NO. 6 GREAT STONE MONUMENTS FEWKES 7 



ograms and Scandinavian runes are well known, but no North Ameri- 

 can tribe erected a monolith or independently invented a system of 

 writing. In the majority of cases the most perfect monoliths, like the 

 obelisk and colossus, in the New World as well as the Old, bear 

 hieroglyphics. 1 



We find at various places in the old and new continents monoliths 

 arranged in alignment or rectangular or circular forms which were 

 connected with solar or stellar ceremonies. These combinations 

 bear various names, being known in the New World as Indian 



Fig. i. — Portion of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England, from Lockyer. 



enclosures, ball courts, or corrals ; while in the Old World they are 

 called dolmens, menhirs, and cromlechs. 



Columns or pillars supporting roofs of buildings, which are so 

 common in sacred architectural constructions, are regarded as mono- 

 liths related to those commemorative or religious forms we are con- 

 sidering. 2 In the same architectural category are huge stone blocks 



1 The association of writing with monoliths is one aspect of a general truth, 

 already mentioned, that the latter almost universally occur in localities where 

 there are evidences of a great antiquity of man. 



2 This theory would consider the columns of Greek temples as morphologic- 

 ally upright stones surrounding a sacred enclosure, rather than homologues 

 of wooden piles of archaic pile dwellings, as taught by Sarasin. 



