Rough Stone Monuments and Their BuildersPeet, T. Eric (Thomas Eric)
History
Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders
Peet, T. Eric (Thomas Eric)
Megalithic monuments; Prehistoric peoples
For Africa the evidence consists in a group of twenty skulls from
dolmen-tombs giving cephalic indices which range from 70.5 to 84.4. The
average index is 75.27, and the majority of the indices lay within a few
units of that number. Ten skulls from Halsaflieni in Malta have cephalic
indices running from 66 to 75.1, the average being 71.84. Of a series of
44 skulls from the rock-tombs of the Petit Morin in France, 12 had an
index of over 80, 22 were between 75 and 80, and 10 were below 75. But
in the dolmens of Lozere distinctly broad skulls were frequent. A series
of British neolithic skulls, mostly from barrows, ran from 67 to 77.
The builders of the megalithic monuments thus belonged in the main to a
fairly dolichocephalic race or races, for the large majority of the
skulls measured are of a long-headed type. There are, however, in
various localities, especially in France, occasional anomalous types of
skull which are distinctly brachycephalic, and show that contamination
of some kind was taking or had taken place.
Of the state of civilization to which the builders of the megalithic
monuments had attained, and of the social condition in which they lived,
there is something to be gathered. It is clear in the first place from
the evidence of the Maltese buildings that they were a pastoral people
who domesticated the ox, the sheep, the pig, and the goat, upon whose
flesh they partly lived. Shellfish also formed a part of their diet, and
the shells when emptied of their contents were occasionally pierced to
be used as pendants or to form necklaces or bracelets.
Whether these people were agricultural is a question more difficult to
answer. It is true that flat stones have been found, on which some kind
of cereal was ground up with the aid of round pebbles, but the grain for
which these primitive mills were used may have been wild and not
cultivated. No grain of any kind has been found in the Maltese
settlements.
The megalithic race do not seem to have been great traders. This is
remarkably exemplified in Malta, where there is not a trace of
connection with the wonderful civilization which must have been
flourishing so near at hand in Crete and the AEgean at the time when the
megalithic temples were built. The island seems to have been entirely
self-sufficing, except for the importation of obsidian, probably from
the neighbouring island of Linosa. Of copper, which wide trade would
have introduced, there is no sign.
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