Fig. 224. Fig. 225.
Diluvial knives.*
Besides.' the axes and knives, there were still other specimens of
wrought silex and sandstone, which appear to have been used as
symbols or signs connected with the rites of religion. Some of these'
were probably the original forms or models of the Celtic stones, so
widely known; viz., cromlechs, dolmens, lichavens, &c. They certainly
have the same shapes, and it is not easy to assign any other use or
origin to them. Generally pyramidal or cubic in form, they are found,
with little variation, from the oldest diluvian to the Celtic period,
F ig. 227. Fig. 228.
Druidical Monuments, f
Fig. 226.
Fig. 229.
Fig. 230.
and even down to near the Roman times. They are represented in
Rigs. 227, 228, 229, and 230.
* Boucher, Ä XXVII. f Ibid., Pis. XXXIII. and XXXIV.
We should remember that many of the instruments we call axes were
probably used,only in sacrifices* and some, perhaps, merely as votive
offerings or amulets; being too small, and made of materials too fragile,
to have been of any use either as weapons or as tools. Moreover,
they were fitted so slightly to their cases, that they must have become
detached whenever a blow was struck, and would thus have been left
in the wound, or, in case of sacrifice, would have dropped into the
hole of the dolmen made to receive the blood of the victim. This
superstition still exists among some savage tribes, who, in their human
sacrifices,always leave the knife in the wound; and may perhaps he
traced in the practice of Italian bravos, with whom it is a point of
professional honor to leave the stiletto sticking in the body of the *»
murdered man.
1 The triangular axe was probably a form consecrated by custom among those rude
tribes, like the crescent among the Turks. Being never employed as an instrument of
death, except in sacrifices; when the sacrifice was consummated, on funereal occasions, it
would be deposited near the urn containing the ashes of the chief they wished to honor, or
under the altar of the god they would propitiate. At any rate, the permanence of so rude
a state o’f art during so many ages, or perhaps so many hundreds of a g eslNrom a. period
of unknown antiquity, separated from historic times by one of the great revolutions of the
earth — and disappearing, not gradually, but suddenly; and either by death or conquest;
to be succeeded by remains of the Roman era—indicates the existence of a people in a state
of barbarism from which they would probably never have emerged. Inhabiting a country
full of lakes and forests, they may have resembled the Indians of North America ; or, to
select a more ancient example, we may compare them to the nomadic tribes of Asia and
Africa: the Tartars, Mongols, and Bedouins. The duration of their stationary state defies .
all speculation; since the most ancient traditions, especially of the pastoral Arabs, represent
them precisely as we see them to-day, and there is no sensible difference between the
tent of Jacob and that of a modem Shfeykh.” *
The supposition that these pre-Celtic populations of Europe may
have resembled our Rorth American Indians is exceedingly just, so
long as similitudes are restricted merely to social habits, superinduced
on both continents by the same natural causes; but that the aborigines
of Europe were not, in any case, identical physiologically with
the trans-Alleghanian mound-builders, has been already exemplified
[supra, p. 291]. This leads us to the “Pre-Celtic Annals of Scotland ”
— one of those sterling works, replete with solid instruction, that
reflects infinite honor on the “ native heath,” which Dr. D a n ie l
W ilso n has recently exchanged for a Canadian home. Whilst
heartily welcoming such an accession of science to our continent, we
lack space to do more than present the learned archaeologist’s results
in the, concisest form. Caledonia, in ages anterior to any Celtic traditions,
appears to have been successively occupied by two types of
map (heretofore unknown to historians), distinct from each other no
* M. Boucher de Perthes : Antiquités Celtiques.