CHAPTER VII

Camps, Fortifications, Vitrified Forts; Santorin; The Towns upon the

Hill of Hissarlik.

Combativeness, to use the language of phrenology, is one of the most

lively instincts of humanity. The Bible tells us of the struggle

between the sons of Adam, and shows us might making right ever

since the days of primeval man. History is but one long account of

wars and conquests, victories or defeats, and progress is chiefly

marked in inventions which made battles more sanguinary and added

to the number of victims slaughtered. At the very dawn of humanity

man learned to make weapons; very soon, however, weapons ceased to

appear sufficient. The first fortification was doubtless the cave,

which its owner strengthened by closing the entrance with blocks of

stone and piles of broken rock, or by digging deep trenches about it.

Population rapidly increased and war was declared between tribe and

tribe, nation and nation, race and race. Terrible must have been

the struggles between invaders and the original possessors of the

soil. Means of defence were multiplied to keep pace with new modes of

attack, and our ancestors of the Stone age were intelligent enough to

make places of refuge in which on necessity they could shelter their

wives and children, and later, when they became sedentary, their flocks

and their stores of grain. In many different localities we find the

remains of camps and fortifications, which, to avoid using a more

ambitious term, we may characterize generally as enclosures.[209]

These primitive enclosures, says Bertrand in his "Archeologie Celtiquc

et Gauloise," may have been very much more numerous than is supposed,

if we include amongst them, as it appears we ought, many ruins long

thought to date from the Roman era.

There is no doubt as to the purpose served by the camps, but we are not

prepared to speak as positively as does Bertrand as to their origin,

and the difficulty of deciding is very greatly increased on account

of these camps having been successively occupied at different epochs

by different peoples. Bearing in mind this reservation, we will now

sum up to the best of our ability all that is so far known about the

most important remains hitherto examined.

The residence of prehistoric man in the rich districts between

the Sambre and the Meuse is proved by worked flints, fragments of

pottery, and human bones dating from most remote times. The stations

successively occupied were situated near watercourses or copious

springs, and, where possible, on isolated escarped plateaux surrounded

by ravines. Hastedon, about a mile and a quarter from Namur, is one

of the best examples we can quote.[210] The camp, first made out in

1865, formed a long square, covering some thirteen hectares, or about

thirty-two acres. It is situated on an isolated mound connected with

the main plateau by an isthmus 227 feet long, and is protected on the

south and west by a deep ravine: To these natural defences men had

added important works to those parts that were accessible. The cutting

of trenches a few years ago brought to light walls of a mean thickness

of more than nine feet, formed of masses of rock and sand and round

pieces of wood parallel with a REVETEMENT of dry stones surmounted

by a palisade consisting of three pieces of wood parallel with the

walls, and seven perpendicular traverses. All the wood was charred;

the besieged had evidently been driven out by fire. Excavations led to

the finding of Roman coins; this and the resemblance of the palisades

to those described by Caesar,[211] the very name of Hastedon, and

the tradition everywhere prevalent in the district, that this bad

been the site of a Gallic Roman camp, led to the general adoption of

that opinion. In fact, Napoleon III. actually ordered excavations

to be made in the hope of finding traces of the Atuatuques, one of

the roost warlike of the tribes of northern Gaul; but side by side

with historic relics were no less than ten thousand flints. These are

chiefly merely chips or nuclei which had served as hammers, or long

thin slices, with some few arrow- and lance-beads often skilfully

cut, some polished hatchets, and saws with fine teeth. Nearly all

are notched and worn with use, which does away with the idea that

the place where they were found was the site of a workshop such as

I have already described. With these worked flints were found some

fragments of coarse pottery, which could not possibly be confounded

with Roman or Gallic work. The flints and pottery, and the walls put

together without cement, point to the conclusion that if the camp of

Hastedon was occupied by the Roman legions, it was long previous to

their day inhabited by some Neolithic race, ignorant of the use of

any but stone weapons and implements.

The camp of Pont-de-Bonn in the commune of Modave (Namur) very

much resembles in its arrangement that of Hastedon.[212] A mound

stands out upon the plain protected on the north and west by rocks

difficult of access and connected with the main plateau by a very

narrow tongue of land. Outside we can make out regular trenches

parallel with each other, and connected by a wall of masonry, at the

foot of which wall were picked up a good many iron nails. Inside the

ENCEINTE itself worked flints were associated with Roman coins. Are

not these proofs in the first place of a long Neolithic occupation,

then of the residence of Gallic Romans, and yet later of even more

modern people of whom the masonry walls and iron nails are relics?

Limburg also contains some defensive works, many centuries old,

which are as yet but little known. We may mention amongst them the

so-called dyke of Zeedyck, near Tongres, a formidable intrenchment

some 2,186 yards long by more than 325 feet wide at the base, and of

a height varying from 49 to 65 feet; the earthen ramparts of Willem

on the Geule, the not less important ones of Houlem, with many others

far away from the great highways of communication, but within the

limits of the two provinces of Liege and Limburg.[213]

A few years ago Bertrand said that there are in France some

four hundred earthen ENCEINTES, only sixty of which contain

relics connecting them with the Gallic Romans. Since Bertrand's

announcement this number has been greatly increased, thanks to eagerly

prosecuted local researches. De Pulligny mentions a hundred in Upper

Normandy[214]; Martinet says they are very numerous in Berry; one

of the most remarkable, the quadrilateral of Haute-Brenne, covered

an area of nearly three thousand acres.[215] Amongst the forests on

the Vosges Mountains were discovered long single and double walls,

the course of which follows the crest of the ramparts overlooking the

valley of the Zorn, between Lutzelbourg and Saverne.[216] At Rosmeur,

on Penmarch Point (Finistere), Du Chatellier excavated two tumuli

which appear to have been connected with a series of defensive works

encircling the whole promontory.[217] It would be merely fastidious

to multiply instances, we will content ourselves with describing a

few of the most interesting of these antique fortifications.[218]

The camp of Chassey (Saone-et-Loire) may be compared with those

of Belgium. It is situated on a plateau 2,440 feet long by a width

varying from 360 to 672 feet. A huge natural rocky barrier rises on

the south and east, whilst on the northeast and southwest we find

two important intrenchments made of huge blocks of stone with a

REVETEMENT of earth. One of these intrenchments is 45, the other

only 29 feet high. There is no trace inside of springs, and the

inhabitants must always have had to obtain their water-supply by

artificial means. The cisterns now in this camp appear to have been

dug out with iron implements, and are certainly of later date than

the first occupation of the plateau. Numerous objects picked up in

the Chassey Camp belong to Neolithic times, but the people who have

occupied it since those remote days, the men of the Bronze and Iron

ages, the Gauls, the Romans, and the Merovingians, have so turned over

the ground that products of industries, completely strange to each

other, are everywhere mixed together in inextricable confusion.[219]

There were originally a good many hearths about the camp, and it was

near to one of them that the spoon was found, figured in an earlier

chapter of this book (Fig. 25). With it were picked up polished

fibrolite, basalt, chloromelanite, serpentine, and diorite hatchets;

evidently made in the neighborhood, as is proved beyond a doubt by the

numerous chips and partly worked pieces lying about, as well as the

discovery of no less than thirty polishers, many of them showing signs

of long service. Bone implements of all kinds and whistles made of

the phalanges of oxen are also constantly found. Even if the presence

of these objects does not enable us to come to any final conclusion,

they are at least most useful and interesting in enabling us to put

together little by little a picture of the life of the most ancient

inhabitants of France.

The camp of Catenoy, Dear Liancourt (Oise) is arranged very much in the

same manner as that of Chassey.[220] CAESAR'S CAMP, as it is called

by the people of the neighborhood, forms a long triangle, the apex

of which rests on the eastern extremity of the plateau. Excavations

have yielded a number of Gallic-Roman objects, with some polished

hatchets, some broken, others intact, with stone and bone weapons,

resembling but for a few slight differences those we have described

so often. Numerous fragments of pottery were also picked up, which

pottery, hand-made and mixed with crushed shells, seldom has either

handles or any attempt at ornamentation. Weapons, implements, and

pottery are all alike totally different from any Roman or Gallic

work known. It is impossible to study the relics at Catenoy without

coming to the conclusion that the camp was occupied at periods prior

to Gallic and Roman times, and that there, as in many other districts,

the Latin conquerors had succeeded an unknown vanquished race.

De Quatrefages has accurately made out a series of works extending

along the left bank of the Nive, as far as Itsassou, and of which the

Pas-de-Roland marks the extreme limit. A merely superficial examination

is enough to show that these defences existed only on the side to which

access would otherwise have been easy, while the height overlooking

the river on the other side, which is impregnable by nature, has

been left untouched. Here too we find the name Caesar's Camp given

to the relics, a fact of common occurrence all over France, where

the great captain was long held in honor. Quatrefages is, however,

of opinion that the works are neither Roman, Gallic nor Celtic,

and he even arrives by a process of elimination at the conclusion

that they were erected by the Iberians, who preceded the Aryans, and

have left so deep an impress on all the countries they successively

occupied. We do not feel able to accept entirely this hypothesis;

but no suggestion of the eminent professor must be overlooked by

those who earnestly seek with unbiassed minds to ascertain the truth.

