Chapter 4 THE PROSPECTORS

IN many parts of the world there are to be found monuments of rough, unhewn stones, sometimes rudely shaped by hammering, which from the size of the stones used have been termed megalithic monuments.[126] These consist of burial chambers, either a simple slab or capstone supported on four or more uprights, or a similar but more complex chamber, approached by a stone-lined passage. Other monuments consist of circles or alignments of standing stones, or single stones only set in an upright position.

There are many types; some, like the dolmen or simplest burial chamber, or the simple standing stone, are widely distributed, while others have a restricted range. One type of elaborate temple is found only in Malta and in the adjacent island of Gozo.[127] Such monuments have these features in common: the stones are large, they have not been hewn with chisels or axes, and they are orthostatic or set on end.

Frequently associated with these megalithic monuments are other structures, which are believed to belong to the same culture, though the association is not so clearly established. Such are bee-hive huts, round towers, and dry walls with polygonal masonry. These are often found in close association with the erections of larger stones, but not infrequently where true megalithic structures are absent.[128]

An attempt has been made to show that the dolmen originated in Egypt, and is closely connected with the mastaba, the tomb used throughout the earliest dynasties.[129] Elsewhere I have endeavoured to show that there are reasons why we cannot attribute the origin of these structures to the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, and that the resemblances may better be explained by supposing that the idea of the former was introduced into Egypt, perhaps at the beginning of the second predynastic period, from some region, such as Syria, where dolmens were known, or else that both had been derived from a common ancestry.[130]

It has been suggested by some inquirers that the fashion of erecting such megalithic monuments of orthostatic blocks arose at one time and in one place, and was carried by degrees from centre to centre until it reached many widely scattered regions between Ireland and Polynesia.[131] It is not suggested that this culture, with which has been associated many others, such as terrace cultivation, irrigation, the use of conch shells and a number of others, was carried to all these places simultaneously or even within the same millennium, nor is it asserted that the people who introduced it to these widely scattered regions were of necessity the same. The idea may, I think, be better expressed by saying that a cult or religion became widely disseminated at an early date, that it developed many varieties in the regions in which it took root, and that these regions often became in time fresh centres for dissemination. Thus it might happen that a daughter cult might ultimately become spread through part of the region in which the parent cult had arisen. A parallel may be drawn from the spread of Christianity, especially in these islands. The new faith reached Britain during the period of the Roman occupation and thence spread to Ireland; later, when it had disappeared from the former, it passed from Ireland to Iona and thence back to England.

We need not discuss the whole of this hypothesis, which is concerned with a much wider area than the lands we are considering. One of the most essential features, however, of this interesting thesis is that the people, whoever they were, who spread the cult of megalithic monuments and allied practices, were travelling in search of gold, silver, copper, tin, amber and pearls; they were, in fact, merchants in search of precious and easily portable commodities.

Now Perry,[132] who has specially worked at this part of the hypothesis, maintains that megalithic monuments are invariably found in association with metalliferous deposits, amber coasts and pearl fisheries, and he has produced maps which appear at first sight very convincing. A careful examination of his megalith map shows that he has copied that of Fergusson, published in 1872,[133] and which represents far less accurately the distribution of these monuments than does that published by Colonel A. Lane-Fox in 1869.[134] Neither of these maps, however, gives us a really reliable summary of the facts. Much work has been done on this subject since these maps were produced, many fresh areas have been added, and two at least have been deducted; but no one has recently attempted to make a map of the European megaliths, or those of any country except Holland.[135] The French anthropologists have made a list of the dolmens in France, and published a summary giving the number noted in each department,[136] a catalogue of the British megaliths is in process of formation.

Wherever it has been possible to test it with sufficient accuracy, we find that Perry's contention is substantially true, and that there is a definite relation between many areas rich in megalithic structures and deposits of metal which are known to have been worked in early days; the megalithic areas of the Baltic coincide fairly well with the coasts producing amber. Nevertheless there are many spots, rich in metals, and which are known or suspected to have been worked in early days, where megaliths, have not hitherto been noted, and on the other hand, dolmens and other such structures occur, sometimes with great frequency, in areas devoid of metals or other precious commodities. The problem is not quite so simple as it would appear from Perry's account.

