Italy.
Although the experience we have just acquired with reference to dolmens in Spain ought to make any one cautious as to making assertions regarding those in Italy, still it probably is safe to assert that, with the exception of one group at Saturnia, there are no dolmens in that country. In many respects Italy is very differently situated from Spain. Her own learned societies and antiquaries have for centuries been occupied with her antiquities, and foreign tourists have traversed the length and breadth of the land, and could hardly have failed to remark anything that called to their recollection the Druids or Dragons of their own native lands. As nothing, however, of the sort has been recorded, we may feel tolerable confidence that no important specimens exist; though at the roots of the hills and in remote corners there can be little doubt that waifs and strays of wandering races will reward the careful searcher for such objects. One, for instance, is known to exist near Sesto Calende, in Lombardy. It is a circle of small stones, some 30 feet in diameter, with an avenue 50 feet in length touching it tangentially on one side, and with a small semicircle of stones 20 feet wide a few yards farther off.[462] The whole looks like the small alignments on Dartmoor, and if several were found and the traditions of the country were carefully sifted, this might lead to some light being thrown on the subject. At present it is hardly much bigger or more interesting than a sheep-fold.
The Saturnia group is thus described by Mr. Dennis:—"They are very numerous, consisting generally of a quadrangular chamber sunk a few feet below the surface, lined with rough slabs of rock set upright, one on each side, and roofed over with two large slabs resting against each other, so as to form a penthouse, or else a single one of enormous size, covering the whole, and laid with a slight slope, apparently for the purpose of carrying off the rain. Not a chisel has touched these rugged masses, about 16 feet square to half that size; some divided, like that shown in the annexed woodcut, into two chambers over 18 feet across. To most of them a passage leads, 10 or 12 feet long and 3 feet wide. All are sunk a little below the surface, because each had a tumulus of earth piled around it, so as to cover all but the cap stone."
One tumulus was observed with a circle of small stones set round it, and Mr. Dennis suggests "that all may have been so encircled, but that the small stones would be easily removed by the peasantry." "Nothing," he adds, "at all like them is seen in any other part of Etruria."[463] Saturnia is situated twenty miles from the sea, and if it is true that nothing of the sort is found elsewhere in Italy, these dolmens must be looked upon as exceptional—the remains of some stray colony of dolmen-builders, the memory of which has passed away, and may probably now be lost for ever.
163. Dolmen at Saturnia. From Dennis' 'Etruria.'
If this is a correct representation of what took place in Italy, the conclusion seems inevitable that the chambered tumuli of that country—all of which are erected with hewn stones—did not grow out of rude-stone monuments. In no country in Europe are the tumuli so numerous or so important as in Etruria, and, as before mentioned, they certainly extend back to an era twelve or thirteen centuries before Christ. But if the dolmens of France or Scandinavia are prehistoric, or, in other words, extend back to anything like a thousand or fifteen hundred years before Christ, there is no reason whatever why dolmens should not be found also in Italy, if they ever existed there. Either it must be that Italy never possessed any or that those in the rest of Europe are very much more modern. If the northern dolmens are only one thousand to two thousand years old, the matter is easily explained. If they are three thousand or four thousand years old, they ought also to be found in Italy.
The fact seems to be that both the Pelasgi of Greece and the Tyrrheni of Italy came in contact either with Egypt or some early stone-hewing people before they left their homes in the East to migrate into Europe, and that they never passed through the rude-stone stage of architecture at any period, or at any place with which we are acquainted; and as they were, so far as we know, the earliest colonists of the countries they afterwards occupied, it seems in vain to look for dolmens where they settled. If Attila had lived five centuries before instead of after the Christian era, he and his Huns might have produced a rude-stone age in Italy. The inhabitants of Etruria were essentially a burying, dead-reverencing people, and if they had only been thrown back to that stage of barbarism which the rude monuments of our forefathers represent, we might have found dolmens there in thousands. The fate of Italy was different. Pressed by the Celts of Gallia Cisalpina in the north and by the Romans in the south, Etruria was squeezed out of existence, but by two races more civilized and progressive than herself. So far from throwing her back towards barbarism, Rome in adopting many of her forms advanced and improved upon them, and imparted to her architecture a higher and more intellectual form than she had been herself able to impress upon it. So, too, in Greece. The Dorian superseded and extinguished the Pelasgic forms, but after a longer interval of time. Four or five centuries elapsed between the last tomb we know of, at Mycenæ, and the earliest Doric temple at Corinth, and the consequence is that we see far fewer traces of the earlier people in the architecture of Greece than we do in that of Rome. But in neither instance was there any tendency to retrograde to a dolmen stage of civilization.