Gregory of Tours relates that at the time of the invasion of the

Vandals, the Gabali took refuge with their families in the CASTRUM

GREDONENSE, and there, for two years, energetically resisted the

invaders.[221] Greze, now a little market town of the department of

Lozere, is the CASTRUM of which the old French chronicler speaks,

and Dr. Prunieres there collected forty stone hatchets, differing

in no material respect from others found in such numbers elsewhere,

with flint knives and scrapers, bone stilettos, and millstones,

doubtless used for grinding grain, all of which are to the learned

French professor proofs of the existence there of a Neolithic station

before the historic period.

In the department of Alpes-Maritimes a series of defensive works

crown the circle of mountains which rise from the shores of the

Mediterranean. These intrenchments certainly date from a remote period,

though we cannot assign them to any definite time, and the fact that

they have been repaired at different epochs proves that they were

successively occupied.[222] They consist principally of circular or

elliptical ENCEINTES surrounded by walls of stones without mortar,

and they vary in diameter from some 39 to 328 feet. One of the largest

is that on the Colline des Mulets, above Monte Carlo.

FIGURE 84

Prehistoric spoon and button found in a lake station at Sutz

(Switzerland).

Although the pile-dwellings of Switzerland and of the TERREMARES of

Italy would appear to have been in themselves protection enough,

their inhabitants did not neglect other means of defence, from

which we may gather that they were engaged in constant and terrible

struggles. The TERREMARES were generally surrounded by a talus

or rampart of earth, with an external fosse which protected the

approaches to the dwellings. The rampart of Castione (Parma), which

dates from the Bronze age, was even strengthened inside with large

timber caissons.[223] In Switzerland, some works recently undertaken

to deflect the course of the Aar, on its exit from Lake Bienne, have

led to the discovery of a village of the Stone age, with the bridges

leading to it and the little forts intended to protect it.[224] As

have the neighboring settlements, this station has yielded a great

many arrows, hatchets, scrapers, and harpoons. We give an illustration

of a curious marrow spoon, and of a round object which seems to have

been a button (Fig. 84), as they mark the progress made.

Great Britain is intersected by lines of fortifications of unknown

origin, but certainly of extreme antiquity. We may mention Dane's

Dyke, Wandyke, the Devil's Dyke at Newmarket, and Offa's Dyke,

running from the Bristol Channel to the Dee, and dividing England from

Wales. Ancient camps and intrenchments, Sir John Lubbock tells us,

crown the greater number of the hills of England. General Pitt-Rivers

explored several of these camps in the county of Sussex. Many extend

over considerable areas, and all contain numerous worked flints and

other relics of prehistoric industry. These relics are met with in

great numbers at the base of the intrenchments, so that we may justly

conclude that they date from the same epoch.

The most celebrated of these camps is that of Cissbury, three miles

north of Worthing. We may also mention that of Hod-Hill in Dorsetshire,

which greatly resembles the one at Cissbury, but we will describe the

latter in some detail.[225] It is situated on a somewhat lofty plateau

of irregular form, its site having been chosen with great skill as

one offering great facilities for defence. The earthen ramparts and

the fosses protecting them cover an area of sixty acres, and their

importance varies according to the relief of the ground; thus the

thickness of the walls is very much greater on the eastern side where

an attack would have been most fraught with danger; four doors give

access to the interior, and on each side of these doors are ruins of

rectangular structures strengthening their defence. Archaeologists,

however, are of opinion that these redoubts, though their construction

is exactly similar to the rest of the fortifications, are of more

recent date. In fact Roman tiles have been found amongst the ruins,

but these really prove nothing, as every one is agreed that Cissbury

was occupied by the Romans after the subjugation of England by them;

and the only point at issue is really whether the walls of which

the ruins still remain date from the Roman period, or from times

prior to their arrival. We ourselves lean to the latter opinion,

as drinking-water is absolutely wanting; a very important point, as

the Roman generals always made it their first care to pitch their

camps near a good water-supply. On the western slope at Cissbury

on each side of the ramparts are fifty funnel-shaped depressions,

some of which are as much as seventy feet in diameter and twelve feet

deep. These holes may have served as refuges, and the larger ones were

certainly lived in, as is proved by the charred stones of the hearths

and the pieces of charcoal found near them; moreover, Tacitus[226]

tells us that the Germans lived in similar habitations. Whatever,

however, may have been their ultimate use, these hollows were in the

first place dug out with a view to obtaining flints in the marly chalk

forming the bill; and recent excavations have revealed the existence

of galleries connecting the depressions. When they became later human

habitations some of the inside openings were blocked up with lumps of

chalk, carefully piled up so as to make entrance extremely difficult,

greatly adding to the security of the inmates.

Thirty of these shafts were excavated in succession; and amongst the

rubbish of all kinds with which they were filled were found some well

cut celts, showing no trace of polish, and some weapons or tools of

the Mousterien type. The number of half-finished implements, and the

even greater quantity of chips, points to these shafts having formed a

centre of manufacture. Many of the implements were made of stag-horn,

and amongst them we must mention some picks which, curiously enough,

exactly resemble those of Belgium and the south of France.[227]

Similar wooden picks are found in the copper mines of the Asturias,

in the salt mines of Salzburg, and in a petroleum well recently opened

on the frontier between the United States and Canada. In all these

localities traces can be made out of ancient mining operations. But

to return to Cissbury: from amongst the prehistoric ruins there were

also taken, numerous fragments of pottery, not at all like Roman

ware, with the bones of the horse, goat, boar, and ox, all still

represented in the fauna of England; with oyster-shells, and the

shells of both land and sea mollusca, of species still to be found

in Great Britain. But no trace has so far been discovered of metals,

and neither the flint implements nor the bones of animals have any of

the marks of rust so characteristic of the Bronze and Iron ages. Must

we not then conclude that these shafts were sunk at a time long prior

to the earliest historic period?

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. This

last fact is the more curious, as Sayce discovered in a passage giving

access to a cave near Syracuse some characters somewhat similar

in form, to which he assigns a proto-Phoenician origin. We may add

that certain characters made out at Cissbury, differing but little

from the modern letter B or the figure 6, are also found in the

most ancient Palmyrian, Copt, and Syrian alphabets. Were this fact

completely established, still more, if it were corroborated by other

analogous facts, we should in it have a very valuable indication of

the relations of England with the most ancient known navigators.

Germany also contains some ancient fortifications, of which the most

remarkable are the HEIDENMAUER of Saint Odila, near Hermeskiel,

between the Moselle and the Rhine. Huge stones, piled up without

cement, form a triple ENCEINTE, but there is nothing to connect these

remains with prehistoric times. It is the same with the intrenchments

in the Grand Duchy of Posen, the existence of which was announced

at a meeting of the Anthropological Society of Berlin.[228] Many

of these defensive works, notably those of Potzrow and of Zabnow,

bad been erected on piles. In the district between Thorn and the

Baltic are numerous mounds of the shape of a truncated cone, the

platform of which is surrounded by an embankment some 590 feet in

diameter.[229] Near many of these were picked up many broken human

bones, mixed together in the greatest confusion with weapon, hatchets,

and hammers, resembling Neolithic types. Everything bears witness to

the struggles of which these mounds were the scene.

Similar relies of a past still obscure are met with in the south

of Europe. Cartailhac has brought into notice the CITANIAS,

which are strange fortified towns in Portugal. On the plateau of

Mouinho-da-Moura, southwest of Lisbon, were found numerous polished

hatchets, associated with shells of marine mollusca and the bones

of mammals belonging to species still extant.[230] This station was

protected by intrenchments of so great an extent that it has been

impossible to examine the whole of them. There are also near the same

place several caves, now nearly choked up. One of them was originally a

regular tunnel; the cutting leading to the entrance was made of earth

and small stones; it contained the bones of animals, some cinders,

and four large vases of coarse workmanship. It is difficult to make

out what this cave was used for, the great confusion in which the

bones lay excluding all idea of its having been a tomb. Ribeiro had

already made out at Lycea an intrenched camp protected by clumsily

constructed walls. Inside the ENCEINTE he picked up numerous fragments

of ornamented pottery, with polished hatchets, shells, and a good

many bones of animals. He also made out several sepulchres.[231]

FIGURE 85

General view of the station of Fuente-Alamo.

