Dolmen

“ Dolmen in Castle Wellan, Ireland. From a drawing by Sir Henry James.
ever formed a chamber in barrow, or that any Irish farmer would ever have made such a level sweep of its envelope if it ever had one? So in fact it is with almost all we know. When a dolmen was intended to be buried in a tumulus the stones supporting the roof were placed as closely to one another as possible, so as to form walls and prevent the earth penetrating between them and filling the chambers, which was easily accomplished by filling in the interstices with small stones as was very generally done. ”

“ The dolmen-graves lie in great numbers on the hill at the foot of which the spring rises, and extend down into the valley. Each dolmen lies in the centre of a stone circle. This last is in some cases formed by very large slabs set on edge, but more often by two or three courses of rough oblong blocks. Many of the graves are badly damaged. One of the finest had an outer circle about 27 feet in diameter, and an inner circle 14 feet in diameter. Between these two a third circle, much more irregular and of small stones, could just be distinguished. ”

“ The dolmens proper gave place in the end to great chambered mounds or tumuli, as at New Grange, which we also reckon as belonging to the Megalithic People. They are a natural development of the dolmen. The early dolmen-builders were in the neolithic stage of culture, their weapons were of polished stone. But in the tumuli not only stone, but also bronze, and even iron, instruments are found—at first evidently importations, but afterwards of local manufacture. ”

“ Thirdly, the dolmen, which is a single slab of stone supported by several others arranged in such a way as to enclose a space or chamber beneath it. Some English writers apply the term cromlech to such a structure, quite incorrectly. Both menhir and dolmen are Breton words, these two types of megalithic monument being particularly frequent in Brittany. Menhir is derived from the Breton men, a stone, and hir, long; similarly dolmen is from dol, a table, and men, a stone. Some archæologists also apply the word dolmen to rectangular chambers roofed with more than one slab. ”

“ We do at least know that the dolmen was raised above a burial, in the one instance of Zennor above two. In the dolmen proper, the supporters of the great capstone are columns and not merely slabs enclosing the space. Dolmens are found not only in Cornwall, but along the west coast of Europe and the northern coast of Africa, also in Palestine, India, and Japan, and appear to be the work of a seafaring people. ”

“ Vain attempts Evidence from dolmens. have been made to trace the migration to its original starting-point by the distribution of the dolmens, or rude stone sepulchres,225 which are found in many European countries. A dolmen, in the strict sense of the word, is composed of large stones set on end, which wholly or partially enclose a space, and are covered by other stones or by a single stone, which rests upon their upper ends. Most of the chambers in our chambered barrows virtually answer to this definition ”

“ Graves of the dolmen or cromlech type are found in all the countries of Western Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere, wherever stone suitable for the purpose abounds, and in this we have a striking illustration of the way in which lines of development in man’s material civilisation are sooner or later correlated to his geographical, geological, and other surroundings. ”

“ Bennett, of Archerton, when inclosing and planting, utilised a fine pound for a clump of beech. The old inclosing ring was used up to make a wall for the protection of the young trees, and these latter, in growing, threw all the huts that had not been despoiled out of shape and into inextricable confusion.
Let us now take in their order such monuments as remain, and I will say a few words about each kind.
1. Of the characteristic dolmen, which we in England perhaps improperly call cromlech, we have but a single good example, that at Drewsteignton. The dolmen was the family mausoleum. ”

“ It has, like the Montagne de la Feé, a galleried chamber [pg 174] or dolmen, the floor formed of an enormous slab across the centre, on which is a sculpture resembling a celt; other sculptured stones were found in the same chamber. At the other end of the dolmen was an avenue of stones, some supporting the skeletons of horses' heads. This tumulus was probably the tomb of some great warrior: the horses' skeletons were the remains of a sacrifice, and the human bones of beings who had been immolated to accompany the earthly remains of their great chief to another world. ”

“ The allée couverte in France, and the chambered barrows of Denmark, North Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and England, are but extensions of the dolmen to hold a larger number of the dead. The dolmens usually have a hole at one end, or a footstone that is removable at will, to allow for food to be passed in to the dead, and for the introduction of fresh applicants for house-room in the mansion of the departed.
Some of these holed dolmens have the stone plugs for closing the holes still extant. On Dartmoor in the kistvaens a small stone at foot or side was placed, to be removed at pleasure. ”

“ And the people who made the stone axes and the pile-dwellings is probably the same that reared the huge funeral piles known as dolmens [7] . A dolmen consists of two immense blocks of stone placed on end, [8] upon which a third is laid, forming a sort of table. The dead were buried beneath, with various implements and weapons at hand. How a people, without engineering skill and contrivances,-could rear such masses into position, is a problem yet unsolved. ”

“ The irregular manner in which they are distributed along the seashores of Europe and Africa has given rise to the theory that they were erected by a wandering race called "the people of the dolmens," but of the whence and whither of these peripatetic dolmen builders we have no knowledge.
From these general considerations, together with the accumulative results of recent researches, there can be little doubt that the megalithic monuments of Europe are chiefly remains of the abodes and memorials of the dead. ”

“ Dolmen. Trégunc. From Concarneau to Quimperlé is a distance of above eighteen miles. The road runs near the sea, [pg 149] over a large tract of land covered with furze (ajonc) , which, in Brittany, grows from five to six feet high, forming a solid impenetrable mass. Huge blocks of granite are scattered about in every direction, jutting out from among the furze—menhirs, cromlechs, and dolmens—a perfect wilderness of Celtic remains. We drove over an extent of several miles of furze-covered hills and heathy land. ”

