GREAT STOXE MONUMENTS IN HISTORY AXD 

 GEOGRAPHY * 



By J. WALTER FEWKES 



INTRODUCTION 



A seemingly well defined phase of human culture history, attained 

 independently in localities widely separated geographically, has been 

 designated the megalithic. The dominant racial feeling, religious or 

 cultural, was expressed in this epoch by great commemorative monu- 

 ments constructed of stone and called " monoliths," or, when sculp- 

 tured in life forms as representations of animals, men, and gods, 

 they are termed colossi. 



The close connection, in the mind of primitive man. of culture 

 and religion is preserved in the Latin word cultus, or its English de- 

 rivative, culture, the stimulus for which is desire for improved condi- 

 tion of life in thought and act or a striving for higher ideals, so well 

 brought out in Mr. Matthew Arnold's scholarly essay, " Sweetness 

 and Light." The megalithic epoch expresses objectively a conscious- 

 ness of power and is largely correlated with religious feeling and the 

 cult of the dead. 



This phase in racial history culminated in the later Stone Age. and 

 in some cases lasted long after the discovery of metals, echoes of it 

 appearing sporadically even in the highest civilization. Many races 

 appear not to have had a megalithic epoch in their history ; in others 

 the expression was individual, not racial ; some peoples had not suffi- 

 ciently advanced to have attained it, while others have progressed so 

 far beyond this condition that its very existence is at present known 

 only by monuments ; the names and the races of the builders have 

 passed out of memory, or are unrecorded. 2 



1 Presidential address delivered before the Anthropological Society of Wash- 

 ington, February 20, 1912. This address was accompanied by stereopticon 

 views, only a few of which are here reproduced as illustrations. 



" Since the habit of erecting megalithic structures is of independent origin 

 and not derivative, the age of monoliths varies among different races. While 

 the dynasty in which many of the Egyptian obelisks were erected is known 

 from the inscriptions they bear, no one has yet satisfactorily determined the 

 antiquity of the unworked dolmens and menhirs, nor is it known whether they 

 were erected contemporaneously with obelisks or earlier. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 61, No. 6 