The prehistoric station of LA MUELA DE CHERT in Maeztrago reminds us

of those of Portugal. It is situated on a little eminence, protected

on the north and east by the natural escarpment of the plateau,

and on other sides by a wall of some height made of stones without

mortar. Some foundations of an oval shape, on which doubtless were

built the homes of the inhabitants, can be made out in the middle of

the ENCEINTE. We can, however, but repeat here what we have said so

often elsewhere, that it is impossible to fix the exact date at which

these intrenchments were made. The discovery, however, of polished

flint hatchets, diorite lance-heads, and a few bones of ruminants

and cerviae unknown in Spain in prehistoric times, would appear to

point to a very considerable antiquity. Lastly, two young Belgian

engineers[232] have lately made out between Almeria and Carthagena a

considerable number of prehistoric stations in which can be traced

successively the different Stone ages and those of Copper and of

Bronze. Several of these stations (Fig. 85) are regular fortified

camps, protected by thick stone walls cemented with a thin layer

of clay. The fire which destroyed the habitations has left behind,

beneath the ashes and cinders, numerous objects, with the aid of which

we are able to form a picture of the life led by the men who built

the fortifications, and we know that they were agriculturists, for

the very stores of grain have been found charred and agglutinated by

fire. In the more recent stations flint, which was in the earliest time

the one material used, has disappeared and is replaced by the copper,

of which a plentiful supply was found in the rich mines riddling the

mountains. Excavations have even brought to light the workshop of

the metallurgist, with its moulds and vases converted into crucibles,

its essays at new forms, its scoriae, and lastly its finished weapons,

showing real skill in their production.

Although it is impossible to assign to them a definite date,

we must, to make this part of our work complete, say a few words

on the earthworks met with in Roumania. A former minister of that

principality, M. Odobesco,[233] classes them as VALLA, TUMULI, and

CETATI DE PAMENTU or citadels.

The VALLA include important works. One of them cuts across Valachie

parallel with the Danube and loses itself in Southern Russia. Another

crosses the north of Moldavia and Bessarabia, following a direction

convergent with the former. These VALLA, although they are known in

the country in which they occur as FOSSES DE TRAJAN, are certainly of

earlier date than the Roman occupation, and in fact Roman roads cut

across the intrenchments or fosses which have been levelled or covered

over to make way for them. Excavations of the large tumuli are not

yet sufficiently advanced for us to hazard an opinion about them. The

smaller ones, however, are seldom of Roman origin. The funeral vases

of calcareous stone which they contain bear witness clearly enough to

their destination, and also to the rite with which they were connected.

The CETATI DE PAMENTU are regular earthen fortifications set up

within short distances of each other on all the heights overlooking

the torrential rivers of Roumania. These intrenchments, generally

of round or oval form, are protected by deep fosses, parapets, and

palisades. Masses of cinders and burnt earth bear unmistakable evidence

to the cause of their destruction. All about, excavations have brought

to light coarse pottery, grindstones for crushing grain, stores of

millet which had been damaged by the flames, and a few primitively

constructed bronze idols. When the vanquished Roumanians were driven

from their intrenchments, they had evidently learned to use bronze,

but were still, as we have already remarked, unacquainted with iron,

as no object in that material has been found, nor does anything bear

any trace of rust.

Thus, throughout Europe, man, in the presence of the many dangers

surrounding him, endeavored in the very earliest times to protect by

similar means his family, his flocks, and his wealth. In America we

are able to quote facts of even more importance. The vast territory

comprised between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, between

the great lakes of Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, is intersected

with truly colossal fortifications, almost all of them made entirely

of earth. The ancient Americans knew how to protect every height and

every delta formed by the junction of two rivers with redoubts, walls,

parapets, fosses, and circumvallations. Not without astonishment we

make out a regular system of fortresses connected with each other by

deep trenches and secret passages, some of them hewn out beneath the

beds of rivers, observatories on the heights, and concentric walls,

some actually strengthened with casemates protecting the entrances. All

these works were constructed by the so-called Mound-Builders, of

whose ancestors or of whose descendants absolutely nothing is known.

All the strongholds of the Mound-Builders rise near abundant

watercourses, and the best proof that can be given of the intelligence

which guided their constructors in their choice of sites, is the

fact of the number of flourishing cities such as Newark, Portsmouth,

Cincinnati, Saint Louis, Frankfort, and New-Madrid, etc., which were

built upon the ruins of various earthworks.

It would take us too long merely to enumerate all the ancient

fortifications still existing in North America. Moreover they all

resemble each other so much that the description of a few of them is

really all that is needed to prove their importance.

Fort Hill (Fig. 5, p. 39) rises from an eminence overlooking a little

river called Paint Creek; the walls vary in height from eight to

fifteen feet, and exceed thirty feet in thickness.[234] Several doors

facilitate entrance, and one of them leads to a square ENCIENTE, the

walls of which have been almost entirely destroyed. This enclosure

probably contained the homes of the people, which may have been mere

cabins of adobes or sun-burnt bricks, or buts covered with rushes,

interlaced branches, or the skins of animals; on this point we are

reduced to guesswork. In the centre of the principal enclosure can

be made out, in almost every case, several much smaller enclosures,

each containing in their turn one or more mounds. Some think these

were consecrated to religious rites, but this is a mere conjecture,

for nothing is really known of the form of government or of the

religion of the Mound-Builders.

Forest trees have grown up on these abandoned ruins, succeeding other

vegetable growths; the huge girth of the decaying trunks proving their

longevity. Man, impelled by motives we cannot fathom, had abandoned the

districts where everything bears witness to his power and intelligence,

and the vigorous vegetation of nature once more has it all its own way.

The most remarkable group of prehistoric fortifications in North

America is perhaps that near Newark, in the valley of the Scioto. It

includes an octagonal ENCEINTE eighty acres in area, a square ENCEINTE

of twenty acres, with two others, one twenty the other thirty acres in

extent. The walls of the great circle are still twelve feet high by

fifty feet wide at the base. They are protected by an interior fosse

seven feet deep by thirty-five feet wide. According to measurements

carefully made by Colonel Whittlesey,[235] the total area covered

by these intrenchments is no less than twelve square miles, and the

length of the mounds exceeds two miles. The large entrances protected

by mounds thirty-five feet high, the avenues leading to them which are

regular labyrinths, the quaintly shaped mounds -- one, for instance,

represents the foot of a gigantic bird -- all combine to strike the

visitor with astonishment. We give a representation (Fig. 86) of a

group, not unlike that we have just described, which is situated at

Liberty (Ohio), and includes two circles and one square. The diameter

of the great circle is 1,700 feet, and it encloses an area of forty

acres, whilst that of the smaller ENCEINTE IS 500 feet; the area of

the square, each side of which measures 1,080 feet, is twenty-seven

acres. The walls are not strengthened by any ditch, and, contrary to

general usage, the earth of which they are made was dug out from the

inside of the ENCIENTE itself. We may also mention Old Fort (Greenup

County, Kentucky, successively described by Caleb Atwater, Squier, and

J. H. Lewis. It is situated forty feet above the river, and the total

length of the walls exceeds 3,175 feet. Six entrances give access

to it, and in the centre rises a mound representing some animal,

a bear probably, measuring more than 105 feet. Several small mounds,

beneath which were found human bones, cluster about the larger one.

FIGURE 86

Group at Liberty (Ohio).

FIGURE 87

Trenches at Juigalpa (Nicaragua).

We must not omit to name an extraordinary system of intrenchments at

Juigalpa, in Nicaragua, which so far as I know is quite unique. This

is a series of trenches extending for several miles (Fig. 87),

varying in width from nine and a half to thirteen feet; at equal

distances are oval reservoirs, the longest axis of which measures

as much as seventy-eight feet. In each reservoir are two or four

mounds, probably serving as watch-towers. We know nothing either of

the people who erected these singular structures or of the enemy from

whom they formed a protection. Nor can anything be guessed as to the

way in which the defence was conducted. All is involved in obscurity,

and at every turn we are compelled to repeat that prehistoric studies

are weighted with uncertainty, long and arduous study being necessary

to bring ever so little order into the chaos in which everything

connected with them is involved.

We must cursorily refer to some other fortifications which really

scarcely belong to our subject, though certain archaeologists claim

for them a prehistoric origin. We refer to the vitrified forts, which

are strange structures in which stones, such as granite and gneiss,

quartzite and basalt, have been subjected to a heat so intense as to

produce vitrification.

These vitrified forts are ENCEINTES, generally of round or elliptical

form, carefully erected where they were most needed for defence, and

protected by one or more ramparts.[236] The ramparts all bear traces of

vitrification, more or less complete, which has, so to speak, cemented

them together. The vitrification is very unequal, being complete in

some parts and scarcely noticeable in others. It is evident that the

builders did not know how to direct their fire uniformly.

