A STUDY OF PREHISTOKIC ANTHEOPOLOGY. 625 



(12) Dolmen of Maue Lud, at Loclimariaquer. Opeuiug south. 



(13) Dolmen (with tumulus) of Kercaclo, Plouharnel, SSE. 



(14) Tumulus of Pornic, Loire-Inferieure, in the upper right-hand corner. This 

 contains several dolmens opening in different directions. A opens to the east. B 

 aud C to the southwest. D to the north. E and F in ruins. 



It is believed that the interments were made continuously in the same 

 sepulcher (as is done partially in our own vaults), a practice which pre- 

 vails to a certain extent in the country to the present day. When the 

 dolmen or tomb became full, the skeletons could have been taken out 

 and deposited in an ossuary. 



It was once the fashion to speak of these monuments as having be- 

 longed to the Druids. This seems to have been a tradition that has 

 grown up within historic times and long after the Druids had passed 

 away. The dolmens belonged as well to the age of bronze as to that 

 of polished stone. Incineration and inhumation were both customary, 

 but the former method pertains more to the bronze age. 



There are about thirty-five hundred dolmens in France. They are 

 plentiful in the center, south, and west, but rarer in the north and east ; 

 plentiful in Great Britain and Ireland, in Spain and Portugal, in Den- 

 mark and Sweden ; some in Belgium and Holland, the Rhine country, 

 and Western Germany; none in Norway; almost none in Italy; none 

 in Eastern Europe. The city of Dresden marks about the dividing 

 longitudinal line. They are found on the coast of Northern Africa be- 

 tween Morocco and Tripoli, in Palestine, in Asia, in South and Central 

 America, but not in North America. 



Many of the dolmens are now covered with earth, and these have 

 t)een called tumili. It is believed by those best qualified to judge, after 

 the longest experience and closest examination, that all have been at 

 one time so covered. One reason for this belief is that it is universal 

 to find the gallery, corridor, or covered way made of the same kind of 

 stones in the same way, on the same level, and leading from the prin- 

 cipal chamber, gradually narrowing in both width and height to what 

 would appear to have been the circumference of the tumulus. In this 

 regard the dolm; n now without a tumulus corresponds exactly with 

 those covered by one. Some (»f these corridors are 40 aud 50 feet 

 in length. In this way the tomb could be covered, the monument com- 

 pleted, and yet the entrance be easily opened and entered upon tlie 

 occasion of a second or subsequent interment. 



The covering of these tumuli consists of layers of broken granite alter- 

 nated with layers of clay and mud from the seashore and vegetable 

 igarth from the neigboring surface. 



The tumulus of Gav'r Inis has a dolmen remarkable for the sculj)- 

 iturings. It is 8 feet by 7, 5 feet 8 inches high, with a corridor or 

 ;alley 14 feet long, 4 feet 6 inches wide ; 5 feet 4 inches high, while the 

 (tumulus crowning it is 180 feet in diameter and was 30 feet high, (See 

 Plate xcvi.) 

 ICumiac at Arzon is 100 feet in diameter and 65 feet high ; Mani-r- 

 H. Mis. 142, pt. 2 40 



