186 



STATUE-MENHIRS. 



mean, as some authorities would have us believe, that the 

 vases we find were themselves carried immense distances for 

 the purpose of barter, but rather that individual specimens 

 spread along the trade routes from the Mediterranean to the 

 Baltic, and from Spain to the British Isles, and were copied 

 by local potters. This form of vase is but one of many 

 objects that can be traced to an Eastern prototype. A 

 curious type of vase with one handle and a slanting lip found 

 by Schliemann at Hissarlik has also been discovered at 

 Phrcstos, Crete, and in Sardinia. Another very distinctive 

 form with a stem, of rather later date, has been found at 

 Abydos, Egypt, at Knossos, Crete, at Ei Algar in the pro- 

 vince of Almeria, Spain, and in Bohemia, but nowhere else in 

 Europe. It would take too long to enumerate all the various 

 forms of pottery or of typical patterns of weapons and orna- 

 ments which can be traced to a similar origin; it is only 

 necessary to mention the two and four-handled vases of the 

 early Bronze Age, also found distributed over the Mediter- 

 ranean basin and all over Western Europe, and the curious 

 spiral decorations, and that of two eyes, found on pottery at 

 Hissarlik in the ruins of the II city, in Spain, France, 

 England, and even as far north as Scandinavia. 



It is most difficult to explain the reason why we should 

 find these statue-menhirs in Guernsey when none are to be 

 found in Brittany, as in other respects, in the similarity of the 

 forms of our dolmens, in the forms and patterns of the pottery 

 found in them, and also in the funeral customs of our primitive 

 inhabitants, we have, we may say, proof of the affinity of our 

 culture in Neolithic times with that of Brittany. Further, in 

 the distinctly Breton type of the bronze implements found in 

 our islands, we have also proof of the continuation of this 

 intercourse in the succeeding Bronze Age. 



The spread of the cult of this divinity from Spain and 

 the French Mediterranean littoral through Herault, Gard, 

 Aveyron and Tarn on to the valleys of the Marne and the Seine 

 and Oise may be accounted for as they lie on the trade route 

 with the North. Its presence in our island is more difficult to 

 explain. Dechelette maintains that a maritime trade already 

 existed in late Neolithic times between Spain and the British 

 Isles, and that proof of the extension of this trade in the early 

 Bronze Age may be gathered from the fact that more 

 u cachettes de fondeurs " containing the earliest form of 

 bronze axe have been found on the western coasts of France, 

 than in any other part of that country. This being correct 

 then this idol may have reached us through this channel. Or, 