Ever since 1777 vitrified forts have been known in Scotland, and

until 1837 they were supposed to exist nowhere else. About that time,

however, Professor Zippe called attention to similar ruins in Bohemia,

and later it was announced that discoveries of the same kind had

been made in various parts of France, Denmark, and Norway. Virchow

speaks of the SCHLAKEN WALLE, or ramparts of vitrified scoria, near

Kern[237] and Schaafhausen, and gave an account of them at a meeting

of German naturalists at Ratisbon. It would be easy to multiply

instances. Vitrified walls are known in the Puy-de-Dome, in which

the facing is of clay, and draught flues, for regulating and fanning

the flames, have been made out. At Castel-Sarrazin is a camp refuge

with similar dispositions,[238] and recently Daubree presented to the

Academie des Sciences a piece of porphyry artificially vitrified from

the prehistoric ENCEINTE of Hartmannswiller Kopf in Upper Alsace.[239]

It is in Scotland, however, that are situated the most remarkable

vitrified forts. A few years ago no less than forty-four were

counted. The most celebrated are those of Barry Hill and Castle Spynie

in Invernesshire, Top-O-Noth in Aberdeen, and a small fort which

rises from a lofty rock in the midst of the Strait of Bute. Vitrified

cairns also occur in the Orkney Islands, notably on the little isle

of Sanday, but the most interesting structures of the kind are Craig

Phoedrick and Ord Hill of Kissock, which rise up like huge pillars

on the hills at the entrance of Moray Firth, at a distance of three

miles from each other.[240]

Craig Phoedrick is now covered with a luxuriant vegetation of broom,

furze, and fern, with groves of firs and larches, amongst which the

explorer makes his way with difficulty to the fortifications, or rather

to the piles of massive blocks to which that name has been given. These

blocks form an acropolis of oval form, the upper part of which is a

flat terrace encircling a central basin some six and a half to nine and

a half feet deep, which may be compared to the craters of the extinct

volcanoes of Auvergne. The sides of the mound are strewn with cyclopean

blocks of vitrified granite, which evidently originally formed part

of the fortifications. It is on the eastern side, overlooking the

valley of the Ness, that the buildings are of the greatest importance;

two terraces can be made out, the lower projecting beyond the upper,

forming a double series of almost perpendicular fortifications,

constructed of vitrified blocks cemented together with thin layers of

mortar, spread without any attempt at regularity. The blocks form,

with the mortar, a conglomerate so compact that when struck with

a hammer they break without separating. Examination of fragments

under the microscope prove that they have gone through important

mineralogical transformations, under the influence of what must have

been an extremely high temperature. The heat must have been indeed

intense which could cause mica to disappear entirely, and feldspar

to melt almost completely.

The hill known as Ord Hill of Kissock is crowned, as is Craig

Phoedrick, with ruins still standing, but the vegetation about them is

so dense and thorny that it is difficult to make out the condition of

the remains. The ruins, which can only be seen from one side, appear

however to have formed part of fortifications, dating from the same

time and serving the same purpose as those of Craig Phoedrick. Were

they forts? There is certainly no sign of their having been used as

habitations. Or were they, as some archaeologists are disposed to

think, beacon houses used for warning the people of the approach of

the Norman pirates or Scandinavian Vikings, whose depredations were not

discontinued until the eighth century of the Christian era? Hypotheses

are always easy, but proofs of these hypotheses are difficult to find,

and we confess we have none to bring forward.[241]

Passing to France, we find the greater number of vitrified forts in

the Departement de la Creuse. At Chateauvieux is an ENCEINTE of oval

form, 416 feet wide at its broadest part.[242] An earthwork, 22 feet

wide at the base, serves as foundation to a wall, the outer and inner

portions of which consist of small granite stones, arranged in regular

layers. The space between the two series of small stones is filled

in with a sheet of melted granite, some twenty-four inches wide,

resting on calcareous tufa. The whole mass is completely vitrified,

and regular geodes or nodules lined with crystals and draped with

pendent drops of melted rock have been produced.

The ancient fortress of Ribandelle, of circular form, rises above the

Creuse, opposite Chateauvieux. It was successively occupied by the

Celts, the Romans, and the Visigoths, but we are unable to fix the date

of its erection or the name of the people who built it. There remain

but a few ruins at the present day, but we can make out in them the

same mode of construction as that followed at Chateauvieux. The walls

are faced with unhewn stones, the outer side of which still retains a

natural appearance, while the inner is corroded and disintegrated. In

the wall itself, separated from the facings by beds of peat mould,

are great blocks of vitrified granite. The traces of the action

of fire are specially noticeable in the upper part of the walls,

so that they were evidently finished when the fusion took place.

The site of the furnace in these forts is difficult to determine. It

was evidently not situated under any of the blocks, for the earthworks

on which they rest retain no traces of the action of fire. Nor was

it situated at the side, for the outer facings have retained alike

their original form and consistency. Nor can the furnace have been

lit on the blocks, as heat exercises its action by radiating in every

direction. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the fire was

spread with the aid of spaces left in the inside of the construction

at various points, for the vitrified mass is divided into blocks,

about nine and three fourths feet long, at very short distances from

each other.

These few examples will be enough to give some idea of the strange

vitrified forts. Many of them retain traces of Roman. occupation. The

Gueret Museum possesses a fragment from the Ribandelle walls in

which a Roman tile is completely imbedded; and M. Thuot picked up

other tiles in a similar condition amongst the ruins. This is a very

decided proof that the vitrification took place after the arrival

of the conquerors of Gaul. The weapons and tools discovered would

appear to confirm this idea, and to suggest similar explanations of

vitrification elsewhere. If so, we shall have. to admit that vitrified

forts date from the earliest centuries of the Christian era, and are

not prehistoric at all. We have, however, noticed them here on account

of the grave doubts in the matter, and because they furnish a striking

and valuable illustration of the relations existing from the most

remote tunes between widely separated races, and maintained until the

present time. In no other way can we account for the practice of the

extremely difficult and complicated operation of the vitrification

of bard rocks in districts so far apart as Norway and Scotland,

Germany and the midlands of France.

The more we think of the difficulties vitrification presents, the

greater is our astonishment. How was the fusion achieved of elements

so refractory alike in their structure and in the resistance offered

by accumulated masses of material? By what processes was heat brought

up to the 1300 degrees necessary for the fusion of granite? The

incineration and fusion of the materials of which the vitrified forts

are made, especially the granite ones of La Creuse and the Cotes du

Nord, bear witness, says Daubree, to a surprising skill and knowledge

of the management of fire in those who burned them, but these qualities

were manifested also in extremely ancient metallurgical operations. It

is quite impossible to suppose the vitrification to have been the

result of a conflagration. No fire, whether accidental or the work of

an incendiary, could be powerful enough to produce such results. The

use of petroleum in the most terrible conflagrations of our own time

-- those of the Commune in 1871, for instance -- did calcine and

disintegrate stone, but I know of no case of vitrification.

The Keramic Museum of Sevres contains several specimens which present

very notable differences to each other. Those from Chateau-Gontier

are formed of very close-grained quartzite granite of a greenish

color streaked with black. The conglomerate welding there together

is a vitrified scoria full of very small bubbles made by the escape

of gas which had not had sufficient strength to get out. The block

from Sainte-Suzanne (Mayenne) consists of quartz mixed with half

calcined grains of feldspar, bleached by the action of fused glass,

which once introduced filled up as it congealed all the vacant spaces

with a vitreous substance of light greenish-white color. The fractures

are green and bright, and are dotted with white points, which are all

that is left of the stones after their disintegration in the grip of

a heat that was alike intense and rapid in its action. The fragments

brought from Scotland differ from those just described. They consist

of small pieces of granite completely merged in a thick paste with

which they form the mass, the whole breaking together when it does

break; and the melted matter seldom has any bubbles in it.[243]

The process employed in cementing the materials of the vitrified

forts was then perfectly unique. The processes employed to obtain

the necessary heat varied according to circumstances and according

to the nature of the materials used. At Sainte-Suzanne and at La

Courbe marine salt was used as a flux. Captain Prevot[244] thinks

that the walls were smeared with a coating of clay, and that as in

the baking of bricks spaces were left between so as to produce more

intense heat. M. de Montaiglon is of opinion that the buildings were

in the first instance erected without the use of any calcareous or

argillaceous material, and that glass in a state of fusion was poured

over them afterwards, this glass consolidating them and forming with

them one indestructible mass. M. Thuot seems much disposed to share

this last opinion, but he thinks that some chemical materials such as

soda or potash were also used. Yet one other possible solution may

be mentioned, a solution which is becoming more and more generally

accepted, namely that the granite was not after all really melted,

but that the vitrification should either be attributed to the fusion

of the argillaceous mass, which has been subjected to an igneous

transformation, such as that which often takes place in furnaces for

baking bricks and in lime-kilns.[245]

Whatever explanation we may accept, however, the processes employed

certainly bear witness to a much more advanced state of civilization

than was acquired in the earliest ages of humanity. We have been

led by the great interest and mystery of the subject to dwell longer

on it than we intended, and we must hasten to return to prehistoric

times with a determination not to transgress again.

Fortifications are a proof of combined action leading to a common

end; they imply social organization, chiefs to command, workmen to

obey. A recent discovery enables us to form a very accurate picture of

prehistoric men gathered together not only for purposes of defence,

but in a society already rich, industrious, and, if we may so speak,

learning to cultivate the arts of peace.

