Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and UsesFergusson, James
History
Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses
Fergusson, James
Megalithic monuments
Drenthe, where they exist in great numbers, but none to the southward
of these provinces, and nowhere do they seem to touch the Rhine or its
bordering lands; but a few are found in the grand-duchy of Luxembourg
as in a sort of oasis, halfway between the southern or French dolmen
region and that of northern Germany.
From the North German districts they extend through Holstein and
Schleswig into Jutland and the Danish isles, but are most numerous on
the eastern or Baltic side of the Cimbrian peninsula, and they are also
very frequent in the south of Sweden and the adjacent islands. Dolmens
properly so called are not known in Norway, but, as above mentioned,
cairns and monuments of that class, are not wanting there.
The value of this distribution will be more easily appreciated when we
have ascertained the limits of the French field, but meanwhile it may
be convenient to remark that, unless the dolmens can be traced very
much further eastward, there is a tremendous gulf before we reach the
nearest outlyers of the eastern dolmen field. There is a smaller, but
very distinct, gap in the country occupied by the Belgæ, between it
and the French field, and another, but practically very much smaller
one, between it and the British isles. This is a gap because the
intervening space is occupied by the sea; but as it is evident from
the distribution of all the northern dolmens in the proximity to the
shores and in the islands that the people who erected them were a
sea-faring people, and as we know that they possessed vessels capable
of navigating these seas, it is practically no gap at all. We know
historically how many Jutes, Angles, Frisians, and people of similar
origin, under the generic name of Saxons, flocked to our shores in the
early centuries of the Christian era, and afterwards what an important
part the Danes and Northmen played in our history, and what numbers
of them landed and settled in Great Britain, either as colonists or
conquerors, at different epochs, down to at least the eleventh century.
If, therefore, we admit the dolmens to be historic, or, in other words,
that the erection of megalithic monuments was practised during the
first ten centuries after the Christian era, we have no difficulty
in understanding where our examples came from, or to whom they are
due. If, on the other hand, we assume that they are prehistoric, we
are entirely at sea regarding them or their connection with those on
the continent. The only continental people we know of who settled in
Britain before the Roman times were the Belgæ, and they are the only
people between the Pillars of Hercules and the Gulf of Riga who, having
a sea-board, have also no dolmens or megalithic remains of any sort.
All the others have them more or less, but the Northern nations did
not, so far as we know, colonise this country before the Christian era.
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