The case was widely different with such countries as Spain or France. There an aboriginal population had existed for thousands and tens of thousands of years, unprogressive and incapable, so far as we know, of progress within themselves, and only at last
slowly and reluctantly forced by Roman example to adopt a more ambitious mode of sepulture than a mere mound of earth. No semi-civilized race ever settled in their lands, and the Carthaginians at Carthagena or Marseilles hardly penetrated into the interior, and were besides neither a building nor burying race, and had, consequently, very little influence on their modes of sepulture.
With Rome the case was different. She conquered and administered for centuries all those countries in which we find the earliest traces of rude-stone monuments, and she could hardly fail to leave some impress of her magnificence in lands which she had so long occupied. But when she withdrew her protecting care, France, Spain, and Britain relapsed into, and for centuries remained sunk in, a state of anarchy and barbarism as bad, if not worse than, that in which Rome had found them three or four centuries before. It was in vain to expect that the hapless natives could maintain either the arts or the institutions with which Rome had endowed them. But it is natural to suppose that they would remember the evidences of her greatness and her power, and would hardly go back for their sepulchres to the unchambered mole-hill barrows of their forefathers, but attempt something in stone, though only in such rude fashion as the state of the arts among them enabled them to execute.
Footnotes
[441] 'Memoria sobre el Tempio Druida de Antequera,' Malaga, 1847.
[442] 'Antegüedades prehistoricos de Andalucia,' Madrid, 1868.
[443] For a great part of the information regarding them, I am indebted to my friend Don J. F. Riaño, of Madrid.
[444] 'Bible in Spain,' ii. p. 35.
[445] Strabo, iii. p. 138.
[446] There is an interesting paper by Lord Talbot de Malahide on this subject in the 'Archæological Journal,' 108, 1870, illustrated by drawings of hitherto unknown dolmens, by Sir Vincent Eyre.
[447] 'Revue archéologique,' new series, viii. p. 530.
[448] "In the year B.C. 218, the second and fiercest struggle between the rival republics of Carthage and Rome was commenced by Hannibal taking Seguntum. The Peninsula thereafter became the theatre of a war afterwards carried by Hannibal into Italy, which was not concluded till 202 B.C., when Spain was added to the growing Italian Republic. But the nation of Spain did not willingly bow to the yoke. One of the bloodiest of all the Roman wars commenced in Spain in 153, and did not finally terminate for twenty years, during which cities were razed to the ground, multitudes massacred and made slaves, and the triumphant arms of Rome borne to the Atlantic shores. Here, therefore, is an epoch in the history of the Spanish peninsula which seems completely to coincide with the ancient traditions of the Scoti, and the knowledge we possess of the period of their arrival in Ireland."—Dan Wilson, 'Prehistoric Annals of Scotland,' p. 475.
[449] See a paper on the migration from Spain to Ireland, by Dr. Madden, 'Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy,' viii. pp. 372 et seq.
[450] Madden, l. s. c. p. 377.
[452] Petrie, "Essay on Tara," 'Trans. R. S. A.' xviii.
[453] "The two provinces which the race of Heremon possessed were the province of Gailian (i.e. Leinster) and the province of Olnemacht (i.e. Connaught)."—Petrie, 'Round Towers,' p. 100.
[454] Reeves, translation of Nennius, p. 55.
[455] 'True Principles of Beauty in Art,' by the Author, appendix, 526.