The AEgean Sea has ever been the theatre of igneous phenomena,

and the three little islands of Thera, Therasia, and Aspronisi,

which shut in the Bay of Santorin, are built up chiefly of volcanic

materials.[246] In 1573 an eruptive cone suddenly appeared; in

1707 the inhabitants of Santorin saw rise up a short distance from

their shores a rock that increased in size for several days and

then suddenly split up. This splitting up was succeeded by a great

eruption of incandescent materials; an eruption which lasted for

no less than five years, forming at the end of that time an island

some 400 feet high by 3,279 feet in circumference. In 1866, after

many violent shocks of earthquake, the ground was rent asunder on

this island and masses of volcanic matter were belched forth, whilst

on the other side of the island the soil sank to such a degree that

canoes were used to get to houses which but the day before were nine

feet above the sea-level. This eruption went on until 1870, and the

quantity of scoriae vomited forth during its continuance welded three

islets, which had hitherto been separate, to the principal island,

of which they now form part. On entering the Bay of Santorin we see on

every side banks of lava, beds of scoriae, and piles of cinders of a

purplish-gray color rising in cliffs to a height of more than 1,312

feet. All these materials are the result of innumerable eruptions,

and the central crater of the volcano is probably situated about

the middle of the bay. It is supposed that at one time a conical

mountain, from 1,958 to 2,600 feet high, rose where soundings now

give a depth of water of over 1,300 feet. A sudden break up of the

mountain probably produced this abyss, and formidable eruptions have

led to the pouring forth of immense quantities of pumice-stone. The

three islets mentioned above would be the remains of the old central

cone, and a bed of pumice-stone from 98 to 131 feet thick is spread

over the whole of their surface, telling of a violent cataclysm of

which neither history nor tradition has preserved the memory.

The letters of Pliny the Younger[247] say that the eruption of

Vesuvius which caused the destruction of Portici lasted five days,

and we know that the houses are covered with a uniformly distributed

bed of pumice-stone some thirteen feet thick, and of cinders about

three feet thick. Everything points to the conclusion that a very

similar catastrophe overtook Santorin; there too whole villages were

buried beneath cinders, stones, and molten lava, belched forth by a

volcano in action; there too men were the witnesses and the victims

of the eruption, as is proved by an accidental circumstance which

took place some twenty-three years after.[248]

The removal of the POUZZOLANA, so called after the volcanic ashes of

Pozzuoli in Italy for the works on the Isthmus of Suez, necessitated

important excavations, and the cuttings revealed the existence of

dwellings which had been bidden away from the light of day for many

centuries. The masses of rubbish hiding these prehistoric ruins

were some sixty-five feet high, and consisted chiefly of volcanic

ashes piled up, for some accidental reason, in comparatively modern

times. Beneath the POUZZOLANA a thin layer of humus contains fragments

of pottery of Hellenic origin; which marks the close of the historic

period, and covers over the mass of pumiceous tufa vomited out by

the volcano. It was in this tufa, which is eight feet thick, that the

first signs of buildings were discovered. Further excavation brought

to light two houses with doors, windows, and bearing walls. In one of

these houses there were five different rooms. Other discoveries rapidly

succeeded each other, alike in the island of Therasia and at Acrotiri,

the principal island, which has given its name to the group. The plan

of these houses is an irregular parallelogram, the angles of which are

rounded and the sides more or less curved. This arrangement differs

greatly from that adopted in Greece as well as from that in use at

Therasia after the time of the volcanic eruptions. The houses too are

quite different in their mode of construction. The walls consist of

great blocks of lava placed one above the other, without any trace

of cement or of lime, and are merely kept in place by a reddish

earth mixed with chopped straw or marine algae. Large branches of

olive or cypress trees, still with the bark on, are imbedded in the

masonry. These pieces of wood, the size of which varies considerably,

were probably added to give the necessary solidity to the walls in the

numerous earthquakes, the disastrous effects of which were only too

well known to the ancient inhabitants of Santorin. It is curious and

interesting to note the use of the same expedient among the inhabitants

of the islands of the Archipelago who are still exposed to the same

danger. The doors and windows are clumsily arched, and the roof seems

to have been a low vault. It was made of stones and coated with clay

and supported by the trunks of olive trees, the charred remains of

which lay upon the floors of the crushed homes. These trunks show

no sign of having been touched with metal tools; not a metal nail

or clamp has been found, and we cannot but conclude that the remains

belong to the age when stone alone was employed.

The inside walls were not glazed or decorated in any way, except in

one instance, that of a house at Acrotiri, from which the rubbish has

been cleared away, revealing on the walls a layer of lime on which

was some colored ornamentation which still retained an extraordinary

brilliancy when it was discovered.

In all the houses and in every room of each were found beneath the

tufa burying them masses of lava and volcanic scoriae, forming a

most eloquent witness of the cause of their destruction. Near one

of the houses of Therasia is a little cylindrical structure, about

three feet high; which cannot have been a well, as it rests directly

on impermeable lava, and was certainly not a cistern, as it is too

small for that. May it, as some think, have been an altar? We cannot

tell, and though the religious sentiment was probably no more absent

among these primitive races than it is among the barbarous peoples

of our own day, it does not do to express an opinion in the absence

of positive proof.

Successive excavations have yielded a number of objects which throw a

new light upon the manners and customs of the inhabitants. Terra-cotta

vases are more numerous than anything else (Fig. 88), and among

them preponderate large yellow vessels capable of holding about one

hundred quarts. Most of them have a clumsy brim, and a rough attempt

has been made at ornamentation by the potter with his fingers on

the damp clay. Other vases of finer clay, colored red or yellow,

are covered with ornaments and graceful arabesques; the garlands of

fruit and flowers are often of remarkably beautiful workmanship. Cups

with well-shaped rounded handles, made of some kind of red ferruginous

earth, others of gray material, were picked up in all the houses. These

various vessels were used for many different purposes; some to cook

food, the marks of the hearth being still on them, whilst others

retained some of the chopped straw with which the domestic animals

had evidently been fed. The most curious of all are those which are

supposed to represent a woman; the front part projecting and surmounted

by a narrow neck bent backwards, with two brown prominences supposed

to stand for breasts, and dots round the upper part representing

a necklace, while ear-rings are indicated by elliptical bands of

different colors. We shall have to refer again to these curious vases

when we speak of the discoveries made at Troy; we need only add now

that the pottery found at Santorin differs completely, alike in form

and ornamentation, from the Greek, Phoenician, and Etruscan specimens,

of which the museums of Europe contain so many. They are evidently

therefore not of foreign origin, but of native manufacture. The

absence of clay in the island of Santorin has thrown some doubt

on this, however, but the researches of M. Fouque have revealed the

former existence of a large valley, at the base of the principal cone,

which valley ran down to the sea-shore near the island of Aspronisi;

and in which probably was found the clay which the potters of the

district soon learned to turn to account.

FIGURE 88

Vases found at Santorin.

With these vases were found some troughs for holding crushed grain, and

lava discs very much like those still in use among the weavers of the

Archipelago to stretch the woof of their tissues; skilfully graduated

lava weights, the correlation of which is very evident, as they weigh

8, 24, and 96 ounces; a flint arrow-head and a saw of the same material

with regular teeth; together with a great variety of other objects,

including many obsidian arrows and knives, reminding us in their

shape of those characteristic of the Stone age in North Europe.

Two rings of gold beaten very thin, and a little copper saw with no

trace of any alloy, are, so far, the only metal objects found in the

excavations. The origin of the former, moreover, is very uncertain,

and there has been much discussion as to where the rings came from. In

spite, however, of all the gaps in the evidence about them, there

remains no doubt that the inhabitants of Santorin were farther advanced

in civilization than the Lake dwellers of Switzerland, the builders

of the TERREMARE of Italy, or the Iberians of the south of Spain,

who were very probably their contemporaries; and we cannot refrain

from expressing our admiration of the wonderful progress made by the

inhabitants of the little group of volcanic islands under notice.

Before the catastrophe which overwhelmed them, Santorin was covered

with comfortable and solidly built houses. Men knew how to till the

ground, and gathered in crops of cereals, among which barley was

the most abundant, then millet, lentils, peas, coriander, and anise;

they had learned to domesticate animals, as is proved beyond a doubt

by the number of bones of sheep and goats; they kept dogs to guard

their flocks, and horses to aid in agricultural work; they knew how

to weave stuffs, to grind grain, to extract the oil from olives, and

even to make cheese, if we may give that name to the pasty white stuff

found at the bottom of a vase by Dr. Nomicos. They were acquainted

with the arch, and they used durable and brilliant colors. The copper

saw is an example of the first efforts of the natives at metallurgy;

the gold and obsidian which were foreign to the island bear witness

to commercial relations with people at a distance. They loved art,

as proved by the shape of their vases and the ornamentation on many

of them, which is really often worthy of the best days of Greece. All

around we see signs appearing as it were suddenly of a civilization,

the origin and tendencies of which are alike still unknown.

