44 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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Fig. 7. Covered Passage op Antequera Section and Plan. 



The age of the megaliths still presents an unsolved problem. It is 

 probable that if the most ancient ones date from neolithic times, their 

 construction was continued through many generations as an ancestral 

 tradition ; and we find them still being built when copper, and after- 

 ward when bronze, took the place of stone. There are also in Alem- 

 tejo and in the Algarves important cemeteries, in which the great 

 crypts, covered alleys and tumuli are replaced by stone coffins meas- 

 uring 2 metres long and half a metre deep. The walls are generally 

 formed of six flags, the bottom and lid of other flags. We reproduce 

 one of these tombs (Fig. 8), which is situated at Cerro del Castello, and 

 j>robably dates from the bronze age. Another tomb, near Odemira, 

 contains broken bones, and with them arms and utensils of stone, and 

 an arrow-head, and a hatchet of copper, without any admixture of 









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Fig. 8. Plan of Cerro del Castello, Fig. 9 Plan op the Tombs of the Corte de 

 Algarve. Gadiana. 



tin. Here we are witnesses of the transition between two distinct 

 epochs ; and, as in several other countries in Europe, pure copper is 

 the first metal employed. 



A new funeral rite responds to these new times. Incineration, im- 

 ported, doubtless, by foreign conquerors, takes the place of inhuma- 

 tion. Cists of a reduced size (Fig. 9), urns, covered with large stones, 

 receive the ashes, and the few fragments of bone that escape the 



