The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

54
THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
As to the date of this trade we can say httle with certainty at present. We have
seen that objects have been found in Spain which seem to point to a connection with
Hissarhk II. In the temple of Hal Tarxien in Malta were found certain carved stones
with a double spiral ornament", which exactly resemble some in the Syracuse museum,
which had closed some of the rock-cut tombs near that city." These tombs have been
relegated by Signer Orsi to the period he calls Siculan I., and to this period belong
the rock-cut tombs at CasteUucio, in one of which was found several pieces of carved
ivory, which closely resemble a piece found in Hissarlik IP^ This city was founded
about 2500 B.C., or perhaps some centuries earlier, and seems to have been sacked
about 2225 B.C.** The trade then which we are discussing must have taken place
during the latter half of the third millenium 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. *=; 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 millenium.
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 EUiot Smith believes that this structure, and the use of the
antechamber, developed in Egypt,^* 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
" Zammit (1920) PI. xxxiv. fig. 3.
» Sergi (1901) 284, fig. 78.
n Peet (1909) 204, fig. 75 ; D&helette (1908-1914) ii. 75.
M Peake (1916) 1. 169.
»5 The megalithic structures had passed through several stages before the arrival in Jutland of the single grave
people, or beaker-folk. cf. Sterjna (1910).
»' Smith (1913).