Still, looking at the matter broadly in the light of information available at present, it does seem that, in western Europe at any rate, the megalithic monuments cluster thickest in or around those regions which produced gold, copper, tin and amber, and which were readily accessible to maritime traffic, and that they coincide very closely with the lines of trade which I described in the last chapter. The exceptions, too, are not destructive to the hypothesis. In the British Isles we find that the megaliths in the main coincide with the metalliferous areas, though in some cases more closely with lead ores than with the metals previously mentioned. As lead does not seem to have been used in north-west Europe before 1000 B.C., these monuments must, if any connection be implied, date from a much later period than that which we are discussing. But a large number of megalithic structures are found in the region surrounding Salisbury Plain and in certain parts of the Cotswolds. These are some of those open chalk and limestone areas already mentioned, which were the early centres of population in this country. As we have seen, certain trade routes to Ireland seem to traverse these regions, and here the merchants would have obtained their supplies of food for the rest of their journey; it would not surprise us, therefore, if they introduced their cult here, and that these populous areas formed fresh centres of dispersion.

The long barrows of Wiltshire and the Cotswold areas, and the same is probably true of those in South Wales, have been thought by some Scandinavian arch?ologists to be closely related to the types peculiar to the Baltic region. Dr. Knut Sterjna[137] believed that the English chambered long barrows represented a stage in the evolution from the dolmens to the chambered barrows (sépultures à galerie) of Denmark and Sweden. The stone circles, which are conspicuous in the Salisbury plain area, are absent in France, and seem to have originated by the Baltic. It would seem, then, that some at any rate of our English megaliths were introduced, not so much by merchants coming from the south as by those adventurers who came later from the Baltic region, some of whom we have seen passed across this country to the port at Warrington.

In France, too, though megaliths are more numerous and finer in the Morbihan, where we have seen that tin and gold were found, than elsewhere in that country, yet they cluster thickly in Finistère, and in a curved line from that department to the Mediterranean coast near Narbonne.[138] The occurrence of so many megaliths in Finistère and the adjoining departments may be due to the need of the early traders to take refuge in the inlets of that region, while endeavouring to round the dangerous promontory. That they did so not infrequently is shown by the occurrence near these inlets of numerous hoards of bronze implements, most of which date from the time which we are discussing.[139]

The band across the country clusters most thickly just north-east of the line, running through the Carcassone gap, now followed by the canal du midi. This seems to indicate that a land route through the pass was in use at this time, as a safer alternative to rounding the Iberian peninsula by sea. From this line the cult seems to have spread north-eastwards, though these monuments grow scarcer the further we leave this line.

Lastly, there are certain islands in which these monuments are found, which do not seem to have produced any wealth of the type required, notably Sardinia and Malta. We have also an isolated group near Taranto. It seems probable that such islands, and points en route with good harbours like Taranto, would have been convenient points of call to these traders, as Tarentum was afterwards to the Ph?nician and Greek merchants. Here, and perhaps too at Syracuse, they may well have had dep?ts, but from the wealth of its megalithic monuments we may well believe that Malta was the base of operations for the western and northern trade. Here we have a small island, very isolated and with excellent ports, with a population primitive and docile; such a spot would be a safe dep?t in which to collect and store valuable merchandise, until it was convenient to ship it through the more traversed and perhaps pirate-infested seas of the east. Thus, though there are more exceptions to his rule than Perry would lead us to suspect, these exceptions do not seem to weaken his hypothesis, but rather help to prove the rule.

Now in Britain and the north generally these monuments, or at any rate some of them such as dolmens and long barrows, are believed to date from the neolithic age, albeit from its latest phases; nevertheless there are instances in Scandinavia and Brittany of the discovery of copper tools and gold beads in these tombs.[140] Further south the evidence of metal in association with them is clearer, but in Malta the only bronze implements discovered, the hoard found in 1915 in the temple of Hal Tarxien,[141] had been deposited above three feet of silt which had accumulated on the temple floor. This at first sight seems to militate against the theory that these structures were the tombs and temples of miners.

I do not think, however, that these facts are necessarily fatal to the hypothesis. In the first instance it is probable that gold and amber were the objects of search, and these were probably to a large extent exported. For a long time metal implements must have been rare in these regions, and the people might well have hesitated to bury them with their dead. The tools of metal were modern and new-fangled, while burial customs are singularly conservative, as we can see at any English funeral. For centuries and millennia it had been customary to bury with the corpse weapons of stone for use in the next world; what kind of a reception would the deceased have had on his arrival with a metal instrument? It would have been a great risk, which was seldom if ever taken. In matters of burial and religion, which are in fact one, the older course is safer, and so these people, even after metal was known, continued to bury stone implements with their dead, just as Joshua circumcised the Israelites with flint knives.[142] The temples of Malta, too, were erected without the use of metal tools, as was Solomon's temple,[143] and it is probable that while this cult lasted no metal object might be taken within the shrine. It was only after Hal Tarxien had been deserted, and its floor covered with three feet or more of dust, that traders in bronze, or perhaps pirates, who knew not the ancient cult, ventured to bury their treasure in the desolated sanctuary.

