ROUGH STONE MONUMENTS 



for the earliest form of structure, the dolmen, 

 occurs in all parts of the area, and if we attempt 

 to date by objects we are met by the difficulty 

 that a dolmen in one place which contained copper 

 might be earlier than one in another place which 

 contained none, copper having been known in 

 the former place earlier than in the latter. 



It still remains to consider the question of the 

 origin of the rock-hewn sepulchre and its relation 

 to the megalithic monument. The rock- tomb 

 occurs in Egypt, Phoenicia, Rhodes, Cyprus, 

 Crete, South Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, Pianosa, 

 the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearic Isles, and 

 France. In all these places there are examples 

 which are certainly early, i.e. belong to the 

 neolithic or early metal age, with the exception of 

 Malta and perhaps Rhodes and Phoenicia. Two 

 types are common, the chamber cut in the vertical 

 face of rock and thus entered from the side, 

 sometimes by a horizontal passage, and the 

 chamber cut underground and entered from a 

 vertical or sloping shaft placed not directly over 

 the chamber, but immediately to one side of it. 

 It is unlikely that these two types have a separate 

 origin, for they are clearly determined by geo- 

 logical reasons. A piece of country where vertical 

 cliffs or faces of rock abounded was suited to the 

 first type, while the other alone was possible when 

 the ground consisted of a flat horizontal surface 



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