But one human skeleton has so far been found in Santorin, and that

is of an inhabitant who had evidently been overtaken in his flight

and crushed beneath the burning scoriae from the volcano. This man

was of medium height, and is supposed to have been between forty and

forty-eight years old. The bones of the pelvis are firmly consolidated,

and the teeth are worn with mastication.

Let us endeavor to guess at the period when the people of Santorin

lived. De Longperier tells us that vases similar to those left by

them are represented on the tomb of Rekmara amongst the presents

offered to Thothmes III., who lived in the eighth century B.C.,

but if so the people of Santorin appear to have borrowed nothing in

their intercourse with Egypt. The first invasion of Greece by the

Phoenicians is supposed to have been in the fifteenth century B.C.,

but the buildings, the pottery, and the various implements of Therasia

and Acrotiri differ essentially from those of the Phoenicians, who,

moreover, from the earliest times, used metals. Must we not therefore

conclude that the catastrophe which overwhelmed Santorin took place

before the fifteenth century B.C.? Conjectures as to the date of the

fatal eruption, however plausible, are of no use in anything relating

to the origin of the people, or the time of their first occupation

of the island. On these points all is still hopeless confusion, and

we must wait for further discoveries before we can hope to come to

any conclusions in the matter.

We have gone back to the very earliest days of man upon the earth;

we have shown that he was the contemporary of the mammoth and

the rhinoceros, of the cave-lion and the cave-bear; we have seen

him crouching in the deep recesses of his cave and fighting the

battle of life with no weapon but a few scarcely sharpened flints,

leading an existence infinitely more wretched than the animals about

him. Not without emotion have we watched our remote ancestors in their

ceaseless struggle for existence; not without emotion have we seen them

gradually growing in intelligence and energy, and attaining by slow

degrees to a certain amount of civilization. Santorin is a striking

and brilliant proof of their progress, and we shall appreciate this

progress yet more when we have examined the ruins piled up on the hill

of Hissarlik. There we shall close this portion of our work, for from

the time when the buildings of which these remains were the relics

met their doom, the use of metals, copper, bronze, gold, silver, and

iron became general. History began to be written, and it is her task

to tell us of the migrations of races, the early efforts of historic,

races, the foundation of empires. In a word, the prehistoric age was

over; that of self-conscious portraiture was now to begin.

A few years ago I was on the ancient Hellespont and my

fellow-travellers, grouped about the deck of our vessel, were trying

to make out on the receding coast of Asia the sites of Troy and of

the tumuli which were then still supposed to have been the tombs of

Achilles, Patrokles, and Hector, but which are now, thanks to the

able researches of Dr. Schliemann, known to belong to a comparatively

modern epoch. The streams, bearing the ever memorable names of Simois

and Scamander, were also eagerly pointed out by the watchers, recalling

the words of Lamartine:

Le nautonnier voguant sur les flots du Bosphore

Des yeux cherchait encore

Le palais de Priam et les tours d'Ilium.

Great indeed is the privilege of genius, immortalizing all that it

touches; for it must be pointed out that Troy was never an important

town, and the war in which it disappeared was in reality but one of

the incessant struggles between the petty princes of Greece and Asia.

When I visited the East, scholars were not at all agreed as to the

site of the town which was so long besieged by the Greeks; and certain

sceptical spirits even went so far as to deny that there ever was

such a person as Homer at all, or that if there were, he wrote the

epic poem which has borne his . name so long. Tradition, however, was

pretty constant in pointing to the hill of Hissarlik as the site on

which Troy was built. Strabo was quite an exception in relegating the

town to the lower end of the bay; where the miserable little village

of Akshi-koi now stands. In 1788 a new idea was started; Lechevalier in

his account of his journey in Troas claims to have recognized the site

of Troy at Bunarbashi. At that time erudition was not very profound,

and Lechevalier's site was accepted; indeed it was long maintained,

and quite recently it has been defended by Perrot. But the nineteenth

century is more exacting; the most plausible hypotheses are not enough

without facts to support them, and excavations at Akshi-koi and at

Bunarbashi show that there never was a town on either of these sites.

Excavations on the hill of Hissarlik, begun by Dr. Schliemann in 1871,

and carried on under his superintendence for more than ten years, have,

on the contrary, yielded most definite, satisfactory, and conclusive

results. At a depth of fifty-two feet the diggers came to the virgin

soil, a very hard conchiferous limestone. The immense masses of DEBRIS

of which the embankment is made up date front different epochs; we have

before us, if we may use such an expression, a perpendicular Pentapolis

or series of five ancient cities one above the other. One town was

destroyed by assault and by fire; another rapidly rose from its ruins,

built with stones taken front the midst of those very remains. The

study of the piled-up rubbish enables us to build up again a picture

of the remote past with all its vicissitudes, and Virchow may well

say that the hill of Hissarlik will for ever be considered one of

the best authenticated witnesses of the progress of civilization.[249]

The first layer of rubbish rests on the rock itself, and may very

well have belonged to the town built by Dardanus, of which Tlepolemus

relates the destruction by his grandfather Hercules.[250] According to

the Homeric story six generations, and according to generally accepted

modern calculations two centuries, separate Dardanus from Priam. If

therefore we accept 1200 B.C. as the date of the Trojan war, the town

built by Dardanus would date from 1400 B.C., and we should. possess

data, if not absolutely certain, at least approximately so.[251]

There remain but a few relics of the buildings erected by the first

inhabitants of the bill of Hissarlik, which relics consist of great

blocks of irregular size, with remains of bearing walls composed of

small stones cemented together with clay and faced with a glaze which

has withstood the wear and tear of centuries.

The second town, which would appear to have been that described in the

Iliad, was probably built by a race foreign to those who erected the

first. The hill, which was to become the Acropolis of the new town,

was surrounded by the new-comers with a wall several feet thick, of

which the foundations consisted of unhewn stones; whilst the upper

part was made of artificially baked bricks, the baking having been

done after they were put in place, by large fires lit in vacant places

left at regular intervals; an arrangement recalling what we have said

in speaking of vitrified forts.[252] It is also interesting to note

a similar mode of construction at Aztalan in Wisconsin in structures

which probably date from the time of the Mound Builders. The walls

at Hissarlik were protected by re-entering angles and projecting

forts. The interior of the ENCEINTE was reached by three doors, and

it is still easy to make out the ruins of the different buildings. A

room sixty-five feet long by thirty-two wide is surrounded by very

thick walls, and towards the southeast is a square vestibule, opening

into the room by a large door.[253] These, Dr. Schliemann thinks,

were the NAOS and PRONAOS of a temple dedicated to the tutelary gods

of the town. Quite close to them is another building with similar

dispositions; a square vestibule giving access to a large room,

which in its turn leads to a smaller apartment. These two buildings,

which are reached through a PROPYLAEUM, are the only ones of which

the explorers have been able to make out the measurements with any

exactitude.

Other ruins are evidently remains of the royal residence. The homes

of the people were clustered on the sides and at the foot of the

hill. After the destruction of the town by the Greeks, the Acropolis

formed one vast mass of ruins, from which bits of walls stood out here

and there as mute witnesses of the catastrophe. The thin layer of black

earth covering the ruins seems to point to the speedy rebuilding of the

town. The houses of the third settlement are very irregularly grouped,

and consisted mostly of one story only, containing a number of very

small rooms. Some of the walls are of bricks with glazed facings,

others of very small stones cemented together with clay. In one

house of rather larger size than the others was found some cement

made of cinders, mixed with fragments of charcoal, broken bones,

and the remains of shells and pottery. On the northwest the new

colonists erected walls in place of those which had fallen down, but

they were of very inferior masonry, coarse bricks baked on the spot,

in the way customary among the Trojans, having formed the material.

The destruction of the third town was more complete than that of

Troy. The walls of the houses can still be made out rising to a

certain height, and it was upon them as foundations that the fourth

colony set up their abodes. These dwellings are smaller still, with

flat roofs formed of beams on which was laid a coating of rushes and

clay. Every generation appears to have been poorer than the last,

alike in material wealth and in fertility of resource.

The fifth colony spread northwards and eastwards. Their homes were

built very much in the same style as those of their predecessors. The

resemblance does not end there, and Dr. Schliemann notes that among

the ruins of the three towns, which successively rose from the site

of Troy, are found similar strange-looking idols, hatchets in jade,

porphyry, diorite, and bronze, goblets with two handles, clumsy

stone hammers, trachyte grindstones, and fusaioles or perforated

whorls bearing symbolic signs of a similar form. Evidently the men

who succeeded each other after the great siege of Troy on the now

celebrated hill of Hissarlik belonged to the same race, perhaps even

to the same tribe. There are, however, certain notable differences

which must not be passed over. The later pottery is not of such

fine clay or so well moulded as the earlier specimens, nor are the

stone hammers, which appear to have been the chief implements used,

of such good workmanship. The piles of shells left to accumulate

about the houses of the fourth and fifth towns can only be compared

to the kitchen-middings so often referred to, and there is no doubt

that those who left such heaps of rubbish about their dwellings could

not have been so civilized as were the celebrated Trojans.

