Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders

by T. Eric Peet

THE BUILDERS OF THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS,
THEIR HABITS, CUSTOMS, RELIGION, ETC.

With regard to the date of the megalithic monuments it only remains to sum up the evidence given in the previous chapters. It may be said that in Europe they never belong to the beginning of the neolithic age, but either to its end or to the period which followed it, i.e. to the age of copper and bronze. The majority date from the dawn of this latter period, though some of the chambered cairns of Ireland seem to belong to the iron age. Outside Europe there are certainly megalithic tombs which are late. In North Africa, for example, we know that the erection of dolmens continued into the early iron age; many of the Indian tombs are clearly late, and the corridor-tombs of Japan can be safely attributed in part at least to the Christian era.

With what purpose were the megalithic monuments erected? The most simple example, the menhir or upright stone, may have served many purposes. In discussing the temples of Malta we saw reason for believing that the megalithic peoples were in the habit of worshipping great stones as such. Other stones, not actually worshipped, may mark the scene of some great event. Jacob commemorated a dream by setting up the stone which had served him as a pillow, and Samuel, victorious over the Philistines, set up twelve stones, and called the place "Stones of Deliverance." Others again perhaps stood in a spot devoted to some particular national or religious ceremony. Thus the Angami of the present day in Assam set up stones in commemoration of their village feasts. It seems clear from the excavations that the menhirs do not mark the place of burials, though they may in some cases have been raised in honour of the dead.

The question of the purpose of stone circles has already been dealt with in connection with those of Great Britain. Alignements are more difficult to explain, for, from their form, they cannot have served as temples in the sense of meeting-places for worship. Yet they must surely have been connected with religion in some way or other. Possibly they were not constructed once and for all, but the stones were added gradually, each marking some event or the performance of some periodic ceremony, or even the death of some great chief. The so-called "Canaanite High Place" recently found at Gezer consists of a line of ten menhirs running north and south, together with a large block in which was a socket for an idol or other object of worship. Several bodies of children found near it have suggested that the monument was a place of sacrifice.

Other megalithic structures can be definitely classed as dwellings or tombs, as we have seen in our separate treatment of them. It is not improbable that, if we are right in considering the dolmen as the most primitive form of megalithic monument, megalithic architecture was funerary in origin. Yet, as we find it in its great diffusion, it provides homes for the living as well as for the dead. In their original home, perhaps in Africa, the megalithic race may have lived in huts of wattle or skins, but after their migration the need of protection in a hostile country and the exigencies of a colder climate may have forced them to employ stone for their dwellings. In any case, in megalithic architecture as seen in Europe the tomb and the dwelling types are considerably intermixed, and may have reacted on one another. This, however, does not justify the assertion so often made that the megalithic tomb was a conscious imitation of the hut. It is true that some peoples make the home of their dead to resemble that of the living. Among certain tribes of Greenland it is usual to leave the dead man seated in his hut by way of burial. But such a conception does not exist among all peoples, and to say that the dolmen is an imitation in stone of a hut is the purest conjecture. Still more improbable is Montelius's idea that the corridor-tomb imitates a dwelling. It is true that the Eskimos have a type of hut which is entered by a low passage often 30 feet in length, but for one who believes as Montelius does that the corridor-tomb is southern or eastern in origin such a derivation is impossible, for this type of house is essentially northern, its aim being to exclude the icy winds. In the south it would be intolerably close, and its low passage besides serving no purpose would be inconvenient.

There is really no reason to derive either the dolmen or the corridor-tomb from dwellings at all. Granted the use of huge stones, both are purely natural forms, and the presence of the corridor in the latter is dictated by necessity. The problem was how to cover a large tomb-chamber with a mound and to leave it still accessible for later interments, and the obvious solution was to add a covered passage leading out to the edge of the mound.

A remarkable feature of the megalithic tombs is the occurrence in many of them of a small round or rectangular hole in one of the walls, usually an end-wall, more rarely a partition-wall between two chambers. Occasionally the hole was formed by placing side by side two upright blocks each with a semicircular notch in its edge. Tombs with a holed block or blocks occur in England, instances being the barrows of Avening and Rodmarton, King Orry's Grave in the Isle of Man, Lanyon Quoit in Cornwall, and Plas Newydd in Wales, which has two holes. There are also examples in Ireland, France, Belgium, Central Germany, and Scandinavia, where they are common. Passing further afield we find holes in the Giants' Graves of Sardinia, and in Syria, the Caucasus, and India, where half the dolmens in the Deccan are of this type. The holes are usually too small to allow of the passage of a human body. It has been suggested that they served as an outlet for the soul of the deceased, or in some cases as a means of passing in food to him.

Attention has been frequently drawn to curious round pits so often found on the stones of dolmens and usually known as cup-markings. They vary in diameter from about two to four inches, and are occasionally connected by a series of narrow grooves in the stone. They vary considerably in number, sometimes there are few, sometimes many. They occur nearly always on the upper surface of the cover-slab, very rarely on its under surface or on the side-walls.

Some have attempted to show that these pits are purely natural and not artificial. It has been suggested, for instance, that they are simply the casts of a species of fossil sea-urchin which has weathered out from the surface of the stone. This explanation may be true in some cases, but it will not serve in all, for the 'cups' are sometimes arranged in such regular order that their artificial origin is palpable. These markings are found on dolmens and corridor-tombs in Palestine, North Africa, Corsica, France, Germany, Scandinavia, and Great Britain. In Wales there is a fine example of a dolmen with pits at Clynnog Fawr, while in Cornwall we may instance the monument called "The Three Brothers of Grugith" near Meneage.

There is no clue to the purpose of these pits. Some have thought that they were made to hold the blood of sacrifice which was poured over the slab, and from some such idea may have arisen some of the legends of human victims which still cling round the dolmens. Others have opposed to this the fact that the pits sometimes occur on vertical walls or under the cover-slabs, and have preferred to see in them some totemistic signification or some expression of star-worship. It is possible that we have to deal with a complex and not a simple phenomenon, and that the pits were not all made to serve a single purpose. Those which cover some of the finest stones at Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim are certainly meant to be ornamental, though there may be in them a reminiscence of some religious tradition. In any case, it is worth while to remember that cup-markings also occur on natural rocks and boulders in Switzerland, Scandinavia, Great Britain (where there is a good example near Ilkley in Yorkshire), near Como in Italy, and in Germany, Russia, and India.