[456] These dimensions are taken from Mitjana's book, merely turned into their equivalents in English feet. They do not, however, agree in scale with the plan, but are probably approximately correct.
[457] There is a view of the mound and church in Parcerisa, 'Recuerdos y Bellezas de España, Asturias y Leon,' p. 30, but too small to enable us to be able to form any idea of its age from the lithograph.
[458] The woodcut is copied from one in Frank Leslie's 'Illustrated News;' which is itself, taken from a French illustrated journal. I do not doubt that the American copy is a correct reproduction of the French original; but there may be exaggerations in the first. I see no reason, however, for doubting that the great stones do exist in the hermitage, and that they are parts, at least, of a dolmen—-and this is all that concerns the argument. I wish, however, we had some more reliable information on the subject.
[460] Borrow, 'Bible in Spain,' ii. p. 35.
[461] 'Congrès international préhistorique,' Paris volume, p. 182.
[462] 'Congrès international préhistorique,' Paris volume, p. 197.
[463] 'Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria,' ii. p. 314.
[CHAPTER X.]
ALGERIA.
It would be difficult to find a more curious illustration of the fable of "Eyes and no Eyes" than in the history of the discovery of dolmens in northern Africa. Though hundreds of travellers had passed through the country since the time of Bruce and Shaw, and though the French had possessed Algiers since 1830, an author writing on the subject ten years ago would have been fully justified in making the assertion that there were no dolmens there. Yet now we know that they exist literally in thousands. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that ten thousand are known, and their existence recorded.
The first to announce the fact to the literary world in Europe was the late Mr. Rhind. He read a paper on what he called "Ortholithic remains in North Africa," to the Society of Antiquaries in 1859, which was afterwards published in volume xxxviii. of the 'Archæologia.' It attracted, however, very little attention, perhaps in consequence of its name, but more from its not being illustrated. It was not really till 1863, when the late Henry Christy visited Algeria, that anything really became known. At Constantine he formed the acquaintance of a M. Féraud, interpreter to the army of Algeria, who took him to a place called Bou Moursug, about twenty-five miles south of Constantine, where, during a short stay of three days, they saw and noted down upwards of one thousand dolmens.[464] M. Féraud afterwards published an account of these in the 'Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Constantine' for 1863, and the subject having attracted some attention in Europe, a second memoir appeared in the following year, which contained a good deal of additional information collected from different district officers. Since then various memoirs have been published in Algeria and France. One by the now celebrated General Faidherbe "speaks of three thousand tombs in the single necropolis at Roknia, and of another equally extensive within a few leagues of Constantine."[465] An excellent résumé of the whole subject will be found in the Norwich volume of the International Prehistoric Congress, by Mr. Flower. From all these we gather a fair general idea of the subject, but, unfortunately, none of the memoirs are written by persons combining extensive local experience with real archæological knowledge, except, perhaps, Mr. Flower. No plan of any one group has yet been given to the world, nor are any of the monuments illustrated with such details and measurements as would enable one to speak with certainty regarding them. This is especially the case with those represented in the 'Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie,' published by the French Government. There are in this work numerous representations of dolmens carefully and beautifully drawn, but very seldom with scales attached to them; and as no text has yet been published, they are of comparatively little value for the purposes of research. Had Mr. Christy lived a little longer, these deficiencies would doubtless have been supplied; but, unfortunately, his mantle has not fallen on any worthy successor, and we must wait till some one appears who combines leisure and means with the knowledge and enthusiasm which characterized that noble-minded man.
