PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE is therefore a subject for the archæologist rather than the historian of art, and needs here only the briefest mention. If we may judge of the condition of the primitive races of antiquity by that of the savage and barbarous peoples of our own time, they required only the simplest kinds of buildings, though the purposes which they served were the same as those of later times in civilized communities. A hut or house for shelter, a shrine of some sort for worship, a stockade for defence, a cairn or mound over the grave of the chief or hero, were provided out of the simplest materials, and these often of a perishable nature. Poles supplied the framework; wattles, skins, or mud the walls; thatching or stamped earth the roof. Only the simplest tools were needed for such elementary construction. There was ingenuity and patient labor in work of this kind; but there was no planning, no fitting together into a complex organism of varied materials shaped with art and handled with science. Above all, there was no progression toward higher ideals of fitness and beauty. Rudimentary art displayed itself mainly in objects of worship, or in carvings on canoes and weapons, executed as talismans to ward off misfortune or to charm the unseen powers; but even this art was sterile and never grew of itself into civilized and progressive art.
Yet there must have been at some point in the remote past an exception to this rule. Somewhere and somehow the people of Egypt must have developed from crude beginnings the architectural knowledge and resource which meet us in the oldest monuments, though every vestige of that early age has apparently perished. But although nothing has come down to us of the actual work of the builders who wrought in the primitive ages of mankind, there exist throughout Europe and Asia almost countless monuments of a primitive character belonging to relatively recent times, but executed before the advent of historic civilization to the regions where they are found. A general resemblance among them suggests a common heritage of traditions from the hoariest antiquity, and throws light on the probable character of the transition from barbaric to civilized architecture.
PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS. These monuments vary widely as well as in excellence; some of them belong to Roman or even Christian times; others to a much remoter period. They are divided into two principal classes, the megalithic structures and lake dwellings. The latter class may be dismissed with the briefest mention. It comprises a considerable number of very primitive houses or huts built on wooden piles in the lakes of Switzerland and several other countries in both hemispheres, and forming in some cases villages of no mean size. Such villages, built over the water for protection from attack, are mentioned by the writers of antiquity and portrayed on Assyrian reliefs. The objects found in them reveal an incipient but almost stationary civilization, extending back from three thousand to five thousand years or more, and lasting through the ages of stone and bronze down into historic times.
The megalithic remains of Europe and Asia are far more important. They are very widely distributed, and consist in most cases of great blocks of stone arranged in rows, circles, or avenues, sometimes with huge lintels resting upon them. Upright stones without lintels are called menhirs; standing in pairs with lintels they are known as dolmens; the circles are called cromlechs. Some of the stones are of gigantic size, some roughly hewn into shape; others left as when quarried. Their age and purpose have been much discussed without reaching positive results. It is probable that, like the lake dwellings, they cover a long range of time, reaching from the dawn of recorded history some thousands of years back into the unknown past, and that they were erected by races which have disappeared before the migrations to which Europe owes her present populations. That most of them were in some way connected with the worship of these prehistoric peoples is generally admitted; but whether as temples, tombs, or memorials of historical or mythical events cannot, in all cases, be positively asserted. They were not dwellings or palaces, and very few were even enclosed buildings. They are imposing by the size and number of their immense stones, but show no sign of advanced art, or of conscious striving after beauty of design. The small number of “carved stones,” bearing singular ornamental patterns, symbolic or mystical rather than decorative in intention, really tends to prove this statement rather than to controvert it. It is not impossible that the dolmens were generally intended to be covered by mounds of earth. This would group them with the tumuli referred to below, and point to a sepulchral purpose in their erection. Some antiquaries, Fergusson among them, contend that many of the European circles and avenues were intended as battle-monuments or trophies.
There are also walls of great antiquity in various parts of Europe, intended for fortification; the most important of these in Greece and Italy will be referred to in later chapters. They belong to a more advanced art, some of them even deserving to be classed among works of archaic architecture.
The tumuli, or burial mounds, which form so large a part of the prehistoric remains of both continents, are interesting to the architect only as revealing the prototypes of the pyramids of Egypt and the subterranean tombs of Mycenæ and other early Greek centres. The piling of huge cairns or commemorative heaps of stone is known from the Scriptures and other ancient writings to have been a custom of the greatest antiquity. The pyramids and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus are the most imposing and elaborate outgrowths of this practice, of which the prehistoric tumuli are the simpler manifestations.
These crude and elementary products of undeveloped civilizations have no place, however, in any list of genuine architectural works. They belong rather to the domain of archæology and ethnology, and have received this brief mention only as revealing the beginnings of the builder’s art, and the wide gap that separates them from that genuine architecture which forms the subject of the following chapters.
MONUMENTS: The most celebrated in England are at Avebury, an avenue, large and small circles, barrows, and the great tumuli of Bartlow and Silbury “Hills;” at Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, great megalithic circles and many barrows; “Sarsen stones” at Ashdown; tumuli, dolmens, chambers, and circles in Derbyshire. In Ireland, many cairns and circles. In Scotland, circles and barrows in the Orkney Islands. In France, Carnac and Lokmariaker in Brittany are especially rich in dolmens, circles, and avenues. In Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy, in India and in Africa, are many similar remains.