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Updated: May 13, 2025
Captain Congreve, after describing the cairns with their rows of stones ranged in circles, the kistvaens or dolmens, the huge rocks placed erect as at Stonehenge, the barrows hollowed out of the cliffs, declares with undisguised astonishment that there is not a Druidical monument of which he had not seen the counterpart in the Neilgherry Mountains.
Hence we have crypts, kistvaens, and dolmens; and the resemblance between them proves nothing as to the parentage of their builders. We may add that the distances between what we may call megalithic zones is considerable. We meet, for instance, with dolmens in Circassia and in the Crimea, but there are no others nearer than the Baltic.
It is hard to estimate how many valuable antiquities have been similarly destroyed by carelessness and ignorance; but such ruin has been more often suffered by stone monuments, longstones, kistvaens, snatched for use as gate-posts and walls by heedless farmers and builders. About two miles inland from Pentewan is Heligan, a very fine estate, whose gardens display rare subtropical vegetation.
The great cairn of Dowth, in Ireland, contained iron knives and rings mixed with bone needles, copper pins, and glass and amber beads, all showing rapid progress in the industrial arts. The tumuli of the Grand Duchy of Posen and those of Prussia cover kistvaens containing funeral vases, weapons, and silver and gold ornaments.
But coming nearer to Northern legend, the cromlechs and kistvaens which abound over Southern India are believed to have been built by a dwarf race, a cubit high, who could, nevertheless, move and handle the huge stones easily. Mr.
In Brittany and in Scotland these cup-like sculptures are found on rocks and menhirs, on the walls of sepulchral chambers, on stones forming the sides of KISTVAENS, accompanied in many instances with radiated circles, which do not, however, help us to understand them better.
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