It need hardly be added that no detailed map exists showing the distribution of the dolmens in Algeria,[466] and as many of the names by which they are known to French archæologists are those of villages not marked on any maps obtainable in this country, it is very difficult to trace their precise position, and almost always impossible to draw with certainty any inferences from their distribution. In so far as we at present know, the principal dolmen region is situated along and on either side of a line drawn from Bona on the coast to Batna, sixty miles south of Constantine. But around Setif, and in localities nearly due south from Boujie, they are said to be in enormous numbers. The Commandant Payen reports the number of menhirs there as not less than ten thousand, averaging from 4 to 5 feet in height. One colossal monolith he describes as 26 feet in diameter at its base and 52 feet high.[467] This, however, is surpassed by a dolmen situated near Tiaret, described by the Commandant Bernard. According to his account the cap-stone is 65 feet long by 26 feet broad, and 9 feet 6 inches thick; and this enormous mass is placed on other rocks which rise between 30 and 40 feet above the surface.[468] If this is true, it is the most enormous dolmen known, and it is strange that it should have escaped observation so long. Even the most apathetic traveller might have been astonished at such a wonder. Whether less gigantic specimens of the class exist in that neighbourhood, we are not told, but they do in detached patches everywhere eastward throughout the province. Those described by Mr. Rhind are only twelve miles from Algiers, and others are said to exist in great numbers in the regency of Tripoli.[469] So far as is at present known, they are not found in Morocco, but are found everywhere between Mount Atlas and the Syrtes, and apparently not near the sites of any great cities, or known centres of population, but in valleys and remote corners, as if belonging to a nomadic or agricultural population.
164. Bazina. From Flower's Paper.
When we speak of the ten thousand or, it may be, twenty thousand stone sepulchral monuments that are now known to exist in northern Africa, it must not be understood that they are all dolmens or circles of the class of which we have hitherto been speaking. Two other classes certainly exist, in some places, apparently, in considerable numbers, though it is difficult to make out in what proportion, and how far their forms are local. One of these classes, called Bazina by the Arabs, is thus described by Mr. Flower:—"Their general character is that of three concentric enclosures of stones of greater or less dimensions, so arranged as to form a series of steps. Sometimes, indeed, there are only two outer circles, and occasionally only one. The diameter of the larger axis of that here represented is about 30 feet. In the centre are usually found three long and slender upright stones, forming three sides of a long rectangle, and the interior is paved with pebbles and broken stones.
165. Choucha. From a drawing by Mr. Flower.
"The Chouchas are found in the neighbourhood of the Bazinas, and are closely allied to them. They consist of courses of stones regularly built up like a wall, and not in steps like the Bazinas. Their diameter varies from 7 to as much as 40 feet; but the height of the highest above the soil does not exceed 5 to 10 feet. They are usually capped and covered by a large flag-stone, about 4 inches thick, under which is a regular trough or pit formed of stones from a foot and a half to 3 feet in thickness. The interior of these little towers is paved like the Bazinas; and indeed M. Payen considers that they are the equivalents in the mountains of the Bazinas in the plains."[470]
166. Dolmen on Steps. From 'Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie.'
In many instances the chouchas and bazinas are found combined in one monument, and sometimes a regular dolmen is mounted on steps similar to those of a bazina, as shown in the annexed woodcut, representing one existing halfway between Constantine and Bona. But, in fact, there is no conceivable combination which does not seem to be found in these African cemeteries; and did we know them all, they might throw considerable light on some questions that are now very perplexing.
The chouchas are found sometimes isolated, and occasionally 10 to 12 feet apart from one another in groups. In certain localities the summits and ridges of the hills are covered with them, while on the edges of steep cliffs they form fringes overhanging the ravines.
In both these classes of monuments the bodies are almost always found in a doubled-up posture, the knees being brought up to the chin, and the arms crossed over the breast,[471] like those in the Axevalla tomb described above ([page 312]).
167. Tumuli, with Intermediate Lines of Stones.
168. Group of Sepulchral Monuments, Algeria.
The most remarkable peculiarity of the tumuli and circles in Algeria is the mode in which they are connected together by double lines of stones—as Mr. Flowers expresses it, like beads on a string—in the manner shown in woodcut No. 167. What the object of this was has not been explained, nor will it be easy to guess, till we have more, and more detailed, drawings than we now possess. Mr. Féraud's plate xxviii.[472] shows such a line zigzagging across the plain between two heights, like a line of field fortifications, and with dolmens and tumuli sometimes behind or in front of the lines, and at others strung upon it. At first sight it looks like the representation of a battle-field, but, again, what are we to make of such a group as that represented in woodcut 168 on the previous page? It is the most extensive plan of any one of these groups which has yet been published, but it must be received with caution.[473] There is no scale attached to it. The triple circles with dolmens I take to be tumuli, like those of the Aveyron ([woodcuts Nos. 8] and [122]), but the whole must be regarded as a diagram, not as a plan, and as such very unsafe to reason upon. Still, as it certainly is not invented, it shows the curious manner in which these monuments are joined together, as well as the various forms which they take.
