United States or Kyrgyzstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Spencer and Gillen, he cannot but know that churinga are not ornaments, are not all oval, but of many shapes and sizes, and that churinga larger than the 9 inch perforated stone from Dumbuck are perforated, and attached to strings. But what I must admire is the amazing luck or learning of Dr. Munro's supposed impostor.
This fact, together with the impossibility of living on a surface that is submerged every twelve hours, and the improbability of any land subsidence having taken place since prehistoric times, or any adequate depression from the shrinkage of the under-structures themselves, compels me to summarily reject the theory that the Dumbuck structure in its present form was an ordinary crannog.
Or the occupants of Dumbuck, on the north side of the river, were Cymri; those of Langbank, on the south side, were Picts. I may at once say that I decline to be responsible for Bede, and his ethnology, but he lived nearer to those days than we do.
Blane's, been found elsewhere in Scotland? The kinds of art, writing, and Celtic ornament, at St. Blane's, are all familiar, but not their presence on scraps of slate. Some of the "art" of the Dumbuck things is also familiar, but not, in Scotland, on pieces of slate and shale.
Munro next describes the disputed things found at Dumbuck. They were analogous to those alleged to have been unearthed at Dunbuie. They were "A number of strange objects like spear-heads or daggers, showing more or less workmanship, and variously ornamented. The stem is perforated with two holes, in one of which there was a portion of an oak pin.
The actual structures of Langbank and Dumbuck, then, are confessedly ancient remains; they are not of the nineteenth century; they are "unique" in our knowledge, and we ask, what was the purpose of their constructors, and what is their approximate date? Dr. Munro quotes and discusses a theory, or a tentative guess of Dr. David Murray.
At Dumbuck the cups occur on a triangular block of sandstone, 14.5 inches long and 4 inches thick. Another cupped block is of 21.5 inches by 16.5. No forger brought these cupped stones in his waistcoat pocket.
My theory of the forger is at the opposite pole from the theory of Dr. Munro. The "manufacturers" were, perhaps, better informed than many of their critics. But, if the things are genuine, more may be found by research in the locality. Dr. Munro is less than kind to the forger in the matter of the "weapons" found at Dunbuie and Dumbuck.
Donnelly, who had been prospecting during two years for antiquities in the Clyde estuary, found at low tide, certain wooden stumps, projecting out of the mud at low water. On August 16, 1898, Dr. Munro, with Mr. I shall here quote Dr. Munro's descriptions of what he himself observed at two visits, of August 16, October 12, 1898, to Dumbuck.
For the present I omit some speculative passages as to the original purpose of the structure. "The so-called Dumbuck 'crannog, that being the most convenient name under which to describe the submarine wooden structures lately discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly in the estuary of the Clyde, lies about a mile to the east of the rock of Dumbarton, and about 250 yards within high-water mark.
Word Of The Day