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Updated: June 5, 2025
Broca "noticed the perforation in four and a half per cent. of the arm-bones collected in the 'Cimetiere du Sud, at Paris; and in the Grotto of Orrony, the contents of which are referred to the Bronze period, as many as eight humeri out of thirty-two were perforated; but this extraordinary proportion, he thinks, might be due to the cavern having been a sort of 'family vault. Again, M. Dupont found thirty per cent. of perforated bones in the caves of the Valley of the Lesse, belonging to the Reindeer period; whilst M. Leguay, in a sort of dolmen at Argenteuil, observed twenty-five per cent. to be perforated; and M. Pruner-Bey found twenty-six per cent. in the same condition in bones from Vaureal.
A still more curious subterranean chapel is near Plouaret, in Cotes-du- Nord. It is, in fact, a prehistoric dolmen under a tumulus, on top of which a chapel was erected in 1702-4. The descent into the crypt is by a flight of steps.
Father Raphael Rodrigues, of that place, asked Father Brenha to excavate with him in the Christmas holidays of 1894. They published some of their discoveries in magazines, and some of the finds were welcomed by Dr. They dug in the remote and not very cultured Transmontane province, and, in one dolmen found objects "the most extraordinary possible," says Father Brenha.
The dolmens, which are of carefully chosen flat blocks showing no trace of work, are all rectangular in plan, and usually consist of four side-walls and a cover-slab. The finest of all, however, the dolmen of Fontanaccia, has seven blocks supporting the cover, one at each short end, three in one of the long sides, and two in the other. None of the dolmens are covered by mounds.
The dolmen served as a crypt to the church, and from it have been recovered objects in stone and copper of a prehistoric period. The Bretons have a ballad, Gwerz, concerning the former monument. It is a miraculous structure dating from the Creation of the World: "Who will doubt that it was built by the hand of the Almighty? You ask me when and how it was constructed.
The Celtic dolmen and cromlech, the Etruscan tumulus, the Hebrew galgal, are words. Some, especially the tumulus, are proper names. Sometimes even, when men had a great deal of stone, and a vast plain, they wrote a phrase. The immense pile of Karnac is a complete sentence. At last they made books.
So I said I would walk round the fire and see what I could find, and went before he could stay me. I had not far to go either, for there were plentiful remains of a roasted sheep or two set aside with the skins, and alongside them a pot of heather ale; so that we had a good meal, sitting in the door of the dolmen, while the moon rose. But first we tried to make Harek drink of the strong ale.
I let go, and swung round and smote my other holder across the face; and he too let go, and I was free, and in the uproar the dancers knew not what had happened. Smiting and kicking, I got clear of them, and saw that the dolmen towered across the fire, and straightway I knew that through the smoke was the only way. I leaped at it, and cleared it fairly, felling a man on the other side as I did so.
The dolmen also existed in China in very early times, but had been replaced by a chamber of finished masonry not later than the ninth century B.C. In the Korean peninsula the dolmen with a megalithic roof is not uncommon, and the sepulchral pottery bears a close resemblance to that of the Yamato tombs.
When so summoned, the Kurumba must pass the night by the dolmens alone, and I have seen one who had been called from his present dwelling for the morning ceremony, sitting after dark on the capstone of a dolmen, with heels and hams drawn together and chin on knees, looking like some huge ghostly fowl perched on the mysterious stone." Mr. Anthrop.
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