169. Plan and Elevation of African Tumulus. From Féraud.
One of these (?) is represented in plan and elevation in the annexed woodcut 169.[474] It is, as will be observed, almost identical— making allowance for bad drawing—with those of Aveyron just referred to, or with the Scandinavian examples as exemplified in the diagram ([woodcut No. 109]). As this class with the external dolmen on the summit seems to be very extensive in Algeria, indeed almost typical, an examination of their interior would at once solve the mystery of their arrangements, and tell us whether there was a second cist on the ground level, or where the body was deposited. Where the dolmen stands free, but on the flat ground, as is the case with that shown in this cut (No. 170), with two rows of stones surrounding it, the body was deposited in a cist formed between the two uprights that support the cap-stone, which are carried down some 5 or 6 feet into the ground for that purpose. My impression is that the same arrangement is met with in those which are raised, and that either the supports of the cap-stone are carried down to the ground for that purpose or that an independent cist, is formed directly under the visible one.
170. Dolmen with Two Circles of Stones. From Féraud.
The dolmen in this last instance is of the usual Kit's Cotty House style, consisting of three upright stones supporting the cap-stone. Sometimes the outer row of stones is replaced by a circular pavement of flat stones,[475] forming what may be supposed to be a procession path round the monument; but in fact hardly any two are exactly alike, and when we come to deal with thousands, it requires very complete knowledge of the whole before any classification can be attempted. Suffice it to say here that there is hardly any variety met with elsewhere of which a counterpart cannot be found in Algeria.
171. Dolmens on the Road from Bona to Constantine. From 'Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie.'
Of their general appearance as objects in the landscape, the annexed woodcut will convey a tolerable idea. They seem to affect the ridges of the hills, but they also stretch across the plain, and in fact are found everywhere and in every possible position. Except apparently on the sea-coast, nothing like the Viking graves, so far as is known, is found in Algeria; whether this indicates that they were a sea-faring people or not is not quite clear, but it is a distinction worth bearing in mind.
172. Four Cairns enclosed in Squares. (From 'Soc. arch. de Constantine,' 1864.)
One curious group is perhaps worth quoting as a means of comparison with the graves of Aschenrade ([woodcut No. 119]). It consists of four tumuli enclosed in four squares joined together like the squares of a chess-board. Single squares enclosing cairns are common enough in Scandinavia, but this conjoined arrangement is rare and remarkable, and its similarity to the Livonian example is so great that it can hardly be accidental. The Aschenrade graves, it will be recollected, contained coins of the Caliphs extending down to A.D. 999, and German coins down to 1040. There would, therefore, be no à priori improbability in these graves in Algeria being as late, if the similarity of two monuments so far apart can be considered as proving identity of age. Without unduly pressing the argument, the points of resemblance which exist everywhere between the Northern Europe and North African monuments appear to prove that the latter may be of any age down to the tenth or eleventh century, but any decision as to their real date must depend on the local circumstances attending each individual example.
