8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6l 



used in foundations or construction of buildings or monolithic roofs 

 of tombs. The covering of the grave of Theodoric the Great at 

 Ravenna, Italy, is a good example of this type of monolith, as are 

 likewise the huge stones found in buildings in Japan, at Ostia near 

 the mouth of the Tiber, in Peru, and elsewhere. 1 



At this point in a consideration of megalithic structures may be 

 mentioned the almost universal duality of types of buildings among 

 human races, or the deep-seated architectural distinction between 

 sacred edifices and habitations. This difference is primarily due to 

 dissimilarity in origin and use. The hut or habitation has, as a gen- 

 eral thing, no resemblance to a primitive sacred edifice, nor does the 

 home and temple develop along the same lines. One is transient, the 

 other permanent ; one disappears in a generation or two, the other 

 remains unchanged ; one is the product of individual labor, the other 

 of combined racial work governed by religious ideals. Consequently 

 little or nothing is known of the houses of the builders ; we know only 

 their great temples or religious structures. 



As megalithic structures are religious in use it is natural to trace 

 their origin to the same feeling that erected rude stone monuments 

 or monoliths to tombs of the dead, rather than habitations of the liv- 

 ing. Temples and shrines thus belong to a series apart from secular 

 buildings. To them we owe the development of sacred architecture 

 which is primarily a communal expression of religious feeling in the 

 building art. The palace-temple contains rooms for the residences of 

 priests, but still preserves the primary distinction between a habita- 

 tion and a sacred edifice. 



The best known of all megalithic monuments is the famous Stone- 

 henge, in Wiltshire, England, the purpose of which has been variously 



1 So far as size goes some of the circular disks with central holes, from Uap, 

 one of the Caroline Islands, may be called monoliths. These stones have been 

 figured and described by Mr. Wm. H. Furniss, 3d, who thus identifies these as 

 stone coins : " This medium of exchange they call Fei and it consists of large, 

 circular, stone wheels ranging in size from a foot in diameter to twelve feet, and 

 having in the center a hole, varying in size with the diameter of the stone, 

 wherein a pole may be inserted sufficiently strong to bear the weight and to 

 facilitate transportation. These stone coins, if I may so call them, are not made 

 on the island of Uap, but were originally quarried and shaped in the Pelao 

 Islands, four hundred miles to the southward, and then brought to Uap by 

 some venturesome navigators in canoes and on rafts, over seas by no means 

 as pacific as the name implies." (University of Pennsylvania, Trans. Dept. 

 Archseol. Free Museum of Science and Art, Vol. I, 1904-5, p. 53.) 



