The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

THE PROSPECTORS 53
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 miUenia 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.'^
The temples of Malta, too, were erected without the use of metal tools, as was Solomon's
temple,'^ 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. '5 The first type he beheves 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 ante-chamber. 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^" 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.
'7 Joshua V. 2 ; cf. Exodus iv. 25. '9 Leeds {1920) 229.
»8 I Kings vi. 7. " Leeds (1922).