Beneath the ruins of the Greek town, which strictly speaking belongs

to history, Schliemann found a quantity of pottery of curious shapes

and very different to anything he had previously discovered. He

ascribes them to a Lydian colony which dwelt for a short time upon the

hill. This pottery resembles that known as proto-Etruscan, of which

so many specimens have been found in Italy. Probably the makers of

both were contemporaries.

By numerous and careful measurements Dr. Schliemann has been able to

determine exactly the thickness of the layers, which correspond with

the different periods during which Hissarlik was inhabited. The remains

of the Greek and Lydian towns extend to a depth of 7 1/2 feet beneath

the actual level of the soil; the fourth layer, from 7 1/2 to 15 feet;

the third, from 15 to 22 1/2 feet; Troy itself, from 22 1/2 to 32 feet;

and lastly Dardania, from 32 to 52 feet. The last layer carries us

back to the golden age of Greek art, where all doubt is finally at

an end. The bas-reliefs of remarkable workmanship bear witness to

the Ilium, founded in memory of Troy. This is the town visited by

Xerxes, Alexander the Great, and Julian the Apostate.[254] That the

town still existed about the middle of the fourth century is proved

by medals taken from the ruins, but it evidently fell into decadence

soon after that time, for its very .name was forgotten by history,

and it was reserved for our own time to resuscitate the ancient city

of Priam and its successors from the ruins which lead been piled up

by the destructive hand of man and by the lapse of tinge. But this

task has been nobly achieved by the enthusiasm, scientific acumen,

and we may perhaps add good-fortune of an archaeologist who cherished

a positive passion for everything relating to Homeric times.

The number of objects picked up at different stages of the excavations

was very considerable. Dr. Schliemann neglected absolutely nothing that

appeared to him at all worthy of his collection, which now belongs to

the Royal Museum of Berlin and contains some twenty thousand objects,

including weapons and implements, some of stone, others of bronze,

and thousands of vases and fusaioles, gazing upon which we see rise

before our eyes a picture of a civilization unknown before but through

the Iliad and a few meagre historical allusions.

Before we note in detail the most remarkable of the objects in

Dr. Schliemann's collection, we must add that recent researches

have also brought to light the remains of a little temple dedicated

to Pallas Athene and referred to in history, as well as those of a

large Doric temple erected by Lysimachus, and of a magnificent theatre

capable of holding six thousand spectators, and which probably dates

from the end of the Roman Republic. The human bones picked lip among

the ruins of the different towns play be attributed to the practice,

already general, of cremation. Virchow has examined the skull of a

woman found at Troy, which is of a pronounced brachycephalic type

(82.5). The crania from the third town, on the other hand, are

dolichocephalic, the mean cranial capacity being sixty-seven. If we

could reason with any certainty from cranial capacity, this would

appear to point to a different race, but it would not do to come to

any positive conclusion with only one Trojan cranium to judge by.

FIGURE 89

Vase ending in the snout of an animal. Found on the hill of Hissarlik

at a depth of 45 1/2 feet.

But to return to Dr. Schliemann's fine collection. The pottery from

the first town, found at a depth of from thirty-two to fifty-two feet

(Fig. 89), is superior alike in color, form, and construction, to the

keramic ware of the following periods. The potter's wheel was unknown,

or at least very rarely used,[255] and pottery was hand made and

polished with bone or wood polishers, the marks of which can still

be made out. The forms are varied and often graceful, many of them,

as do those found in the mounds of North America imitating those of

the animals among which the potters lived. The usual color of the

keramic ware is black, some times decorated with white lozenge-shaped

ornaments. Some vases have also been found colored red, yellow,

and brown, and even decked with garlands of flower and fruit, as are

some of those of Santorin. We must also mention some apodal vases,

and others with three feet, used for funeral purposes, containing

human ashes (Fig. 90). The terra-cotta fusaioles, found in such

numbers among the ruins of the towns that rose successively from

the hill of Hissarlik, are, on the other hand, rare at Dardania,

if we may retain that name.[256]

FIGURE 90

Funeral vase containing human ashes. Found at a depth of 50 feet.

Excavations have brought to light more than six hundred celts or

knives, generally of smaller size than those found in Denmark or

France. Rock of many kinds, including serpentine, schist, felsite,

jadeite, diorite, and nephrite, were used; and saws of flint or

chalcedony, some toothed on one side only, others on both, are of

frequent occurrence. They were fixed into handles of wood or horn,

and kept in place with some agglutinative substance, such as pitch,

several of them still retaining traces of this primitive glue. We must

also mention awls, pins of bone and ivory, and ossicles or knuckle

bones, in every stage of manufacture, confirming the accounts of

Greek historians, who tell us of the great antiquity of the game

played with them. The Dardanians used wooden and bone implements and

weapons almost exclusively. It is impossible to say whether they were

acquainted with the use of metals, but we might assert that they were

if we could quite certainly attribute to them a certain mould of mica

schist, found at a depth of 45 1/2 feet, which bad been used in the

process of casting spits and pins, which are. supposed to be of more

ancient date than the fibulae.

FIGURE 91

Large terra-cotta vases found at Troy.

FIGURE 92

Earthenware pitcher found at a depth of 19 1/2 feet.

FIGURE 93

Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.

The most valuable objects of the collection come from the deposits

representing the town of Troy; they are all twisted, broken, and

charred, bearing witness to the fierceness of the flames in which the

town perished. These discoveries reveal to us the daily life of the

people of Troy. Judging from the number of boars' tusks found, hunting

must have been a favorite pastime with them. The bones of oxen, sheep,

and goats, of smaller species than those of the present day, have also

been found. Horses and dogs were rare, and cats unknown. The domestic

poultry of the present day was also wanting, no remains of birds

having been found except a few bones of the wild swan and the wild

goose. Fish and mollusca, as proved by the immense numbers of bones

and shells, formed an important part of the diet of the Trojans. They

also fed largely on cereals, which they cultivated with success; and

wheat, the grains of which were very small, was known to them. The

preservation of these vegetable relics was due to carbonization.

FIGURE 94

Terra-cotta vase found with the treasure of Priam.

FIGURE 95

Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.

The pottery discovered is of an infinite variety, and includes jars

from 4 3/4 feet to 7 3/4 feet high (Fig. 91), of Which Schliemann

found more than six hundred, nearly all of them empty. Their size

need not surprise us, for Ciampini[257] speaks of a pottery DOLIUM

of such vast size and height that a ladder of ten or twelve rungs was

needed to reach the opening.[258] With these jars were found some large

goblets, some long-necked vessels (Fig. 92), some amphorae, and vases

with three feet (Fig. 93). Some of the vases had lids the shape of a

bell (Fig. 94), others were provided with flaps or horns by which to

lift them (Fig. 95). The potter gave free vent to his imagination,

but the decorations representing fish-bones, palm branches, zigzags,

circles, and dots, are all of very inferior execution.

FIGURE 96

Earthenware pig found at a depth of 13 feet.

FIGURE 97

Vase surmounted by an owl's head. Found beneath the ruins of Troy.

Two series of terra-cotta objects deserve special mention, one

representing animals, generally pigs (Fig. 96), though an example

has been found of a hippopotamus; a fact of very great interest,

as this animal does not live at the present day anywhere but in the

heart of Africa. We know from this terra-cotta representation that

it lived in Greece in the days of Troy. Pliny speaks of it in Upper

Egypt in his day, and according to Mariette it lived thirty-five

centuries before the Christian era in the delta formed by the mouth

of the Nile. The second series of objects referred to above as of

special interest are vases representing the heads of owls with the

busts of women (Fig. 97). It is easy to make out the beak, eyes,

and ears of the bird, and the breasts and navel of the woman. In

some instances the face, breasts, and sexual organs of a woman are

represented by a series of dots forming a triangle with the point

downwards.[259] Other dots represent a necklace, and very similar

designs are to be seen on the Chaldean cylinders. Can we then connect

them in any way with the relics of Troy, and is it possible that

the Trojans and Chaldeans were of common origin? However that may

be, the constant repetition of these signs proves that they were of

hieratic character. Terra-cotta was also used for a very great number

of other purposes, as was the case everywhere before the introduction

of metals. Some deep and some flat plates made of very common clay have

been found, together with buttons, funnels, bells, children's toys,

and seals on which, some authorities think, Hittite characters can

be made out. No lamps, or anything that could serve their purpose,

have been found. The Trojans probably used torches of resinous wood

or braziers, when they required artificial light.

It would be impossible to give a list of the objects of every variety

found among the ruins of Troy, with the aid of which we can form a very

definite idea of the private life of its people. Some fragments of an

ivory lyre, and some pipes pierced with three holes at equal distances,

bear witness to their taste for music; a distaff, still full of charred

wool, deserted by the spinner when she fled before the conflagration,

tells of domestic industry and manual dexterity, while marble and stone

phalli prove that the generative forces of nature were worshipped.[260]

FIGURE 98

Copper vases found at Troy.

