CHAPTER X 



WHO WERE THE BUILDERS, AND WHENCE 

 DID THEY COME? 



MODERN discussion of the origin of the 

 megalithic monuments may be said to 

 date from Bertrand's publication of the French 

 examples in 1864. In this work Bertrand upheld 

 the thesis that " the dolmens and allees couvertes 

 are sepulchres ; and their origin seems up to the 

 present to be northern." In 1865 appeared Bon- 

 stetten's famous Essai sur les dolmens, in which he 

 maintained that the dolmens were constructed by 

 one and the same people spreading over Europe 

 from north to south. At this time the dolmens of 

 North Africa were still unstudied. In 1867 followed 

 an important paper by Bertrand. In 1872 two 

 events of importance to the subject occurred, the 

 publication of Fergusson's Rude Stone Monuments 

 in All Countries, and the discussion raised at the 

 Brussels Congress by General Faidherbe's paper 

 on the dolmens of Algeria. Faidherbe maintained 

 the thesis that dolmens, whether in Europe or 

 Africa, were the work of a single people moving 

 southward from the Baltic Sea. 



The question thus raised has been keenly de- 



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