduced by the megalithic race, though there is a certain possibility in favour of such a hypothesis.

That the megalithic people possessed a religion of some kind will hardly be doubted. Their careful observance of the rites due to the dead, and their construction of buildings which can hardly have been anything but places of worship, is a strong testimony to this. We have seen that in the Maltese temples the worship of baetyls or pillars of stone seems to have been carried on. Several stone objects which can scarcely have been anything but baetyls were found in the megalithic structures of Los Millares in Spain, but none are known elsewhere in the megalithic area.

There is some reason for thinking that among the megalithic race there existed a cult of the axe. In France, for instance, the sculptured rock-tombs of the valley of the Petit Morin show, some a human figure, some an axe, and some a combination of the two. This same juxtaposition of the two also occurs on a slab which closed the top of a corbelled chamber at Collorgues in Gard. A simple allée couverte at Göhlitzsch in Saxony has on one of its blocks an axe and handle engraved and coloured red. There are further examples in the allée couverte of Gavr'inis and the dolmen called La Table des Marchands at Locmariaquer.

These sculptured axes call to mind at once the numerous axe-shaped pendants of fine polished stone (jade, jadeite, etc.) found in Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, and France, and apparently used as amulets. The excavation of Crete has brought to light a remarkable worship of the double axe, and it has been argued with great probability that one of the early boat signs figured on the pre-dynastic painted vases of Egypt is a double axe, and that this was a cult object. It seems very probable that in the megalithic area, or at least in part of it, there was a somewhat similar worship, the object of cult, however, being not a double but a single axe, usually represented as fitted with a handle. It need not be assumed that the axe itself was worshipped, though this is not impossible; it is more likely that it was an attribute of some god or goddess.

Among the rock-hewn tombs of the valley of the Petit Morin in the department of Marne, France, were seven which contained engravings on one of the walls. Several of these represent human figures (Fig. 13). The eyes are not marked, but the hair and nose are clear. In some the breasts are shown, in others they are omitted. On each figure is represented what appears to be a collar or necklace. Similar figures occur on the slabs of some of the allées couvertes of Seine et Oise, and on certain blocks found in and near megalithic burials in the South of France. Moreover, in the departments of Aveyron, Tarn, and Hérault have been found what are known as menhir-statues, upright pillars of stone roughly shaped into human semblance at the top; they are of two types, the one clearly female and the other with no breasts, but always with a collar or baldric.

It has been argued that these figures represent a deity or deities of the megalithic people. Déchelette, comparing what are apparently tattoo marks on a menhir-statue at Saint Sermin (Aveyron) with similar marks on a figure cut on a schist plaque at Idanha a Nova (Portugal) and on a marble idol from the island of Seriphos in the Ægean, seems inclined to argue that in France and Portugal we have the same deity as in the Ægean. This seems rather a hazardous conjecture, for we know that many primitive peoples practised tattooing, and, moreover, it is not certain that the French figures represent deities at all. It is quite as likely, if not more so, that they represent the deceased, and take the place of a grave-stone: this would account for the occurrence of both male and female types. This was almost certainly the purpose of six stones that remain of a line that ran parallel to a now destroyed tomb at Tamuli (Sardinia). Three have breasts as if to distinguish the sex of three of those buried in the tomb. We must not therefore assume that any of the French figures represents a 'dolmen-deity.'

The method of burial observed in the megalithic tombs is almost universally inhumation. Cremation seems to occur only in France, but there it is beyond all doubt. The known examples are found in the departments of Finistère, Marne, and Aisne, and in the neighbourhood of Paris. In Finistère out of 92 megalithic burials examined 61 were cremations, 26 were inhumations, and 5 were uncertain. It is extremely curious that this small portion of France should be the only part of the megalithic area where cremation was practised. It is generally held that cremation was brought into Europe by the broad-headed 'Alpine' people, who seem to have invaded the centre of the continent at some period in the neolithic age. It is possible that in parts of France a mixture took place between the megalithic builders and the Alpine race. Intermarriage would no doubt lead to confusion in many cases between the two rites.

In all other cases the builders of the megalithic monuments buried their dead unburned. Often the body was lying stretched out on its back, or was set in a sitting position against the side of the tomb; but most frequently it was placed in what is known as the contracted position, laid on one side, generally the left, with the knees bent and drawn up towards the chin, the arms bent at the elbow, and the hands placed close to the face. Many explanations of this position have been suggested. Some see in it a natural posture of repose, some an attempt to crowd the body into as small a space as possible. Some have suggested that the corpse was tightly bound up with cords in order that the spirit might not escape and do harm to the living. Perhaps the most widely approved theory is that which considers this position to be embryonic, i.e. the position of the embryo previous to birth. None of these explanations is entirely convincing, but no better one has been put forward up to the present.

This custom, it must be noted, was not limited to the megalithic peoples. It was the invariable practice of the pre-dynastic Egyptians and has been found further east in Persia. It occurs in the neolithic period in Crete and the Ægean, in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and other parts of Europe, and it is one of the facts which go to show that the builders of the megaliths were ethnologically connected, however remotely, with their predecessors in Europe.

At Halsaflieni, in Malta, we have perhaps examples of the curious custom of secondary interment; the body is buried temporarily in some suitable place, and after the flesh has left the bones the latter are collected and thrown together into a common ossuary. That the bones at Halsaflieni were placed there when free from flesh is probable from the closeness with which they were packed together (see p. 111). There are also possible examples in Sicily (see p. 79). The custom was not unknown in neolithic days, especially in Crete. It is still occasionally practised on the island and on the Greek mainland, where, after the dead have lain a few years in hallowed soil, their bones are dug up, roughly cleaned, and deposited in caves.

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