United States or South Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A vast period of time, countless centuries, indeed, have passed away since the close of the Paleolithic epoch. The burghs, NURHAGS, and CASTELLIERI show the progress of civilization, and at the same time prove that this progress extended throughout Europe, and that at a time not so very far removed from our own.
Diodorus Siculus considered them very ancient, and one fact has come to light in our day which enables us to arrive at a somewhat more exact decision. Fergusson, who speaks with authority on everything relating to the monuments of the Stone age, assigns the NURHAGS to the mystic times of the Trojan War. In all probability they were built by an invading people.
Some of these stones bore prominences resembling the breasts of a woman. The accumulations of earth and rubbish about the NURHAGS are, some of them, from six to ten feet high.
They are in every case surmounted by a pediment, formed of a single block, and often covered with sculptures dating from different epochs. These sepulchres are certainly of later date than the NURHAGS, and in them have been found numerous implements of bronze, but none of stone. The most remarkable of all of them, that at Torello, near Mahon, is thirty-three feet high.
Count Albert de la Marmora counted three thousand of them a few years ago, and more recent explorers tell us that this number is greatly exceeded. Like the burghs, which they strangely resemble, the NURHAGS are conical towers with very thick walls made of huge stones, some Hewn, others in their natural state, arranged in regular courses without mortar.
According to the point of view of different archaeologists, they have been called temples of the sun, hermitages, phallic monuments, or signal towers. We meet with a similar problem in considering the NURHAGS, as in considering the burghs. They have been justly called a page of history, written all over the surface of Sardinia by an unknown people.
All over the island of Sardinia, side by side with the NURHAGS, rise tombs to which have been given the name of SEPOLTURE DEI GIGANTI. They are from thirty-two to thirty-nine feet long by a nearly equal width, and are built,. some of huge slabs of stone, some of stones of smaller size.
The CASTELLIERI of Istria, which the Slavonian peasants call STARIGRAD, are as yet but little known. Doubtless an examination of them will bring out their resemblance to the NURHAGS and TALAYOTI. They are, however, more than mere towers, forming regular ENCEINTES between walls formed of two facings of dry stones, the space between which is filled in with smaller stones.
The BURGHS of Scotland, the NURHAGS of the island of Sardinia, the TALAYOTI of the Balearic Isles, the CASTELLIERI of Istria, are all ancient witnesses of the modes of building employed in the most remote ages. BURGHS, BROCKS, or BROUGHS are numerous in Scotland, and also in the islands of the Atlantic.
We can compare them to nothing but the Towers of Silence, on which the Parsees expose their dead to the birds of heaven, which are ever ready rapidly to acquit themselves of their melancholy functions. The origin of the NURHAGS is as uncertain as their use.
Word Of The Day