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
Before leaving the Jersey circle, if any one will compare it with the
chamber at Mycenæ (woodcut No. 4), they can hardly fail to perceive
the close similarity and probable identity of destination that exists
between them; but as the island example is very much ruder, according
to the usual reasoning it must be the more ancient of the two. This,
however, is the capital fallacy which has pervaded all reasoning on
the subject hitherto. It is true that nothing can be more interesting
or more instructive than to trace the progress of the Classical, the
Mediæval, and the Indian styles through their ever-changing phases,
or to watch the influence which one style had on the other. That
progress was, however, always confined within the limits of a nation,
or community of nations, and the influence limited to such nations
as from similarity of race or constant intercourse were in position
to influence reciprocally not only the architecture, but their arts
and feelings. In order to establish this in the present instance,
we must prove that there was such community of race and frequency
of intercourse between the Channel Islands and Greece 1000 years
B.C., that the latter would copy the other, or rather that
2000 years B.C. the Channel Islanders gave the Greeks those
hints which they were enabled to elaborate, and of which the chambers
at Mycenæ about the time of the Trojan war were the result. Had this
been the case the influence could hardly have ceased as civilization
and intercourse with other countries increased, and we ought to find
Tholoi in great perfection in these islands, and probably temples and
arts in all the perfection to which they were afterwards expanded in
Greece. In fact, we get into such a labyrinth of conjecture, that no
escape seems possible. It would be almost as reasonable to argue that
the images on Easter Island, which we know continued to be carved in
our day, were prehistoric, because they are so much ruder than the
works of Phidias. The truth is, that where we cannot trace community
of race or religion, accompanied by constant and familiar intercourse,
we must take each people as doing what their state of civilization
enabled them to accomplish, wholly irrespective of what was doing or
had been done by any other people in any other part of the world. All
that it is necessary to assume in this case is, that a dead-revering
ancestral-worshipping people wished to do honour to the departed, as
they knew or heard was done by other races of their family of mankind
elsewhere, and that they did it in the best manner the state of the
arts among them admitted of--rudely, if they were in a low state of
civilization, and more perfectly if they had advanced beyond that stage
in which rude forms could be tolerated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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