The preceding woodcuts are perhaps sufficient to explain the more general and more typical forms of Algerian dolmens, but they are so numerous and so varied that ten times that number of illustrations would hardly suffice to exhibit all their peculiarities. Their study, however, is comparatively uninteresting, till we know more of their contents, and till something definite is accepted as to their age. When, however, we turn to examine that, we find the data from which our conclusions must be drawn both meagre and unsatisfactory. Such as they are, however, they certainly all tend one way. In the first place, the negative evidence is as complete here as elsewhere. The Greeks, the Romans, and the early Christians were all familiar with northern Africa, and there is not one whisper as to any such monuments having been seen by any of them. When we consider our own ignorance of their existence till some ten years ago, it may be said that such evidence does not go for much; but it is worth alluding to, as a hint in the opposite direction would be considered final, and as its absence, at all events, leaves the question open. On the other hand, all the traditions of the country as reported by M. Féraud, and others, and repeated by M. Bertrand and Mr. Flower, ascribe these monuments to the pagan inhabitants who occupied the country at the time of the Mahommedan conquest. Thus (page 127): "At the epoch the Mussulman invasion these countries were inhabited by a pagan population, who elevated these vast ranges of stone to arrest the invading host." Or, again, they even name the prince who opposed the conquerors. Thus (page 117): "Formerly at Machira lived a pagan prince called Abd en Nar—fire worshipper. He married Zana, queen of a city now in ruins bearing that name. When the Arabs conquered Africa, Abd en Nar abjured his crown, became a Mussulman, and from that time called himself Abd en Nour—worshipper of the light."[476]
173. Tombs near Djidjeli. From 'Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie.'
This, too, must be taken for what it is worth; but in a cemetery near Djidjeli, on the north coast, there is a curious tomb formed of a circle of stones like those of the pagan cists, with a head-stone which, if it is not the turban-stone that is usually found in Turkish tombs of modern date, is most singularly like it. That the cemetery belongs to the Mahommedans seems clear, but the circles of stones, though small, indicate a very imperfect conversion—just such as the tradition indicates.
These arguments, however, acquire something like consistency when we come to examine the contents of the tombs themselves. One of them (No. 4) is described by Mr. Féraud as surrounded by a circular enceinte, 12 metres, nearly 40 feet, in diameter. The chamber of the dolmen measured 7 feet by 3 feet 6 inches. At the feet of the skeleton were the bones and teeth of a horse, and an iron bridle-bit. In the same grave were found a ring of iron, another ring with various other objects in copper (bronze?), some fragments of pottery of a superior quality, and fragments of worked flint implements, and lastly a medal of the Empress Faustina.[477] All the three ages were consequently represented in the one tomb, and yet it certainly belongs to the second century. None of the others give such distinct evidence of their age, but M. Bertrand, who is a strong advocate for the prehistoric age of French dolmens, sums up his impressions of M. Féraud's discoveries in the following words: "Ceux de la province de Constantine ne pouvaient, à en juger par les objets qui y out été trouvés, être de beaucoup antérieur à l'ère chrétienne; quelques-uns même seraient postérieurs."[478]
In addition to what he found inside the tombs, M. Féraud discovered a Latin inscription in the cap-stone of a dolmen near Sidi Kacem. The letters are too much worn to enable the sense of the inscription to be made out, but quite sufficient remains to prove that it is in Latin, and, from the form of the letters, of a late type.[479]
Monsieur Leternoux found hewn stones and even columnar shafts of Roman workmanship among the materials out of which the bazinas at the foot of the Aures chain had been constructed, and he gives a drawing of a cippus of late Roman workmanship, bearing an inscription in Berber character, which he identifies with those on two upright stones of rude form, one of which forms parts of a circle near Bona.[480]