In a recent paper Mr. Thurlow Leeds has suggested that the dolmen originated in the Iberian peninsula, in the basin of the Tagus, and thence spread throughout west Europe.[144] The first type he believes to have been polygonal with a short gallery of approach, lined with large stones, and this gallery seems, from his plans, to have been somewhat in the nature of an antechamber. He further shows that such primitive dolmens are derived from cave tombs, found in the neighbouring region, and in these caves the antechamber seems more apparent. More recently[145] he has compared these early dolmens with certain rock-cut tombs at Castellucio near Syracuse, though, if I understand him aright, he would derive the Sicilian tombs from those in Portugal. Taking all the facts into consideration it seems more likely that the Iberian caves and dolmens are derived from the rock-cut tombs of south-east Sicily.

As to the date of this trade we can say little with certainty at present. We have seen that objects have been found in Spain which seem to point to a connection with Hissarlik II. In the temple of Hal Tarxien in Malta were found certain carved stones with a double spiral ornament[146], which exactly resemble some in the Syracuse museum, which had closed some of the rock-cut tombs near that city.[147] These tombs have been relegated by Signor Orsi to the period he calls Siculan I., and to this period belong the rock-cut tombs at Castellucio, in one of which was found several pieces of carved ivory, which closely resemble a piece found in Hissarlik II[148]. This city was founded about 2500 B.C., or perhaps some centuries earlier, and seems to have been sacked about 2225 B.C.[149] The trade then which we are discussing must have taken place during the latter half of the third millennium B.C., and in the light of the Babylonian tablet already quoted may well have begun some centuries earlier. How soon the trade and the megalith cult passed on from Spain to Brittany and thence to Ireland and the Baltic is uncertain, though it becomes difficult to fit in all the successive cultures unless we postulate that megalithic monuments were known in Denmark and the south of Sweden as early as 2400 or 2500 B.C.[150]; in Brittany a still earlier date seems to be needed. We may then suggest tentatively that the Atlantic trade began before the close of the first half of the third millennium.

All this seems to indicate that the rock-cut tomb with an antechamber, the fore-runner of the dolmen, came from Asia; the antechamber also occurs in the Egyptian mastaba. Professor Elliot Smith believes that this structure, and the use of the antechamber, developed in Egypt,[151] but of this I do not feel confident. It may well have been introduced into that land from the north-east by his Giza folk. If these may be identified, as I think they may, with Newberry's people, who introduced wheat and the second pre-dynastic culture, we must postulate the use of rock-cut tombs with antechambers in Syria before 4000 B.C. Rock-cut tombs and dolmens, dating from before and just after the discovery of metal, are not uncommon in some parts of this region.[152]

Some years ago Professor Fleure was engaged in a detailed survey of the physical characters of the present inhabitants of Wales, and the results of this inquiry were published in 1916.[153] Among the many types noted was one which is of special interest in this connection. He describes it as: "powerfully built, often intensely dark, broad-headed, broad-faced, strong and square jawed men characteristic of the Ardudwy coast, the south Glamorgan coast, the Newquay district (Cardiganshire), Pencaer in north Pembrokeshire, and other places."[154] He states in another place; "We found our dark, stalwart, broad-headed men on certain coastal patches, often curiously associated with megaliths in Wales."[155] Later on he states that a similar type has been noted in Ireland, about Wicklow, in South Devon, and perhaps Cornwall, in the gulf of Saint Brieuc, around Narbonne, in the Asturias and around Oviedo, on the Andalusian coast from Motril to Moguer, in the gulf of Salerno and thence past the gulf of Taranto to Bari, on the Adriatic.[156]

It will thus be seen that this type appears to occur in just those regions in which megaliths and traces of early mining have been found. The inference Fleure has drawn is that in some way these people were connected with the ancient trade we have been discussing.[157] Though I cannot find that he has published the fact, Fleure has told me that he has noted the type in many of our commercial centres, especially in sea-port towns. It is not uncommon in Liverpool, especially in shipping circles.

Some years previous to the publication of Fleure's paper I had noted in Athens, in the restaurant at which I usually lunched, a type which I was unable to place among those described by Ripley. I noted, too, that they looked prosperous and were evidently well-off. Early in 1914 I noted the same type in Alexandria, especially common among the successful Greek cotton merchants. Both these occurrences puzzled me until in 1916 Fleure's paper seemed to offer an explanation. I then remembered having noted the same type in Venice and Florence, and among the portraits in both those cities of successful merchants of the renaissance; it also occurred to me that the type could often be seen in London, especially in the city.

