Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 2, Anaxagoras-ATH

338
ARCHAEOLOGY
embraces those of later regular sepulture, with the sepul¬
chral pottery of rudest type, the personal ornamentsjmd
other remains of the prehistoric races of Europe, onward
to the dawn of history. It even includes the first traces
of the use of the metals, in the employment of gold toi
personal adornment, though with no intelligent recognition
of its distinction from the flint and stone m whic
workmen of this neolithic period chiefly wrought _
The nearly indestructible nature of the materials in
which the manufacturers alike of the palaeolithic and the
neolithic period chiefly wrought, helps to account for t
immense number of weapons and implemen so
prolonged ages of stone-working which have been recovered.
The specimens now accumulated m the famous collec ion
of the Christiansborg Palace at Copenhagen amount to
several thousands. The Royal Irish Academy the Society
of Antiquaries of Scotland, the British Museum, an
other collections, in like manner include many hundreds
of specimens, ranging from the remotest periods of the
cave and drift men of western Europe to the dawn of
definite history within the same European area, they
include hatchets, adzes, gouges, chisels, scrapers, discs,
and other tools in considerable variety ; axes, lances, spear
and arrow heads, mauls, hammers, and other weapons and
implements of war and the chase; besides a variety of
utensils, implements, and ornaments, with regard to which
we can but vaguely guess the design of their construction.
Many of these are merely chipped into shape, sometimes
with much ingenuity, in other cases as rudely as the most
barbarous and massive implements of the paleolithic
period. But from their association, in graves or other
clearly-recognised deposits of the later period, with ground
and polished implements, and even occasionally with the
first traces of a time when the metals were coining into use,
there is no room to question their later origin. In part
they may be legitimately recognised, like the whole ele¬
ments of archseological classification, to mark different
degrees of rudeness in successive steps towards civilisation,
in°part they indicate, as in manufactures of our own day,
the economy of labour in roughly-fashioned implements
designed only for the rudest work, or for missiles the use
of which involved their loss.
To the same primitive period of rude savage life must
be assigned the rudiments of architectural skill pertaining
to the ^Megalithic Age. Everywhere we find traces, alike
throughout the seats of oldest civilisation and in earliest
written records, including the historical books of the Old
Testament Scriptures, of the erection of the simple mono¬
lith, or unhewn pillar of stone, as a record of events, a
monumental memorial, or a landmark. There is the
Tanist Stone, or kingly memorial, like that set up in
Shechem when Abimelech was made king; the Hoar
Stone, or boundary-stone, like “the stone of Bohan, the
son of Reuben,” and other ancient landmarks of Bible
story; the Cat Stone, or battle-stone, a memorial of some
great victory; and the stone set up as the evidence of
some special treaty or agreement, like Laban and Jacob’s
pillar of witness at Galeed. To the same primitive stage of
architecture belong the cromlech, the cairn, the chambered
barrow, and other sepulchral structures of unhewn stone;
as well as the weems, or megalithic subterranean dwellings
common in Scotland and elsewhere, until, with the intro¬
duction of metals and the gradual mastery of metallurgic
art, we reach the period of partially hewn and symmetrical
structures, of which the great temple of Stonehenge is the
most remarkable example. But it is in Egypt that mega¬
lithic architecture is seen in its most matured stage, with
all the massiveness which so aptly symbolises barbarian
power, but also with a grandeur, due to artistic taste and
refinement, in which the ponderous solidity of vast mega¬
lithic structures is relieved by the graces of colossal
sculpture and of an inexhaustible variety of architectural
detail. There appears to be a stage in the development
of the human mind in its progress towards civilisation
when an unconscious aim at the expression of abstract
power tends to beget an era of megalithic art. The huge
cromlechs, monoliths, and circles still abounding in many
centres of European civilisation perpetuate the evidence of
such a transitional stage among its prehistoric races. But
it was in Egypt that an isolation, begot by the peculiar
conditions of its unique physical geography, though also
perhaps ascribable in part to certain ethnical characteristics
of its people, permitted this megalithic art to mature into
the highest perfection of which it is capable. There the
rude unhewn monolith became the graceful obelisk, the
cairn was transformed into the symmetrical pyramid, and
the stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge, or the mega¬
lithic labyrinths of Carnac in Brittany, developed into
colonnaded avenues and temples, like those of Denderah
and Edfu, or the colossal sphinx avenue of Luxor.
Elaborately-finished axes, hammer-heads, cups, and vases
of the late neolithic era serve to illustrate the high stage to
which the arts of a purely stone period could be advanced,
in the absence of any process of arrestment or change.
But long before such a tendency to development into orna¬
mental detail and symmetrical regularity of construction
could be brought to bear on the megalithic architecture^ of
the same era, the metallurgic sources of all later civilisation
had begun to supersede its rude arts. To such remote
eras we strive in vain to apply any definite chronology.
At best we work our way backwards from the modern or
known into the mysterious darkness of remotest antiquity,
where it links itself to unmeasured ages of geological time.
But by such means science has been able to add a curious
chapter to the beginnings of British and of European story,
involving questions of mysterious interest in relation to
the earliest stages in the history of man. The very char¬
acteristics which distinguish him in his rudest stage from
all other animals have helped from remotest times to per¬
petuate the record of his progress.
The evidences of the various acquirements and degrees
of civilisation of the prehistoric races of Britain are derived
not only from weapons, implements, pottery, and persona
ornaments found deposited in ancient dwellings and sepul¬
chres; but from still older traces supplied by chance dis¬
coveries of the agriculturist, miner, and builder, such as
the implements of the ancient whalers of the Forth, or the
monoxylous oaken canoes dug up from time to time in
the valley of the Clyde, or even beneath some of the most
ancient civic foundations of Glasgow. Both alike pertain
to areas of well-defined historical antiquity, from the very
dawn of written history, or of literate chronicles m any
form; and both also have their geological records, pre¬
serving the evidence of changes of level in unrecorde
centuries subsequent to the advent of man, when the
whales of the Forth and the canoes of the Clyde were em¬
bedded in the alluvium of those river-valleys, and elevated
above the ancient tide-marks of their estuaries. _ Another
change of level, possibly in uninterrupted continuance of
the ancient upheaval, has been in progress since the Roman
invaders constructed their military roads, and built their
wall between the Forth and the Clyde, in the 1st and 2d
centuries of the Christian era. ... ■,
By evidence such as this a starting-point is gained whence
we may confidently deduce the colonisation of the British
Islands, and of the north of Europe, at periods separated
by many centuries from that in which our island first
figures in history. The researches of the ethnologist add
to our knowledge of this unrecorded era, by disclosing
some of the physical characteristics of the aboriginal