4 oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



found but few perfect ones, and it is slated that some French officers 

 had wantonly destroyed them. 



In 1867 Dr. Bourguignat, the well-known conchologist and archeol- 

 ogist of Paris, visited this necropolis, camped on it, and his account is 

 the only complete one. He put the number of dolmens remaining in 

 his time at fifteen hundred, and estimated the total number formerly 

 existing at several thousand. He regarded this vast assemblage of 

 megalithic sepulchers as a colossal cemetery. 



In the following year General Faidherbe, in a paper published in 

 the 'Annales de l'Academie de Bone,' attributed these sepulchers to the 

 troglodyte Libyans, whose actual descendants were, he states, the 

 Kabyles and Berbers. 



The people living in this vicinity, and, presumably, the builders of 

 these sepulchers, were of a later date than the neolithic or later stone 

 epoch, for the art-objects excavated by Bourguignat from the interior 

 were bronze rings or bracelets, amulets and rings of silver gilded with 

 gold; and earthern vases. According to the well-known anthropologist, 

 Pruner-Bey, the human skeletons contained in the tombs were those 

 of Aryans, of negroes, Egyptians and Kabyles, with hybrids between 

 the negro and Kabyle women. The Aryans occupied the large 

 sepulchers; their cranial type resembled that of ancient Italy. 



The dominant race, according to French statements, had imposed 

 on the other peoples its mode of burial and its religious beliefs, since the 

 eastward orientation of the sepulchers of Eoknia is identical with the 

 traditional position made sacred by Aryan customs. 



The remains of the men were distinguished by an earthen vase 

 placed near the head, but the women were not considered worthy of 

 the honor of a funeral vase. 



The question arises as to the exact age of these dolmens and their 

 builders. Were they contemporaneous with the early Egyptians, and 

 was the bronze age of northern Africa of the same or of an earlier date 

 than the bronze epoch in Egypt? 



Dr. Collignon has, more recently, thrown much light on the affinities 

 of the builders of these dolmens, who, he suggests, were Berbers, and 

 perhaps of the same race as the dolmen-builders of France and the 

 Cromagnon family whose remains were found at Les Eyzies, in Dor- 

 dogne, France. Of the races of the sedentary population now living 

 in Tunisia, where also occur numerous dolmens, especially at Ellez 

 (which is situated about 100 miles east of Eoknia), there are five types 

 of Berbers. "One of these types reaches its greatest purity in the 

 neighborhood of Ellez and its area of distribution almost exactly covers 

 the area of distribution of dolmens. Moreover, this race presents 

 plainly the special anatomical characters of the bones found in the dol- 

 mens of France, notably at Sordes and at Homme-Mort, i. e., a feeble 