The weapons and implements found included haematite and diorite

projectiles used in slings, stone hatchets, and hammers pierced to

receive handles, flint saws and obsidian knives. Metallurgy began to

play an important part, and stone with its minor resisting power was

quickly superseded by bronze. In fact, Virchow was certainly justified

in saying that the whole town belonged to the Bronze age. Iron was

still unknown, at least so far no trace of it has been found, either

among the ruins of Troy or of the towns which succeeded it. Several

crucibles and moulds of mica, schist, or clay have been found with one

of granite of rectangular shape bearing on each face the hollows in

tended to receive the fused- metal. The Schliemann museum possesses

numerous battle-axes[261] of bronze, some double-bladed daggers

with crooked ends, lances similar to those discovered at Koban,[262]

and thousands of spits, some with spherically shaped heads, others

of spiral form. Some of these spits are made of copper, as are some

large nails weighing thirty ounces, so that this metal was evidently

still often used in a pure state.

FIGURE 99

Vases of gold and electrum, with two ingots, found beneath the ruins

of Troy.

FIGURE 100

Gold and silver objects from the treasure of Priam.

FIGURE 101

Gold ear-rings, head-dress, and necklace of golden beads from the

treasure of Priam.

At the foot of the palace, the ruins of which rise from the Acropolis

at a depth of 27 1/2 feet, the pick-axes of the explorers brought to

light metal shields, vases (Fig. 98), and dishes mixed together in

the greatest confusion, often soldered together by the intense heat

to which they had been subjected. They had probably been enclosed in

a wooden chest that was destroyed in the conflagration.[263] We are

astonished at the wealth revealed to us. Cups, goblets, and bottles of

gold (Figs. 99 and 100) lay side by side with golden necklaces[264]

and ear-rings of electrum.[265] The ornaments that had belonged to

women are especially curious. At one place alone several diadems

(Fig. 101) were picked up, with fifty-six ear-rings, six bracelets,

and nine thousand minor objects, such as rings, buckles, buttons, dice,

pins, beads, and ornaments of a great variety.[266] All these treasures

were piled up in a great silver vase, into which they had doubtless

been hastily thrown in the confusion of a precipitate flight. They

are all of characteristic forms, quite unlike anything in Assyrian or

Egyptian art. Were they made in Troy itself? Dr. Schliemann doubts

it; he thinks that the makers of such clumsy pottery are not likely

to have been able to produce jewelry of such delicate and remarkable

workmanship. I should not like to be so positive, for even amongst

the most advanced peoples we find very common objects mixed with

others showing artistic skill. Why should it not have been the same

at Troy? I think that in future Trojan art must take its place in the

history of the progress of humanity. The nineteenth century has brought

that art to light, and by a strange caprice of chance the treasures

of Priam adorn the museum of Berlin, and we have seen the diadem of

fair Helen exhibited in the South Kensington Museum of London.[267]

Treasures nearly as valuable as those we have been describing

were found in earthenware vases in several other parts of the

ruins. Unfortunately, many of the objects found were stolen and melted

down by the workmen, whilst others were taken to the Imperial Palace

at Constantinople, whence they are doomed to be dispersed. In 1873,

however, Dr. Schliemann was fortunate enough to hit upon a deposit

containing twenty gold ear-rings, and four golden ornaments which

had formed part of a necklace.[268] Similar ornaments were found at

Mykenae, near Bologna, in the Caucasus, in the Lake dwellings, and,

stranger still, on the banks of the Rio Suarez in Colombia.[269]

I will not add more to what I have already said about the towns which

succeeded each other on the ruins of Troy, and of which the successive

stages of rubbish on the hill of Hissarlik are the only witnesses

left. The flames spared none who settled on that doomed spot, and

new arrivals disappeared as rapidly as they came. The Ilium of the

Greeks and Romans alone enjoyed any prosperity, but it too was in its

turn swept away; and at the present day a few wandering shepherds and

their flocks are the sole dwellers upon the hill immortalized by Homer.

Before concluding this chapter I must refer once more to a, fact of

considerable interest. In that part of the deposits of Hissarlik which

represents Troy, Dr. Schliemann picked up the perforated whorls to

which the name of fusaioles has been given (Fig. 102), and of which

we spoke in our account of the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland. These

fusaioles are generally of common clay mixed with bits of mica,

quartz, or silica, though some few have been found at Mykenae and

Tiryns of steatite. The clay whorls before being baked were plunged

into a bath of a very fine clay of gray, yellow, or black color,

and then carefully polished. They nearly all bear ornaments of very

primitive execution, such as stars, the sun, flowers, or animals,

and more rarely representations of the human figure.

FIGURE 102

Terra-cotta fusaioles.

We ourselves think these fusaioles are amulets which were taken to

Troy by the Trojans, and piously preserved by their successors. One

important fact tends to confirm this hypothesis. A great number of them

bear the sign of the SWASTIKA[270] (Fig. 103), the cross with the four

arms, the sacred symbol of the great Aryan race so long supposed to be

the source of all the Indo-European races. The SWASTIKA is engraved,

not only on the fusaioles, but also on the diadems of the daughters of

Priam, on the idols the Trojans worshipped, and on numerous objects

from the Lydian and Greco-Roman towns. We meet with the double cross

among the prehistoric races of the basin of the Danube, who colonized

the shores of the Troad and the north of Italy, and it was introduced

with the products of that antique civilization on the one side to the

Greeks, the Etruscans, the Latins, the Gauls, the Germanic races,

the Scandinavians, and the Bretons; and on the other to the people

of Asia Minor, Persia, India, China, and Japan.[271]

FIGURE 103

Cover of a vase with the symbol of the SWASTIKA. Found at Troy.

This sign of the SWASTIKA meets us at every turn; we find it on many

ancient Persian books, on the temples of India, on Celtic funeral

stones, and on a Hittite cylinder. It is seen on vases of elegant

form from Athens and Melos; on others from Ceres, Chiusi, and Cumae,

as well as on the clumsy pottery recently discovered at Konigswald

on the Oder and on the borders of Hungary; on bronze objects from

the Caucasus, and the celebrated Albano urn; on a medal from Gaza

in Palestine and on an Iberian medal from Asido. We see it on the

Gallo-Roman rings of the Museum of Namur, and on the plaques of the

belt, dating from the same epoch, which form part of the magnificent

collection of M. Moreau. Schliemann tells us of it at Mykenae and

at Tiryns. Chantre found it on the necropoles of the Caucasus. It

is engraved on the walls of the catacombs of Rome, on the chair of

Saint Ambrose at Milan, on the crumbling walls of Portici, and on the

most ancient monuments of Ireland, where it is often associated with

inscriptions in the ogham character.[272]

The SWASTIKA occurs twice on a large piece of copper found at Corneto,

which now belongs to the Museum of Berlin. Cartailhac noticed it in

the CITANIA of Portugal, some of which date from Neolithic times.[273]

The English in the Ashantee war noticed it on the bronzes they took

at Coomassie on the coast of Guinea, and it has also been found on

objects discovered in the English county of Norfolk.

FIGURE 104

Stone hammer from New Jersey bearing an undeciphered inscription.

Moreover, if we cross the Atlantic we find the same symbol engraved

on the temples of Yucatan, the origin of which is unknown, on a

hatchet found at Pemberton, in New Jersey (Fig. 104), on vases from

a Peruvian sepulchre near Lima, and on vessels from the PUEBLOS of

New Mexico. Dr. Hamy, in his "American Decades," represents it on a

flattened gourd belonging to the Wolpi Indians, and the sacred tambours

of the Esquimaux of the present day bear the same symbol, which was

probably transmitted to them by their ancestors. The universality of

this one sign amongst the Hindoos, Persians, Hittites, Pelasgians,

Celts, and Germanic races, the Chinese, Japanese, and the primitive

inhabitants of America is infinitely strange, and seems to prove the

identity of races so different to each other, alike in appearance

and in customs, and is a very important factor in dealing with the

great problem of the origin of the human species.

We have dwelt much on the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, but we must

add that, like all great discoveries, they have been very vigorously

contested.[274] Boetticher, for instance, considers the ruins

of Hissarlik to be nothing more than the remains of a necropolis

where cremation was practised according to the Assyrio-Babylonian

custom.[275] A distinguished and very honest savant, S. Reinach,

constituted himself the champion of this theory at the meeting of the

Congress in Paris in 1889. Schliemann replied very forcibly, and the

meeting appeared to be with him in the matter, as were also a number

of men of science who visited Hissarlik in 1888, and we think that in

the end history will adopt the opinion of the great Danish antiquarian.

We have now passed in review the chief of the works left behind him by

man from the earliest (lays of his existence to the dawn of historic

times. We must still show prehistoric man in the presence of death,

the universal destroyer, and learn from the evidence of the tombs of

the remote past how our ancestors met the common doom.