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
In 1864 M. Bertrand published in the 'Revue archéologique' a small map
of France, showing the distribution of dolmens as then known; and three
years afterwards another, on a much larger scale, intended to accompany
the 'Dictionnaire des Antiquités celtiques,' and containing all that
was then known. Were a second edition of this map published now, it
would, no doubt, be much more full and complete; but the main outlines
must still be the same, and are sufficient for our present purposes.
From these maps and the text which accompanies them we learn that the
greater number of the rude-stone monuments in France are arranged at no
great distance on either side of a straight line drawn from the shores
of the Mediterranean, somewhere about Montpellier, to Morlaix, in
Brittany. There are none east of the Rhone, none south of the Garonne,
till we come to the Pyrenees, and so few north of the basin or valley
of the Seine that they may be considered as wanderers.
Referring to the table at the end of this chapter, which is compiled
from that of 1864, we find that thirty departments contain more than
ten monuments. Thirty others, according to M. Bertrand, contain from
one to eight or nine; and the remaining twenty-nine either contain none
at all or these so insignificant as hardly to deserve attention.
From this table we learn, at least approximately, several facts of
considerable interest to our investigation. The first is that, of
the three divisions into which Cæsar divides Gaul, the northern in
his day belonged to a race who had had no stone monuments. There are
none in Belgium proper, and so few in French Flanders, or indeed in
any part of Gallia Belgica, that we may safely assert that the Belgæ
were not dolmen-builders. In the next place, I cannot help agreeing
with M. Bertrand in his conclusion that the Celts properly so called
have as little claim to the monuments as the Belgæ.[379] We know
something of the provinces occupied by the Celts six hundred years
before Christ from Livy's[380] description of the tribes who, under
Bellevesus, invaded Italy. Their capital was Bruges, and they occupied
the departments immediately around that city; but they had not then
penetrated into Brittany, nor north of the Seine, nor into any part of
Aquitania.[381] But they occupied the whole of the east of Gaul up,
apparently, to the Rhine and the country on the east bank of the Rhone.
According to the French statistics, there are 140,000 barrows or tumuli
in the departments of the Côte-d'Or, Vosges, Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin,
Doubs, Jura, and Ain, but not one single dolmen;[382] and there are
none to the east of the Rhine. As we proceed westward, the tumuli
become rarer, and the dolmens are gradually met with. The Averni, for
instance, were one of the Celtic tribes that accompanied Bellovesus,
and in their country dolmens are found; but perhaps we need only infer
from this that in a hilly country like Auvergne the older people still
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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