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Contemporary with this later form of dolmen were several other types of tomb. This quickly developed into the true corridor-tomb, which had at first a small round chamber with one or two cover-slabs, a short corridor, and a round or rectangular mound.
Menhir is derived from the Breton men, a stone, and hir, long; similarly dolmen is from dol, a table, and men, a stone. Some archæologists also apply the word dolmen to rectangular chambers roofed with more than one slab. We have carefully avoided this practice, always classing such chambers as corridor-tombs of an elementary type.
It was at one time supposed that the highly specialized form of dolmen found in Japan had no counterpart anywhere on the continent of Asia, but that supposition has proved erroneous. The contents of the sepulchres, however, are more distinctive.
As the night promises to be cold, let me have some strong brandy-and-water, a dozen oatmeal biscuits, a thick rug, and a lantern. Nothing else! "Krantz carried out my instructions to the letter. His motor took me to Dolmen Valley, and at eight o'clock I began the ascent of the hill. On reaching the summit, I uttered an exclamation. 'Someone has been excavating, and quite recently!
Sometimes they took gay donkey-drives to visit a solemn dolmen in a gloomy pine-wood, with mistletoe hanging from the trees, and the ghosts of ancient Druids haunting the spot. The cavalcade on such occasions was an imposing spectacle.
If the dolmen was to be partly or wholly covered with a mound, as some certainly were, it would not even be necessary to remove the slope. Roughly speaking, the extension of megalithic monuments is from Spain to Japan and from Sweden to Algeria. These are naturally merely limits, and it must not be supposed that the regions which lie between them all contain megalithic monuments.
The narrow ends are closed up with smaller slabs, one of which, that which faces north, has a small hole pierced in it. A similar closure slab with a hole is also found in certain rock-tombs quite close to this dolmen. Apparently none of these dolmens have been systematically excavated, and nothing is known of their date. Dolmen with holed stone at Ala Safat.
The most characteristic is a tomb of larger dimensions enclosing a dolmen which contains a coffin hollowed out from the trunk of a tree, or a sarcophagus of stone,* the latter being much more commonly found, as might be expected from its greater durability.
We decorate our graves with flowers as though the dead appreciated them; they are but the representatives of the ancient sacrifice to the dead. We drink to the memory of the deceased as though pouring out libations to them. Our tombstones are direct descendants of the menhir and the obelisk, our altar-tombs of the dolmen, our family vault of the primeval cave ossuary.
The true dolmen is extremely rare in Germany, and only occurs in small groups in particular localities. The corridor-tomb with a distinct chamber is also very exceptional, especially east of the Elbe. The most usual type of megalithic tomb is that known as the Hünenbett or Riesenbett.
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