Stone Monuments of Brittany. 27 
Christian missionaries began to throw down these stones, which 
were objects of worship, but, finding the task beyond their 
powers, they consecrated the remainder, and put crosses on 
them. Crosses are on some to this day. Now, when the stone 
was thrown down, the weathering must have gone on, both on 
the newly exposed part as well as the rest of the surface, and 
the difference still apparent and the sharpness of the fractured 
surfaces, compared to the weathering that occurred previously, 
shows that it must have been in a standing position for an im- 
mensely longer time than it has been in a broken and recumbent 
one. Again, one of the menhirs of the alignments of Kermaric 
is shown by Mr. Miln, who carried out extensive excavations 
there, to have been thrown down by the Romans, and used as a 
cooking place for the Roman camp, which utilised some of the 
standing stones in its vallum, and in this the same evidence of 
great weathering is shown, which must have occurred when it 
was in an upright position. Indicative of a remote antiquity, of 
course some must be much older than others, and the erection 
of these monuments must have gone on through long ages. 
Another interesting point is the similarity of idea between the 
obelisks and pyramids of the early Empire in Egypt, and the 
giant menhirs and the large tumuli of the Stone Age people. Is 
* it not probable that both peoples started with the same ideas, 
but that the Egyptians elaborated them as civilization advanced ? 
For stone monuments of similar kind are found in Algiers, 
Tripoli, and Syria, as well as in Europe and in India; also 
instances are known in Arabia and Persia, on islands in the 
Pacific, and the coast of Peru. 
Omitting the latter isolated instances, it will be seen that 
these megalithic monuments form a continuous series from 
Northern Africa, through Syria, Arabia, and Persia, to India, 
and along the Western coast of Europe, being found in the West 
of Spain, the West of France, the South and West of England, 
all over Ireland, and in Denmark and the extreme South of 
Sweden. They are hardly found at all in Central Kurope, and 
from their distribution along the Western coast exclusively, it 
seems to show that the Neolithic people who erected them were, 
to some extent, a sea-faring people, or else migrated along a tract 
of country now submerged, which skirted the West of Europe, 
whilst prevented by the then existing physical conditions from 
going far into the interior. . 
The facts seem to point to Northern Africa as the original 
home of these people; had they been a sea-faring race they 
would naturally have spread themselves round the coasts of the 
Mediterranean before venturing into the Atlantic, but this does 
not appear to have been the case. 
It is certain that the coast-line and climate of Europe have 