174. Circle near Bona.
In addition to these there are numerous instances among the plates which form the volume of the 'Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie' where the rude-stone monuments are so mixed up with those of late Roman and early Christian character that it seems impossible to doubt that they are contemporary. As no text, however, has yet been published to accompany these plates, it is most unsafe to rely on any individual example, which from some fault of the draughtsman or engraver may be misleading. The general impression, however, which these plates convey is decidedly in favour of a post-Roman date, and of their being comparatively modern. It requires, however, some one on the spot, whose attention is specially directed to the subject, to determine whether the rude-stone monuments are earlier than those which are hewn, or whether the contrary is not sometimes, perhaps always, the case. If M. Bertrand is right, and the Faustina tomb is of any value as an indication of age, certainly sometimes at least, the rude monuments are the more modern. Carthage fell B.C. 146, and the Jugurthan war ended B.C. 106, and it is impossible to conceive that a people like the Romans, would possess as they did the sovereignty of northern Africa, after that date, and not leave their mark on it, in the shape of buildings of various sorts. If we adopt the usual progressive theory, all must be anterior to B.C. 100; for on that hypothesis it would be considered most improbable that after long contact with Carthaginian civilization and under the direct influence of that of Rome anyone could prefer rude uncommunicative masses to structures composed of polished and engraved stones. It certainly was so, however, to a very great extent, and my impression is, for the reasons above given, that the bulk of these North African dolmens are subsequent to the Christian era, and that they extend well into the period of the Mahommedan domination, for it could not, for a long time at least, have been so complete as entirely to obliterate the feelings and usages so long indulged in by the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. Nothing, indeed, would surprise me less than if it were eventually shown that some of these rude-stone monuments extended down to the times of the Crusades. As, however, we are not yet in a position to prove this, it is only put forward here as a suggestion, in order that those who may hereafter have the task of opening these tombs may not reject any evidence of their being so late, as they probably would do if imbued with prehistoric prejudices.
It is to be feared that the question who the people were that set up these African dolmens must wait for an answer till we know more of the ethnography of northern Africa in ancient times than we do at present. The only people who, so far as we now see, seem to be able to claim them, are the Nasamones. From Herodotus we learn that this people buried their dead sitting, with their knees doubled up to their chins, and were so particular about this that, when a man was dying, they propped him up that he might die in that attitude (iv. 190). We also learn from him that they had such reverence for the tombs of their ancestors that it was their practice in their solemn form of oath to lay their hands on these tombs, and so invoke their sanction; and in their mode of divination they used to sleep in or on these sepulchres (iv. 172). All this would agree perfectly with what we find, but Herodotus unfortunately never visited the country nor saw these tombs, and consequently does not describe them, and we do not know whether they were mere mounds of earth, or cairns of stone, or dolmens such as are found in Africa. It is also unfortunate for their claim that, in his day, the Nasamones lived near the Syrtes and to the eastward of them (ii. 32), and it seems hardly possible that they could have increased and multiplied to such an extent in the four following centuries as to occupy northern Africa as far as Mount Atlas, without either the Greeks or the Romans having known it. They are mentioned again by Curtius (iv. 7), by Lucan (ix. v. 439), and by Silius Italicus (ii. v. 116 and xi. v. 180), but always as a plundering Libyan tribe, never as a great people occupying the northern country. Their claim, therefore, to be considered the authors of the thousands of dolmens which are even now found in the province of Algeria, seems for the present wholly inadmissible.
Still less can we admit M. Bertrand's theory alluded to above, that the dolmen-builders migrated from the Baltic to Britain, and thence through France and Spain to Africa. Such a migration, requiring long land journeys and sea voyages, if it took place at all, is much more likely to have been accomplished when commercial intercourse was established, and the North Sea and the Mediterranean were covered with sailing vessels of all sorts; but then it is unlikely that a rude people, as the dolmen-builders are assumed to be, could have availed themselves of these trade routes.
Still no one can look at such monuments as this of Aveyron (woodcuts [ Nos. 8] and [122]) and compare them with those of Algeria, of which [woodcut No. 169] is a type, without feeling that there was a connection, and an intimate one, at the dolmen period, between the people on the northern with those on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, which can only be accounted for in one of three ways.
Either it was that history was only repeating itself when Marshal Bougeaud landed in Algeria in 1830, and proceeded to conquer and colonise Algeria for the French. Or we must assume, as has often been done, that some people wandering from the east to colonise western Europe left these traces of their passage in Africa on their way westward. The third hypothesis is that already insisted upon at the end of the Scandinavian chapter, which regards these rude-stone monuments as merely the result of a fashion which sprung up at a particular period, and was adopted by all those people who, like the Nasamones, reverenced their dead and practised ancestral worship rather than that of an external divinity.
