More than a hundred megalithic monuments of France have been found to contain bronze, and this number would be more than doubled if we counted the finds in tombs not connected with megaliths, such as those of Aveyron and Lozère, where a few bits of bronze were found mixed with numerous stone objects. One fifth of the weapons, especially the swords and daggers found beneath the dolmens, are of bronze. At Kerhué in Finistère, a number of bronze swords were arranged in a circle round a little heap of cinders and black earth, relics, probably, of the cremation of the dead, in honor of whom the tumulus had been erected.
Beneath the dolmens of Roknia (Algeria) were found thirteen bronze ornaments, and two in silver gilt of very superior workmanship, and under those of the Caucasus were picked up blue-glass beads, arrow-heads, and bronze rings; but M. Chantre, who is an authority in the matter, thinks these objects date from interments subsequent to the erection of the dolmens.
Iron was much more rarely used than bronze in the greater part of Europe. It was not even known in Scandinavia before the Christian era. In Germany, Pannonia, and Noricum its use dates from the sixth or seventh century B.C. Beneath the mounds of Central America we find but a few fragments of meteoric iron, the rarity of which made them extremely valuable; on the other hand iron was known to the Hellenes as long ago as the fourteenth century B.C., and it had been employed in Egypt for many centuries prior to that time. The most ancient sepulchres of Malabar contain iron tridents, and Genesius dates their use from before the deluge. It is therefore surprising to find that some races remained for an illimitable time ignorant of the way to procure a metal of such great utility.
Iron was not used in Brittany until towards the close of the period during which megalithic monuments were erected. Stone, bronze, and iron were found together in the Nignol tomb at Carnac, which dates from the time when cremation was already practised. We find the same association of different materials in the Rocher dolmen.
In the British Isles, especially in Scotland and in Ireland, bronze and iron objects are more numerous than in France. At Aspatria, near St. Bees in Cumberland, a cist was discovered containing the skeleton of a man measuring seven feet from the crown of the head to the feet. Near the giant lay numerous valuable objects, including an iron sword inlaid with silver, a gold buckle, the fragments of a shield and of a battle-axe, and the iron bit of a snaffle bridle. The great cairn of Dowth, in Ireland, contained iron knives and rings mixed with bone needles, copper pins, and glass and amber beads, all showing rapid progress in the industrial arts. The remarkable cairns near Lough Crew (Ireland), which were untouched and indeed unknown to archæologists until 1863, were found to contain, amongst many other interesting objects, numerous human bones, fragments of pottery, shells of marine mollusca, 4,884 bone implements, and seven pieces of iron very much oxidized. The tumuli of the Grand Duchy of Posen and those of Prussia cover kistvaens containing funeral vases, weapons, and silver and gold ornaments.
We are altogether in the dark as to the date or the use of the various objects found in these tombs, and the coins bearing dates which are often associated with them, do not seem to help us much, belonging as they doubtless do to a much later period than the erection of the monuments. We may, however, mention that near the surface of the mound of Mané-er-H’roek eleven medals of Roman emperors from Tiberius to Trajan were found; whilst under the tumulus of Rosmeur, on the Penmarch Point (Finistère), were various Roman coins; at Bergous in Locmariaker, at Mané-Rutual, and at other places in Brittany, coins of the earliest Christian emperors; at Uley, in Gloucestershire, some coins of the time of the sons of Constantine; at Mining-Low (Derbyshire), beneath a kistvaen surrounded by a cromlech, some medals of Valentinianus; at Galley-Low, with a magnificent gold necklace set with garnets, a coin of Honorius, but as these last were found at the outer edge of the mound there are doubts as to the time of their deposition; these doubts were, however, to some extent set at rest by the finding of a coin of Geta beneath the monument itself. We might multiply instances of similar finds, but I will only mention one more, the discovery under some Scotch barrows of silver necklaces and coins of the Caliphs of Bagdad, bearing date from 88 887 to 945 A.D.
This last discovery confirms what I have already said, that the introduction of the coins was of much later date than the erection of the monument. Another fact adds weight to this decision. The most ancient Gallic coins date from about three centuries before our era, and the earliest British from a century earlier than that. How is it that excavations have brought to light no specimens of either? The Romans successively occupied all the countries of which we have just spoken; the tombs themselves bear witness to their conquests; and it is to the violation of the tombs, the displacements, and secondary interments that we owe the introduction of coins, pottery, and bricks that undoubtedly date from the Roman period, and were probably placed beside their dead by the Roman legionaries.
