CHAPTER X
WHO WERE THE BUILDERS,
AND WHENCE DID THEY COME?
Modern discussion of the origin of the megalithic monuments may be said to date from Bertrand's publication of the French examples in 1864. In this work Bertrand upheld the thesis that "the dolmens and allées couvertes are sepulchres; and their origin seems up to the present to be northern." In 1865 appeared Bonstetten's famous Essai sur les dolmens, in which he maintained that the dolmens were constructed by one and the same people spreading over Europe from north to south. At this time the dolmens of North Africa were still unstudied. In 1867 followed an important paper by Bertrand. In 1872 two events of importance to the subject occurred, the publication of Fergusson's Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries, and the discussion raised at the Brussels Congress by General Faidherbe's paper on the dolmens of Algeria. Faidherbe maintained the thesis that dolmens, whether in Europe or Africa, were the work of a single people moving southward from the Baltic Sea.
The question thus raised has been keenly debated since. At the Stockholm Congress in 1874 de Mortillet advanced the theory that megalithic monuments in different districts were due to different peoples, and that what spread was the custom of building such structures and not the builders themselves. This theory has been accepted by most archæologists, including Montelius, Salomon Reinach, Sophus Müller, Hoernes, and Déchelette. But while the rest believe the influences which produced the megalithic monuments to have spread from east to west, i.e. from Asia to Europe, Salomon Reinach holds the contrary view, which he has supported in a remarkable paper called Le Mirage Oriental, published in 1893.
The questions we have to discuss are, therefore, as follows: Are all the megalithic monuments due to a single race or to several? If to a single race, whence did that race come and in what direction did it move? If to several, did the idea of building megalithic structures arise among the several races independently, or did it spread from one to another?
We shall consider first the theory that the idea of megalithic building was evolved among several races independently, i.e. that it was a phase of culture through which they separately passed.
On the whole, this idea has not found favour among archæologists. The use of stone for building might have arisen in many places independently. But megalithic architecture is something much more than this. It is the use of great stones in certain definite and particular ways. We have already examined what may be called the style of megalithic architecture and found that the same features are noticeable in all countries where these buildings occur. In each case we see a type of construction based on the use of large orthostatic slabs, sometimes surmounted by courses of horizontal masonry, with either a roof of horizontal slabs or a corbelled vault. Associated with this we frequently find the hewing of underground chambers in the rock. In almost all countries where megalithic structures occur certain fixed types prevail; the dolmen is the most general of these, and it is clear that many of the other forms are simply developments of this. The occurrence of structures with a hole in one of the walls and of blocks with 'cup-markings' is usual over the whole of the megalithic area. There are even more remarkable resemblances in detail between structures in widely separated countries. Thus the Giants' Tombs of Sardinia all have a concave façade which forms a kind of semicircular court in front of the entrance to the tomb. This feature is seen also in the temples of Malta, in the tomb of Los Millares in Spain, in the naus of the Balearic Isles (where, however, the curve is slight), in the Giant's Grave of Annaclochmullin and the chambered cairn of Newbliss in Ireland, in the tomb of Cashtal-yn-Ard in the Isle of Man, in the barrow of West Tump in Gloucestershire, and in the horned cairns of the north of Scotland. These parallels are due to something more than coincidence; in fact, it is clear that megalithic building is a widespread and homogeneous system, which, despite local differences, always preserves certain common features pointing to a single origin. It is thus difficult to accept the suggestion that it is merely a phase through which many races have passed. The phases which occur in many races alike are always those which are natural and necessary in the development of a people, such as the phase of using copper. But there is nothing either natural or necessary in the use of huge unwieldy blocks of stone where much smaller ones would have sufficed.
There are further objections to this theory in the distribution of the megalithic buildings both in space and time. In space they occupy a very remarkable position along a vast sea-board which includes the Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Atlantic coast of Europe. In other words, they lie entirely along a natural sea route. It is more than accident that the many places in which, according to this theory, the megalithic phase independently arose all lie in most natural sea connection with each other, while not one is in the interior of Europe.