When it became clear that here was a type, not recognised or described by any previous anthropologist, and one, moreover, with a rather unusual distribution, it was felt that it should receive a name, which should identify it neither with any people past or present, nor with any language, for such equations would inevitably lead to confusion, nor with any place or country, for its place of origin was uncertain. Since the distribution of the type seemed to be in maritime trading centres, or else in those areas which were connected with ancient mining or trade, it was felt that this type must have been associated with these enterprises. Taking therefore a name, commonly used in America and in our colonies for those who go out to search for gold or other precious metals, we decided to term them "Prospectors," and by this name they will now be called.

Constant observations since made on people of this type have shown us that they are remarkably clever, especially at money making, and that they engage more in trade than in manufacture, and that their trade is commonly in oversea commodities, when it is not in money itself. The type seems intermediate between that of the Mediterranean and of the Alpine, and suggests a cross, but the great stature which is sometimes, though not invariably, found among them suggested that the cross was probably between the Mediterranean and the eastern Alpine or Anatolian type, rather than with the short and stumpy western Alpine. It was felt that they had reached the west and north from somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean region,[158] as had in all probability the cult of megalithic monuments, and certainly the knowledge of metals. Further than this it was not possible to trace them.

Now, as has already been noted, the Prospector type has been noticed not uncommonly in Florence, both among the present population and in the fifteenth century portraits. A glance at some of the pictures on the Etruscan tombs,[159] and the portrait statuettes on the alabaster sarcophagi, shows us a type corresponding very closely to Fleure's description.

The Etruscans are a mysterious people, and various views which have been expressed as to their origin have led to no little confusion of thought. Leaving out of account such evidence as may have come down from the neolithic and early bronze ages, we find, according to tradition, that the Etruscans arrived from Asia Minor, probably in the eleventh century B.C., or perhaps a little later.[160] About 800 B.C. we have arch?ological evidence of the arrival of another people from the north, who settled near Bologna, where they developed a culture known as that of Villa-Nova. The Etruscans and the Villa-Nova people certainly exchanged products, and may have to some extent amalgamated. Later traditions suggest that the Etruscans extended their empire over the Villa-Nova area and to the south as well,[161] but this, while true in one sense, may give a very wrong impression.

I would suggest that the Etruscans proper, the Etruscus obesus of the Latin writers, were the people who so closely resemble our Prospectors, and the fact that they are said to have come from the east, agrees well with this view. The Prospectors, wherever we meet them, are merchants and business men, and not the kind of men to lead warlike expeditions, or to bring all Italy within their empire. On the other hand, as I hope to show in subsequent chapters, the men responsible for the Villa-Nova culture were a warlike, conquering type, given to imperial expansion, and it is far more likely that if one or other were the conqueror it would be the men of Villa-Nova.

That such was the case seems to be indicated by the frescoes in a tomb, a copy of which is on view in the garden of the Etruscan museum at Florence. In these we find depicted a country house, with domestic scenes, and a portrait of the owner, a fair man with a narrow face, blue eyes and brown beard, wearing a fox-skin head-dress. This man is totally unlike the Etruscus obesus of most of the other tomb paintings, and seems to be of that fair Nordic type, which, as I hope to show, formed the ruling caste, at any rate, of the Villa-Nova people. It seems probable, too, that the bodies buried in the Regulini-Galassi and other warrior tombs were also of this type.[162] All this seems to suggest that the Villa-Nova people at one time conquered Etruria, then extended their empire as far south as Naples and Pompeii. The Etruscan prospectors would not have been averse to this extension of the dominions of their war-lords, as their trade was doubtless increased thereby.

But it may be argued that megalithic monuments are not to be found in Tuscany, though it was once said that this was the case.[163] This, of course, is true, but the Etruscans are believed not to have entered Italy until after 1100 B.C., when such erections were in most places obsolete. Some of the earliest of the Etruscan tombs, however, look as though they had developed from the dolmen form,[164] though they are made of well-wrought stone, rock-cut tombs are of common occurrence, and dry polygonal walling, which, as we have seen, often occurs in megalithic areas, is not uncommon,[165] and there is a very fine example of this work at Fiesole.

