The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European historyGrant, Madison
History
The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history
Grant, Madison
Ethnology -- Europe
“Polished hatchets, often enough of rare stone, beads from necklaces,
and pendants of Callais or of divers materials, implements of flint,
knives, arrow points which are wing-shaped, scrapers, nodules, grinding
stones, pottery, vases, grains of baked earth, some rare jewels of gold,
collars and bracelets, such is, in general, the composition of the
contents of the neolithic dolmens of Brittany, contents different, as we
shall see, from those of the sepulchres of the Bronze Age in the same
region. These vast Armorican crypts belong certainly to the end of the
Neolithic period, in spite of the absence of copper, the habitual
forerunner of bronze objects. The smallness of the crypt, the size of
the tumulus, the mixture of construction in huge blocks and in walls
seem to indicate, as M. Cartailhac has observed, a more recent age than
that of ordinary dolmens. In the pure Bronze Age the monolithic supports
are replaced by the walls of unmortared stones.
“Moreover, we shall see that there have been found in certain covered
alleys in Brittany, pottery of a very characteristic type called
calciform vases, pottery belonging in the south of France and southern
Europe with the first objects of copper and bronze. Jewels of gold
confirm, on the other hand, these chronological determinations.” On p.
397: “The dolmen sepulchres of the Bronze Age in Brittany, and notably
in Finisterre, are distinguished more often by the type of their
construction from those of the Stone Age.”
“The dolmens of Normandy and Isle de France contain some stone objects,
fragments of vases, and numerous debris of human skeletons.” The end of
the pure Neolithic is the date of the megaliths in Armorica, as we read
on p. 407. The first metals, imported from the south, penetrated into
northern Gaul a little later than in the southern provinces. That is why
certain typical objects of the end of the pure Neolithic in Armorica,
such as Callais and the calciform vases, are associated with the first
objects of copper or bronze in the funerary crypts of Provence and
Portugal.
G. Elliot Smith and W. H. R. Rivers claim that there is a close
connection throughout the eastern hemisphere between the distribution of
megalithic monuments and either ocean or fresh-water pearls, but this
appears to the author to be far-fetched. Two very recent articles
dealing with megaliths are “Anthropology and Our Older Histories,” by
Fleure and Winstanley, and “The Menhirs of Madagascar,” by A. L. Lewis.
129 : 8. Rice Holmes, _Cæsar’s Conquest of Gaul_, p. 9.
129 : 12. Earliest iron in the north. See the notes to pp. 131 : 1 and
131 : 9 on the La Tène period. Also Montelius, 2, and Sophus Müller, 2,
pp. 145 and 165 _seq._
129 : 13. Mound burials among the Vikings. Montelius, 2.
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