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Updated: June 27, 2025
We need not record the existence of dolmens, or table-stones, the remains of burial mounds, which have been washed away by denudation, nor of what the French folk call alignements, or lines of stones, which have suffered like other megalithic monuments. Barrows or tumuli are still plentiful, great mounds of earth raised to cover the prehistoric dead. But many have disappeared.
A remarkable feature of the megalithic tombs is the occurrence in many of them of a small round or rectangular hole in one of the walls, usually an end-wall, more rarely a partition-wall between two chambers. Occasionally the hole was formed by placing side by side two upright blocks each with a semicircular notch in its edge.
The simplest manifestation of megalithic building, the dolmen, was up till lately thought to be absent from Sardinia, but the researches of the last few years have brought to light several examples, of which the best known are those of Birori, where the chamber is approximately circular in plan. The monuments, however, for which Sardinia is most famous are the nuraghi.
The walls of the subterranean galleries of Cissbury bore not only cup-shaped ornaments, strive, and curved or broken lines, recalling those on the megalithic monuments of Scotland and Ireland; but Park Harrison has made out some regular RUNES, or written characters, of which a reproduction was shown at the Paris Exhibition in 1878.
The Spanish Peninsula abounds in megalithic monuments. With the exception of a few menhirs, whose purpose is uncertain, all are sepulchral. Dolmens and corridor-tombs are numerous in many parts, especially in the north-east provinces, in Galicia, in Andalusia, and, above all, in Portugal. There is a fine dolmen in the Vall Gorguina in North-East Spain.
We have already spoken of the calaite found beneath the dolmens of Brittany, and we may add now that it has also been found in the caves of Portugal and beneath the megalithic monuments of the south of France. Commerce developed rapidly during Neolithic times, and, as far as we can make out from traces left, its course was from the southeast to the northwest.
Worlebury is remarkable for having a large number of pits sunk into the ground within its rampart. The remains of megalithic circles occur at Stanton Drew. There are barrows at Stoney Littleton, Dundry, and Priddy. There is a lake-village of the crannog type at Godney. The most interesting Roman remains are at Bath, where a splendid system of baths has been brought to light.
The megalithic race do not seem to have been great traders. This is remarkably exemplified in Malta, where there is not a trace of connection with the wonderful civilization which must have been flourishing so near at hand in Crete and the Ægean at the time when the megalithic temples were built.
Algeria has been far more completely explored, and possesses a remarkable number of megalithic monuments. Many of the finest are situated near the town of Constantine. Thus at Bou Nouara there is a hill about a mile in length which is a regular necropolis of dolmen-tombs. Each grave consists of a dolmen within a circle of stones. The blocks are all natural and completely unworked.
Some writers, however, have argued the existence of extensive trade-relations from the occurrence of a peculiar kind of turquoise called callaïs in some of the megalithic monuments of France and Portugal. The rarity of this stone has inclined some archæologists to attribute it to a single source, while some have gone so far as to consider it eastern in origin.
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