Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric PeoplesNadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
History
Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
Nadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
Archaeology; Prehistoric peoples
One of the most important monuments that have come down to us is that
of Carnac. The alignments of Menec, Kermario, and Kerlescant include
1,771 menhirs, of which 675 are still standing. The alignments of
Erdeven, which succeed those of Carnac, extend for a length of more
than a mile and a half. They originally included 1,030 menhirs, of
which 288 are still extant.
The archæologists of Brittany, carried away perhaps by their patriotic
enthusiasm, claim that when these monuments were intact they included
two thousand menhirs. What is really certain, however, is that a
definite plan was evidently followed, the distances between the
alignments tallying exactly; the menhirs being set up in straight
parallel lines gradually decreasing in size towards the east.
Excavations near them have brought to light fragments of charcoal,
masses of cinders, chips of silicate of flint, with numerous fragments
of pottery, and tools made of quartzite, granite, schist, and diorite,
similar to those met with under all the other megaliths of Morbihan.
This is yet another proof, if such were needed, that they were all the
work of the same race and all probably date from the same period.
The number of megalithic monuments in the world is simply incalculable.
M. A. Bertrand estimates the total number in France as 2,582,
distributed in 66 departments and 1,200 communes. They are most
numerous of all in Brittany; there are 491 in the Côtes-du-Nord, 530 in
Ille-et-Vilaine. I am not sure of the number in Morbihan, but I know it
is very considerable. The commission appointed at the instigation of
Henry Martin decided that there were as many as 6,310 megaliths in
France, but then amongst these were included polishing stones and
cup-shaped stones, with other similar relics of the remote past.
Lastly, a report recently presented to the Chamber of Deputies by M. A.
Proust estimates at 419 the number of groups classed by government. In
other countries these numbers are greatly exceeded. There are 2,000
megaliths in the Orkney Islands and a great many in the extreme north
of Scania, and in Otranto in the southern extremity of Europe, where
they resemble the _pedras fittas_ of Sardinia. Pallas, and after him,
Haxthausen, tells us that there are thousands of kurganes in the
steppes of Central and Southern Russia.19 These kurganes are cromlechs,
tombs surmounted by upright stones, square or conical hypogea, all
scattered about without any apparent system, surmounted by roughly
sculptured female busts, known amongst the common people as _kamena
baba_, or stone women. Tumuli, too, abound on the shores of the Irtisch
and of the Yenisei, mute witnesses to the former presence of a vanished
race of which we know neither the ancestors nor the descendants. These
monuments are, however, by some attributed to the Tchoudes, a people
who came from the Altai Mountains. The Esthonians, the Ogris or Ulgres,
the Finns, and perhaps even the Celts, are supposed to be branches of
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