Of all these three hypotheses, the second seems the least tenable, though it is the one most generally adopted. The Pyramids were built, on the most moderate computation, at least 3000 B.C.[481] Egypt was then a highly civilized and populous country, and the art of cutting and polishing stones of the hardest nature had reached a degree of perfection in that country in those days which has never since been surpassed, and must have been practised for thousands of years before that time in order to reach the stage of perfection in which we there find it. Is it possible to conceive any savage Eastern race rushing across the Nile on its way westward, and carrying their rude arts with them, and continuing to practise them for four or five thousand years afterwards without change? Either it seems more probable to assume that the Egyptians would have turned them back, or if they had sojourned in their land like the Israelites, and then departed because they found the bondage intolerable, it is almost certain that they would have carried with them some of the arts and civilization of the people among whom they had dwelt. If such a migration did take place, it must have been in prehistoric times so remote that its occurrence can have but little bearing on the argument as to who built these Algerian monuments. But did they come by sea? Did the dolmen-building races embark from the ports of Palestine or those of Asia Minor? Were they in fact the far-famed Phœnicians, to whom antiquaries have been so fond of ascribing these structures. The first answer to this is that there are no dolmens in Phœnicia, and that they have not yet been found near Carthage, nor Utica, nor in Sicily, nor indeed anywhere where the Phœnicians had colonies. They are not even found at Marseilles, where they settled, though on the western bank of the Rhone, where they had no establishments, they are found in numbers. They may have traded with Cornwall, and discovered lands even farther north, but to assume that so small a people could have erected all the megalithic remains found in Scandinavia and the continent of France, and other countries where they never settled, perhaps never visited, is to ascribe great effects to causes so insignificant as to be wholly incommensurable. So wholly inadequate does the Phœnician power seem to have been to produce such effects, that the proposition would probably never have been brought forward had the extent of the dolmen region been known at the time it was suggested. Even putting the element of time aside, it is now clearly untenable, and if there is any truth in the date above assigned to this class of monuments, it is mere idleness to argue it.
The idea of a migration from France to Algeria is by no means so illogical. The French dolmens, so far as is now known, seem certainly older than the African—a fact which, if capable of proof, is fatal to the last suggestion—and if we assume that this class of monument was invented in western Europe, it only requires that the element of time should be suitable to establish this hypothesis. When the Celts of central Gaul, six centuries before the Christian era, began to extend their limits and to press upon those of the Aquitanians, did the latter flee from their oppressors to seek refuge in Africa, as at a latter period the dolmen-builders of Spain sought repose in the green island of the west? There certainly appears to be no great improbability that they may have done so to such an extent as to cause the adoption of this form of architecture after it had become prevalent elsewhere; and as the encroaching Celts, down to the prosecution of the middle ages, may have driven continual streams of colonists in the same direction, this would account for all the phenomena we find, provided we may ascribe that modern date to the Algerian examples which to me appears undoubted.
It is hardly probable, however, that the Aquitanians would have sought refuge in Africa unless some kindred tribe existed there to afford them shelter and a welcome. If such a race did exist, that would go far to get rid of most of the difficulties of the problem. We are, however, far too ignorant of North African ethnography to be able to say whether any such people were there, or if so, who their representatives may now be, and till our ignorance is dispelled, it is idle to speculate on mere probabilities.
We know something of the migrations of the peoples settled around the shores of the Mediterranean for at least ten centuries before the birth of Christ, but neither in Greek or Roman or Carthaginian history, nor in any of the traditions of their literature, do we find a hint of any migration of a rude people, either across Egypt or by sea from Asia, and, what is perhaps more to the point, we have no trace of it in any of the intermediate islands. The Nurhags of Sardinia, the Talayots of the Balearic Islands, are monuments of quite a different class from anything found in France or Algeria. So too are the tombs of Malta, and, as just mentioned, there are no such remains in Sicily.
We seem thus forced back on the third hypothesis, which contemplates the rise of a dolmen style of architecture at some not very remote period of the world's history, and its general diffusion among all those kindred races of mankind with whom respect for the spirits of deceased ancestors was a leading characteristic.