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
Even more interesting than these for our present purposes was the
discovery a few years later of human remains in the valleys of the
Dordogne and other rivers of the south of France. Here geology does not
help us, but climatology does. At that time the climate of the south
of France was so cold that the inhabitants of these caves had all the
habits of people now dwelling in the Arctic regions. Their principal
domestic animal was the reindeer, but they were familiar with the
woolly-haired mammoth, the cave bear, and the aurochs. The climate was
so cold that they could throw on one side the débris of their feasts,
and floor their dwelling with marrow bones and offal without dreading
pestilence or even suffering inconvenience. They were, in fact, in
every respect, so far as we have the means of judging, identical with
the Esquimaux of the present day, and must have inhabited a climate
nearly similar to that of Arctic North America. How long ago was this?
We know from the pictures in the tombs near the pyramids that the
climate of Egypt was the same 5000 or 6000 years ago as it is now, and
we have no reason to suppose that, while that of the southern shores of
the Mediterranean remained unchanged, the northern would vary in any
very different ratio. Clearing of forests may have done something, but
never could have accounted for such a change as this. If we take 50,000
or 60,000 years instead of 5000 or 6000, it will not suffice for such a
revolution, though geologists will be wroth if we assume only 100,000;
as a convenient number this will answer our present purposes.
Having at least this space of time at their disposal, the tendency of
modern antiquaries has been to sweep everything into this great gulf.
Why, they ask, may not Stonehenge and Avebury be 10,000, 20,000, or
50,000 years old? Man then existed, and why may he not have erected
such monuments as these? Of course he might, but there is no proof
that he did, and as no single tangible reason has yet been adduced
for supposing them so old, the mere presumption that they might be so
cannot count for much.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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