CASTILLO MOS, NOW THE SUMMER RESIDENCE OF THE MARQUIS DE LA VEGA ARMIJO, PONTEVEDRA
whose huge moss-covered trunks must be at least two hundred years old. Here and there the ground was thickly carpeted with camellia blossoms. In hot weather the family dines out of doors in the shade, at a table consisting of one solid piece of wood, brought from America, and which must have been sawn from the trunk of a tree at least twelve feet in diameter.
It was two o’clock when we returned to our conveyance, and as we had brought our lunch with us, we ate it in the carriage, and were thus able to avoid a break in our homeward journey. At 4 p.m. we were once more in our comfortable hotel in Pontevedra, after a delightful excursion, which we would not have missed for a great deal.
My next outing was on foot, and of quite a different kind, my object being to look with my own eyes upon some of the wonderful prehistoric rock-drawings that have quite recently been discovered in the vicinity, and to compare them with the hemispheric or “cup and ball” drawings that have been discovered in various parts of Scotland and Ireland. These cup marks were for a long time considered to be merely a primitive form of ornamentation, without any further significance, but, according to the latest theory, they are a very ancient form of writing, while the accompanying circles are thought by some to represent the religious belief of the writers. Mr. Rivett Carnac tells us that it has been suggested that these writings are ideographic and belong to a period when the materials for record were limited to stone—long before the discovery of an alphabetical system,[260] and before the discovery of metal. In the Ethnographical Museum at Berlin I have seen some fine specimens of Peruvian writing by means of knotted cord—a method that was used in China in the very earliest days of that country’s history. “This system,” says Mr. Rivett Carnac, “was ideographic, just as the knot in the pocket-handkerchief is ideographic.” It seems not at all unlikely that our distant ancestors may have understood the meaning of these cup marks, just as the Chinese and Peruvians understood the knots upon their string.
Cup marks are to be found in many varieties in almost every part of the world, the most frequent being concentric circles with a central cup or dot, and this is the kind that I found upon some flat granite boulders on a rocky slope near a pine wood about half an hour’s walk from Pontevedra.
These cup marks had been discovered by Señor E. Campo only a few months previous to my arrival, and as yet their existence is hardly known outside Pontevedra. Señor E. Campo, who is a member of the Pontevedra Archæological Society, lost no time in making drawings of this prehistoric writing for his Society; it was this gentleman who kindly conducted me to one of the spots where the writing is to be seen, and it was he who provided me with the drawings that I now place before my readers. Those who have studied the subject will notice at once the remarkable similarity that exists between this writing and the examples found on rocks in India, in various parts of Great Britain, in the Isle of Man, and in Denmark. It seems incredible that such a similarity of design could possibly have arisen without there having been at some time or other a close connection between the peoples amongst whom they originated. Professor Nilsson has attributed the circles and symbols found on rocks in Scandinavia to a Phœnician origin—but how comes it, in that case, that there are no such carvings amongst genuine Phœnician remains?
Humboldt considered the signs which he found upon rocks in South America to be, not symbols, but merely “the fruits of the idleness of hunting nations.”[261]