
NR TRE On ery ee ae et ee o aa a ee eS ee a a re 

1891.] Among the Prehistoric Monuments of Brittany. 889 
transport monoliths weighing more than some of the obelisks of 
Egypt, the great menhir of Lockmariaquer being nearly 68 feet 
long, and weighing 240 tons? Were they genuine Celts? Prof. 
Gabriel de Mortillet says no. “All these primitive monuments 
formerly bore the collective name of Celtic or Druidical monu- 
ments. It was supposed that they were peculiar to the Celts, 
and raised by their priests, the Druids. It is a great error. 
These monuments are found in abundance in regions which have 
never been occupied by the Celts, as Denmark, Spain, Portugal, 
Morocco, Algeria, etc. They are even very probably in greater 
part anterior to the great Celtic invasions ; and if they attracted 
the attention of the Druids, it was only when they were already 
partly in ruins and lying on the surface of the soil” (“La 
Préhistorique Antiquite de Homme,” 1885). 
Cartailhac, in his excellent work on Prehistoric France (1889), 
also says that we must abandon the views of the older archeolo- 
gists, who believed that these were Druidical monuments, and 
should be attributed to the Gallic or Celtic race, or to any single 
race of emigrants from the east. Within twenty years, owing to 
the rapid course of discovery in France, so many dolmens having 
been opened, in which were found the skeletons of different races, 
the tendency among the most experienced French students is, 
with Mortillet, to deny any special ethnic value *to these monu- 
ments. For example, De Quatrefages discovered the bones of 
two races in the same dolmen, and Hamy has demonstrated that 
the population of France was almost as much mixed during 
neolithic times as to-day. Cartailhac concludes that the problem 
of the megalithic monuments is exactly that of the advanced 
civilization of Europe, which even in prehistoric times became 
almost universal, and which is called neolithic. “Did it,” he 
asks, “reach our country with new races or populations ? _ Was 
it spread by contact of one people with another? We have no 
response to make to these questions. The truth is probably 
scattered throughout all systems, and that which is true for one 
country will be inexact in another.” 
All archeologists, however, agree that these monuments were 
erected by the neolithic race or group of races, who used pol- 


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