The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished RacesAllen, Emory Adams
History
The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished Races
Allen, Emory Adams
Archaeology; Indians; Prehistoric peoples
We have mentioned the use of stone circles in Neolithic times.
During the Bronze Age they built the circle very large, sometimes
twelve hundred feet in diameter, and they were sometimes made of
earth. These circles are regarded by some27 as being simply
burial places, and many of them have been proved to be such. But
others regard them as temples, meaning thereby not a building, in
our sense of the word, but a place of sanctity, and probably
where some form of worship was held. Even if we allow that they
were originally tombs in every case, it does not follow that they
have not also been temples, for the religious sentiment has, in
all ages, and in all places, tended to center in tombs, which
ultimately have become places of worship. Many of our Christian
Churches have originated in this manner, and it is a most obvious
transition from the tomb to the temple. The worship of the
spirits of the dead at the one would naturally grow into the
worship of the Great Unknown in the other.28
The preceding cut is a restoration of one of the largest of these
temples. Here we see a circle twelve hundred feet in diameter, of
upright stones, guarded by both a ditch and embankment. From the
two openings in the embankment formerly extended two long winding
avenues of stone. Between them rises Silbury Hill, the largest
artificial mound in Great Britain, being one hundred and thirty
feet high. The area of the large inclosure was about twenty-eight
and a half acres. This was a temple of no inconsiderable size. It
was, of course in ruins when the earliest account of it was
written, and we can only speculate as to the lapse of time since
it was venerated as a place of worship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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