Morris Jastrow junior,[166] in studying the religion of Babylonia, was struck with certain resemblances between the religious practices of that country and those in vogue in Etruria. Here I will only mention three points: the Sumerians, like the Etruscans, lived in city states; the Sumerians were governed by priestly magistrates known as Patesi, while the Etruscans had similar officials called Lucumons; lastly both peoples were addicted to the practice of hepatoscopy, or the art of divining by means of sheeps' livers, and made models of the livers to aid their students. Such models have been found in Sumer and Etruria, and nowhere else except at Boghaz Keui, on the Halys, the ancient capital of the Hittites.

Relatively few sculptured figures of the Sumerians have come down to us, but those which have been found show us a sturdy people, not very tall, short in the neck and with broad heads,[167] and some of the Etruscan tomb paintings resemble fairly closely some of the Sumerian reliefs.[168] Besides this some of the small statuettes brought by M. de Morgan from Susa,[169] show us heads which bear a close resemblance to those found on the Etruscan alabaster sarcophagi. It is a far cry from Etruria to Sumer, but tradition brings the Etruscans from Asia Minor, and Boghaz Keui may have been an intermediate station, though probably not the only one. But we have seen that the Babylonians were engaged in trading for tin in the Mediterranean region in 2800 B.C., so that it is not altogether impossible that the Prospectors may have come in the first instance from the Persian gulf, where they had been known as Sumerians, though it is, of course, possible that the Prospector was not the only element of that population.

A very natural reply to such a suggestion is that megalithic monuments do not occur in Sumer, or, as I should prefer to state it, have not yet been observed near the Persian gulf. Such absence is not, however, fatal to our hypothesis. As we have seen it seems likely that the dolmen is derived from the rock-cut tomb, and such tombs, and dolmens too, occur in Syria. As yet we know little about the tombs of Mesopotamia before 3000 B.C., and still less of their contents; we may yet find in that region some sepulchre, perhaps built of sun-dried brick, perhaps of slabs of stone, which bears a closer resemblance to the dolmen than does the Egyptian mastaba.

The contention is that several lines of evidence point to the Sumerians, or certain groups of them, as being the traders who travelled the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast of Europe in search of precious metals, and who are somehow responsible for the spread of the megalithic culture. Now, as we have seen, the Prospector is normally a merchant, we do not find him as a rule among miners and sailors, yet sailors must have accompanied these expeditions, and perhaps skilled miners also in some cases. It may be that the cult of the dolmen, or the rock-cut tomb which preceded it, belonged to one or other of these humbler peoples, perhaps recruited from the coast of Syria. Or it may be, again, that the Prospector, being unable to bury his dead after the fashion customary by the Persian Gulf, devised another plan more convenient for use in strange lands. The latter is, I am inclined to think, the more likely solution, since dolmens and other megalithic structures are found all round Sumer, in Syria and Palestine to the west[170], in the Crimea and the Caucasus.[171] Stone circles are found to the east in Seistan[172], while both these and dolmens occur further east in India.

Time will show whether the suggestion, which I have put forward, that the Prospectors, who seem to have been responsible for introducing the use of metal into the west and north, to which they came in search of precious ores, started originally from the Persian Gulf, or whether, indeed they were but sojourners in southern Mesopotamia, having arrived there by sea from some more distant land, bringing with them the seeds of civilisation, as the legends of Oannes, the exalted fish-man, as given by Berosus, seem to indicate. [173]

Be this as it may, there seems to be adequate evidence of a trade, starting in the eastern Mediterranean and going first to Malta and Sicily, and thence to Spain, Brittany, the British Isles and the Baltic. That the prime object of such trade was the procuring of gold, copper, tin and amber, seems equally certain, as does the fact that megalithic monuments are found associated with all the sites whence these commodities could be obtained, as well as upon the land routes connecting them. Further, a certain type of man, whom we term the Prospector, is found living in no small numbers in most of these megalithic areas, as well as becoming a successful merchant at many of the sea-port towns of Europe. Lastly we have seen that this trade, then in the hands of Babylonians, had reached the Mediterranean by 2800 B.C., was in touch with Malta, Sicily and Spain between 2600 and 2300 B.C., and scarcely later had reached Brittany, Ireland and the Baltic.

Thus it seems clear that the Prospectors, in search of metal, reached Celtic lands, where their descendants may yet be found. What language they spoke is uncertain; it may have been allied to Etruscan or to Sumerian. But judging from their cosmopolitan habits, one may surmise that they were polyglot, and adopted the language of the country in which they settled. We can, then, hardly expect to detect any survivals of the Prospector tongue in the modern Celtic languages, unless indeed it be some loan words connected with the metal trade.

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