THE BUILDERS 



departments of Aveyron, Tarn, and Herault have 

 been found what are known as menhir-statues, 

 upright pillars of stone roughly shaped into human 

 semblance at the top ; they are of two types, the 

 one clearly female and the other with no breasts, 

 but always with a collar or baldric. 



It has been argued that these figures repre- 

 sent a deity or deities of the megalithic people. 

 Dechelette, comparing what are apparently tattoo 

 marks on a menhir-statue at Saint Sermin (Avey- 

 ron) with similar marks on a figure cut on a 

 schist plaque at Idanha a Nova (Portugal) and 

 on a marble idol from the island of Seriphos in the 

 /Egean, seems inclined to argue that in France 

 and Portugal we have the same deity as in the 

 ^Egean. This seems rather a hazardous con- 

 jecture, for we know that many primitive peoples 

 practised tattooing, and, moreover, it is not 

 certain that the French figures represent deities 

 at all. It is quite as likely, if not more so, that 

 they represent the deceased, and take the place 

 of a grave-stone : this would account for the 

 occurrence of both male and female types. This 

 was almost certainly the purpose of six stones 

 that remain of a line that ran parallel to a now 

 destroyed tomb at Tamuli (Sardinia). Three have 

 breasts as if to distinguish the sex of three of those 

 buried in the tomb. We must not therefore 

 assume that any of the French figures represents 

 a ' dolmen-deity/ 



i39 



