A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



with Phallism, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Cornish stone 

 circles may in part have owed their origin to some far away echo of this 

 ancient worship. 



Questions of date and authorship are closely connected, and if we 

 knew the one we could arrive at the other. Sir Norman Lockyer and 

 Mr. W. Gowland have lately (1901) been exploring Stonehenge, and by 

 different routes they have arrived at a very similar conclusion, viz. that 

 Stonehenge may be dated from 2000 B.C. to 1680 B.C. Mr. Gowland 

 considers it to be of late Neolithic Age, and explorations lately carried out 

 at Arbor Low Circle, Derbyshire, have led to the belief that that monu- 

 ment also dates from late Neolithic times. At Stonehenge the barrows 

 around and at Arbor Low the barrow constructed out of the bank are of the 

 Bronze Age, but the circles are thought to be earlier than this. It by no 

 means follows that our stone circles are of the same age ; they may be 

 earlier or they may be later ; we have, in fact, nothing to fix their date 

 by except their relationship to the neighbouring huts and barrows. 

 The round circles, the round huts, and the round barrows are, on the face 

 of them, of the same period and that the Bronze Age, but this super- 

 ficial resemblance may be illusory and the circles may be of an earlier, 

 Neolithic Age. If the circles, huts, and barrows were contemporaneous, 

 it follows that the men who lived in the huts and were buried in the 

 barrows, almost certainly Celts, were also the authors of the stone circles. 

 If however the circles are older, then their builders must have been of 

 a pre-Celtic, primitive race. It is not impossible that, seeing how diverse 

 are these monuments in this one county, some may have been the work 

 of a Neolithic, pre-Celtic people, and others the work of the Celts, with, 

 it may be, different objects and uses. 



What those objects were is, for all our speculations, still hidden. 

 We shall perhaps agree with Dr. Borlase that ' it may with great 

 probability be asserted that . . . having for the most part been dedi- 

 cated to Religion, [they] naturally became afterwards the Curice and Fora 

 of the same Community.' Or we may copy the caution of an earlier 

 writer, Norden, and say : ' This monumente seemeth to importe an 

 intention of the memoriall of some matter . . . thowgh time haue 

 worne out the maner.' 



NOTE 



Since the above article was written Sir Norman Lockyer, K.C.B., F.R.S., has been 

 investigating the position and surroundings of certain Cornish circles, and has traced ' sight- 

 lines ' which are thought to have had reference to particular stars at remote periods ; articles 

 on these researches have appeared in Nature, 19056, but as they are still more or less sub 

 judice this brief mention will suffice. A committee of the British Association has, through 

 Mr. St. George Gray of Taunton, recently pursued explorations at Stripple Stones, though so 

 far without much result. 



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