How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

This impressive memorial stands on Salisbury Plain, eight miles north of the cathedral city of Salisbury, in the neighbourhood of which are many barrows. Was it then the temple of a burying place of mighty chieftains or was it erected in memory of some great victory in honour of the dead heroes and the nation’s god? According to Geoffrey of Monmouth (A.D. 1154) who is supposed to have compiled much of his history from Celtic legends, Stonehenge is a Celtic Memorial, erected to the glory of the Celtic Zeus.

Rhys, in his “Celtic Heathendom,” accepts the probability of this account and adds: “What sort of temple could have been more appropriate for the primary god of light and of the luminous heavens than a spacious open-air enclosure of a circular form like Stonehenge? Nor do I see any objection to the old idea that Stonehenge was the original of the famous temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, the stories about which were based in the first instance most likely on the journal of Pytheas’ travels.” Pytheas was a Greek navigator and astronomer of the second half of the fourth century B.C., who was a native of the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles) and visited the coasts of Spain, Gaul, and Britain.

Situated some twenty miles to the north of Stonehenge is the Abury or Avebury monument. Its remains comprise two circles, formed of menhirs, which are enclosed within a large outer circle of monoliths, about 1250 feet in diameter. This was further surrounded by a moat and rampart, which suggest that the structure may have served at once the purposes of a place of assembly and a stronghold.

At Carnac, in the old territory of Brittany, in France, are the remains of about 1000 menhirs, some of which reach a height of 16 feet, disposed in parallel straight rows, forming avenues nearly two miles long. They are unworked blocks of granite, set in the ground at their smaller ends. The neighbourhood also abounds with tumuli, dolmens, and later monuments that belong to the Polished Stone Age.

Furthermore, remains of such monuments as we have been describing are found in Scandinavia, Ireland, North Germany (in Hannover and the Baltic Provinces); also in India and Asia Minor, in Egypt, on the northwest of Africa and in the region about the Atlas Mountains. This fact, assuming that the monuments are of Celtic origin, testifies to the wide-spread migrations of this important branch of the Indo-European family which in prehistoric times swept westward in successive waves. It is known that this race also overflowed into Northern Italy and Spain. That none of their monuments of the Rough Stone and Polished Stone ages exist in these countries seems to point to the migration thither having been made at a later period.

From the time that the Celtic race finds its way into recorded history it has been recognised as pre-eminently characterised by artistic genius. The rude menhirs, under the combined influences of Christianity and art were in time replaced by Stone Crosses that in form closely approximate the thickset simplicity of the monolith, but are embellished with carved ornament. And the latter in its detail is evidently akin to the motives of decoration found upon the weapons and earthenware of the Bronze Age, combined with the interlace of lines, suggested by the example of weaving, and the use of motives derived from plant forms. These same principles of decoration were applied to the metal-work in which the Celt excelled and later to the decorated manuscripts in which he reached so high a degree of artistry. The Celtic artists in time also introduced human and animal figures into their designs, but always treated them solely as motives of decoration and never with the purpose of representing them naturally.

The prevalence of these decorative motives in ancient Asiatic and European ornament may have been due to the extended migrations of the Celts. But not necessarily; for they are equally to be found in the primitive ornament of the South Sea Islanders, North American Indians, and the inhabitants of Peru, Mexico, and Central America. Primitive man, in fact, shows a tendency to similarity of motives and methods at corresponding stages of his evolution.

In the last three countries have been discovered some of the most remarkable remains of the Polished Stone Age and the Bronze Age. For it was to this stage—after how many centuries of development is only a matter of conjecture—that the mighty nations of the Incas, Aztecs, and others had attained, when the Spanish invaders in the sixteenth century overcame them and wiped out their civilisations.

Hitherto the most famous example has been the ruins of Cuzco, the imperial city of the Incas in Peru, which was captured by Pizarro; but the exploration of Professor Hiram Bingham has recently unearthed, also in Peru, Machu Picchu, a city of refuge, perched almost inaccessibly on the heights of the Andes. It is the belief of the explorer that this is the traditional city of Tampu Tocco, to which a highly civilised tribe retreated, when they were hard pressed by barbarian enemies and from which, legend says, they descended later to conquer Peru and found the city of Cuzco, under the leadership of “three brothers who went out from three windows.” Now Tampa means a place of temporary abode and Tocco means windows; and in the principal plaza of this newly discovered city has been found a temple with three windows.

Thus it is possible that it was actually a deserted city at the time of the Spanish invasion, held in reverence as the cradle city of the Incas. Anyhow, it escaped the knowledge and the ravages of the Spaniards and retains to-day its primitive state, unmixed with the additions of any subsequent civilisation.