Whatever may be the difficulties, however, we are already able to come to certain definite conclusions. We cannot connect the megalithic monuments with any one of the ancient religions known. They were certainly not set up in honor of Odin or of Osiris, of Astarte or of Athene, the Phoenician or the Egyptian, the Greek or the Roman gods; their erection seems to have had but one end in view, to do honor to the dead. Beneath none of them do we find the remains either of the cave-bear or of the reindeer, still less of the mammoth or of the rhinoceros; whereas we do constantly meet with the bones of animals characteristic of Neolithic times. It is therefore to that period that we must attribute the more ancient of these mysterious monuments. And the setting up of such memorials continued throughout the intermediate time between the Stone and Bronze ages, and through the Bronze and Iron periods. It was, indeed, still practised now and then in the earlier centuries of the Christian era. More than that, such monuments are even now occasionally erected. The Khassias of India make cromlechs of large, flat unhewn stones, some six to seven feet high, and the Angami-Nagas of the extreme north of British India set up extensive alignments of menhirs, similar to those of France. Inscriptions in the old Irish cipher writing, known as ogham, prove that megalithic monuments were erected in Ireland after the time of St. Patrick; and, as we have already remarked, some of the Breton menhirs are surrounded by crosses. In India, too, we find the symbol of the Christian faith, and in 1867, were discovered on the shores of the Godavery between Hyderabad and Nagpore, a few dolmens made of four upright stones surmounted by one or two slabs of sandstone, and encircling a cross which is said to date from the same age as the dolmens themselves. We must add, however, that the most competent archæologists are of opinion that this form of the cross was not introduced into India until about the sixth or seventh century of our era. Probably the erection of megalithic monuments was not discontinued in England or in France until towards the eighth or ninth century after Christ; and the menhirs set up later in Scotland and in Scandinavia prove how fondly the people of those countries clung to ancient traditions. These rude stone monuments were handed down from one race to another, from invaders to invaded, from conquered to conquerors.
We must not, however, omit to mention one serious objection. Roman historians, exact as is their description of Gaul, Britannia, and Germania, are silent as to stone monuments. Tacitus does not refer to Stonehenge or to Avebury. Cæsar was present at the naval battle between his own fleet and that of the Veneti, in the Gulf of Morbihan, and if the megalithic monuments of Carnac were then there, would they not have arrested the attention of the great captain? This silence is the more inexplicable as one of the earliest geographers mentions the stone of Iapygia; Ptolemy speaks of a similar stone on the shores of the ocean; Strabo, of a group of dolmens near Cape Cuneus; Quintus Curtius, of an important alignment in Bactriana; Pliny, who mentions a leaning pillar in Asia Minor, says nothing of the megalithic monuments of Gaul, which he crossed several times. Moreover, Ausonius, Sidonius, Appollinaris, and Fortunatus, who are so eager to glorify their own land, maintain a similar silence with regard to these structures. Sulpicius, Severus, and Gregory of Tours, old chroniclers of French history, also pass them over without a word. More than that, Madame de Sévigné, who was stopping at Auray in 1689, and visited its environs, writes to her daughter of all she has seen and done, without alluding to the alignments of Carnac, or of Erdeven, which were, of course, much more complete in her day than in ours. In fact, they are mentioned for the first time by Sauvagère, in his “Recueil des Antiquites de la Gaule,” in which he attributes them to the Romans. We may therefore, perhaps, conclude that these decayed and clumsy-looking monuments were despised for generations, no one realizing their importance or caring to penetrate their secrets.
If need were, we have yet other proofs of their extreme antiquity. In excavating an alignment in the district occupied by the Kermario group, a Roman encampment was discovered. The enceinte is represented by a long wall about six feet thick, and propped up against this wall were found a number of flat stones blackened with smoke, on which the legionaries doubtless cooked their food. In some instances these hearths were made on an overturned menhir, and other menhirs, which had belonged to the alignment, were fitted into the walls. A Roman road passes near Avebury, and, contrary to their general custom, the haughty conquerors had turned aside to avoid the tumulus. These are decisive proofs that in France and England at least the megalithic monuments were erected before the advent of the Romans.