“ In some cases the living rock forms hart of the enceinte, which has been completed with the help of other blocks frolic elsewhere. It is often difficult to decide where the monument end, and the rock begins. When the escarpment was too abrupt, it was levelled with the aid of a kind of retaining wall, which forms a terrace round the dolmen. The dolmens in the plain seem to have been constructed with even greater care. The enceintes are wider and the slabs of the tables larger.” Megalithic monuments are met with even in the desert. ”

“ Fig. 131.—Dolmen at Assier. These are the bare stones which have been taken for stone altars, being referred to the religious worship of the Gauls. The supposed Druidical altars are, in fact, nothing but ruined dolmens. The purpose, therefore, for which they were elevated was not, as has always been stated, to serve as the scene of the sacrifices of a cruel religion; for, at the present day, it is completely proved that the dolmens were the tombs of a pre-historic epoch.
These tombs were intended to receive several dead bodies. ”

“ Morocco, Tunis, Algeria, and Tripoli all abound in dolmens and other monuments. Even in the Nile Valley they occur, for what looks like a dolmen surrounded by a circle was discovered by de Morgan in the desert near Edfu, and Wilson and Felkin describe a number of simple dolmens which exist near Ladò in the Sudan. Tripoli remains as yet comparatively unexplored. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is a dolmen consisting of three huge stones, on which rests a still larger block, twelve feet long and estimated at sixteen tons in weight; it doubtless was a Neolithic burying-place.
Dolmen near Drewsteignton
Relics of the Bronze Age are far more abundant, [155] and they form, indeed, the chief archaeological feature of Devonshire. ”

“ The same arrangement is followed in the closed dolmen, the cross slabs being inside, as shown in the view (woodcut No. 208) , and plan (woodcut No. 207) . The interior of the closed dolmen contained a little black mould on the surface. Below this a greyish white earth, brought from a distance, with which were found human ashes and portions of bones and charcoal mixed, and pieces of broken pottery, red and black. These rested on the solid rock on which the dolmen was erected. Nothing whatever was found in any of the open dolmens ”

“ Regarding the nomenclature of the several species of megalithic monuments met with in Brittany some 38 definitions are necessary. A menhir is a rude monolith set up on end, a great single stone, the base of which is buried deep in the soil. A dolmen is a large, table-shaped stone, supported by three, four, or even five other stones, the bases of which are sunk in the earth. ”

“ The question, however, fortunately, hardly requires to be argued, inasmuch as in Ireland, in Denmark, [22] and more especially in France, we have numerous examples of dolmens on the top of tumuli, where it is impossible they should ever have been covered with earth. One example for the present will explain what is meant. In the Dolmen de Bousquet in the Aveyron [23] the chamber is placed on the top of a tumulus, which from the three circlets of stone that surround it, and other indications, never could have been higher or larger than it now is. ”

“ A dolmen near Tzarskaya has a small semicircular hole at the bottom of one of its end-slabs, while another in the valley of Pehada has sides consisting of single blocks, placed so as to slant inwards considerably, and a circular hole in the centre of the slab which closes one of its ends.
In Asia megalithic monuments are not infrequent. We first find them in Syria, they have been reported from Persia, and in Central and South India they exist in large numbers. ”

“ Combined with these are found, very sparsely on the shore of the Crimea, but frequently on the eastern shore of the Baltic and in Circassia, the forms of dolmens we are familiar with in other parts of the world. Nothing like a regular survey of them has yet been attempted, nor have we any detailed accounts of them; but from such information as is published, [521] the general type seems to be that of the holed dolmen, such as those represented in the annexed woodcuts. ”

“ As stated above, England seems to be the native country of the great circles, no 100-metre circles having yet been found anywhere out of England, excepting, of course, that at Stennis. France, on the contrary, seems to be the native country of the dolmens. They exist there in numbers far beyond anything we can show, and of dimensions exceeding anything we can boast of. In England proper, when we have enumerated Kit's Cottyhouse, the dolmen in Clatford Bottom, Wayland Smith's Cave, that at Rollright, and one at Drewsteignton, in Devonshire, our list is nearly exhausted. ”

“ The dolmens of Africa are often found to contain objects peculiar to the Iron Age, and it is said that in some parts of India the people are still in the habit of erecting menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens and other megalithic monuments. Scandinavian archaeologists assign their dolmens exclusively to the Stone Age. ”

“ Dolmens.
155. View of the Interior of Dolmen at Antequera. From Mitjana.
The finest dolmen known to exist in Spain is that of Antequera, above alluded to; it will, indeed, bear comparison with the best in France or any other country in Europe. The chamber is of a somewhat oval shape, and measures internally about 80 feet from the entrance to the [Pg 384] front of the stone closing the rear. Its greatest width is 20 feet 6 inches, and its height varies between 9 and 10 feet. [456] The whole is composed of thirty-one stones: ten on each side form the walls; one closes the end ”

“ To Broca, the resemblance between the dolmens of Europe, Africa, and even of America proves but one thing: the similarity of the aspirations and powers of all men. Everywhere, and at every time, men have aimed, in their monuments, not only at durability, but at the expression of force and of power. It was with this end in view that they erected menhirs and selected enormous stones for their megalithic monuments. The dolmen, which looks like an architectural building, is but a modification of primitive tombs. ”

“ It has been predicted that these villages will ere long form part and parcel of Noya, for the spaces between them are filling up rapidly.
The dolmen was situated on the flat top of a high hill far from all human habitation, and shut in by pines and the slopes of yet higher hills. It was a rough scramble up steep goat paths winding among stones and furze. We found seven Druidical-looking stones placed in a small circle round what had once been a grave. Sr. ”