very nearly up to the stage where we left its microlithic sister at Mycenæ some two thousand years before its time.
All this will be made clearer in the sequel, but meanwhile there are one or two points which must be cleared up before we can go further. Many antiquaries insist that all the dolmens[1] or cromlechs,[2] which we now see standing free, were once covered up and buried in tumuli.[3] That all the earlier ones were so, is more than probable, and it may since have been originally intended also to cover up many of those which now stand free; but it seems impossible to believe that the bulk of those we now see were ever hidden by any earthen covering.
Probably at least one hundred uncovered dolmens in these islands could be enumerated, which have not now a trace of any such envelope. Some are situated on uncultivated heaths, some on headlands, and most of them in waste places. Yet it is contended that improving farmers at some remote age not only levelled the mounds, but actually carted the whole away and spread it so evenly over the surface that it is impossible now to detect its previous existence. If this had taken place in this century when land has become so valuable and labour so skilled we might not wonder, but no trace of any such operation occurs in any living memory. Take for instance Kits Cotty House, it is exactly now where it was when Stukeley drew it in 1715,[4] and there was no tradition then of any mound ever having covered it. Yet it is contended that at some earlier age when the site was probably only a sheep-walk, some one carried away the mound for some unknown purpose, and spread it out so evenly that we cannot now find a trace of it. Or take another instance, that at Clatford Bottom,[5] also drawn by Stukeley. It stands as a chalky flat to which cultivation is only now extending, and which
- ↑ Dolmen is derived from the Celtic word Daul, a table—not Dol, a hole—and Men or Maen, a stone.
- ↑ Crom, in Celtic, is crooked or curved, and therefore wholly inapplicable to the monuments in question; and lech, stone.
- ↑ The most zealous advocate of this view is the Rev. W. C. Lukis, who, with his father, has done such good service in the Channel Islands. His views are embodied in a few very distinct words in the Norwich volume of the 'Prehistoric Congress,' p. 218, but had previously been put forward in a paper read to the Wiltshire Archælogical Society in 1861, and afterwards in the 'Kilkenny Journal.' v. N. S. p. 492 et seqq.
- ↑ 'lter Curiosum,' pl. xxxii. and xxxiii.
- ↑ 'Stonehenge and Avebury,' pl. xxxii. xxxiii. and xxxiv.
