PRIMITIVE AND PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE:EARLY BEGINNINGS

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CHAPTER I.

PRIMITIVE AND PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Desor, Les constructions lacustres du lac de Neufchatel.

Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments. R. C. Hoare, Ancients Wiltshire. Lyell, The

Antiquity of Man. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times. Nadaillac, Prehistoric America.

Rougemont, L'age du Bronze. Tylor, Primitive Culture.

EARLY BEGINNINGS. It is impossible to trace the early stages of the process by

which true architecture grew out of the first rude attempts of man at building. The

oldest existing monuments of architecture--those of Chaldæa and Egypt--belong to

an advanced civilization. The rude and elementary structures built by savage and

barbarous peoples, like the Hottentots or the tribes of Central Africa, are not in

themselves works of architecture, nor is any instance known of the evolution of a

civilized art from such beginnings. So far as the monuments testify, no savage people

ever raised itself to civilization, and no primitive method of building was ever

developed into genuine architecture, except by contact with some existing civilization

of which it appropriated the spirit, the processes, and the forms. How the earliest

architecture came into existence is as yet an unsolved problem.

PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE is therefore a subject for the archæologist rather than

the historian of art, and needs here only the briefest mention. If we may judge of the

condition of the primitive races of antiquity by that of the savage and barbarous

peoples of our own time, they required only the simplest kinds of buildings, though

the purposes which they served were the same as those of later times in civilized

communities. A hut or house for shelter, a shrine of some sort for worship,

a stockade for defence, a cairn or mound over the grave of the chief or hero, were

provided out of the simplest materials, and these often of a perishable nature. Poles

supplied the framework; wattles, skins, or mud the walls; thatching or stamped earth

the roof. Only the simplest tools were needed for such elementary construction.

There was ingenuity and patient labor in work of this kind; but there was no

planning, no fitting together into a complex organism of varied materials shaped with

art and handled with science. Above all, there was no progression toward higher

ideals of fitness and beauty. Rudimentary art displayed itself mainly in objects of

worship, or in carvings on canoes and weapons, executed as talismans to ward off

misfortune or to charm the unseen powers; but even this art was sterile and never

grew of itself into civilized and progressive art.

Yet there must have been at some point in the remote past an exception to this rule.

Somewhere and somehow the people of Egypt must have developed from crude

beginnings the architectural knowledge and resource which meet us in the oldest

monuments, though every vestige of that early age has apparently perished. But

although nothing has come down to us of the actual work of the builders who

wrought in the primitive ages of mankind, there exist throughout Europe and Asia

almost countless monuments of a primitive character belonging to relatively recent

times, but executed before the advent of historic civilization to the regions where

they are found. A general resemblance among them suggests a common heritage of

traditions from the hoariest antiquity, and throws light on the probable character of

the transition from barbaric to civilized architecture.

PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS. These monuments vary widely as well as in

excellence; some of them belong to Roman or even Christian times; others to a much

remoter period. They are divided into two principal classes, the megalithic structures

and lake dwellings. The latter class may be dismissed with the briefest mention. It

comprises a considerable number of very primitive houses or huts built on wooden

piles in the lakes of Switzerland and several other countries in both hemispheres, and

forming in some cases villages of no mean size. Such villages, built over the water for

protection from attack, are mentioned by the writers of antiquity and portrayed on

Assyrian reliefs. The objects found in them reveal an incipient but almost stationary

civilization, extending back from three thousand to five thousand years or more, and

lasting through the ages of stone and bronze down into historic times.

The megalithic remains of Europe and Asia are far more important. They are very

widely distributed, and consist in most cases of great blocks of stone arranged in

rows, circles, or avenues, sometimes with huge lintels resting upon them. Upright

stones without lintels are called menhirs; standing in pairs with lintels they are

known as dolmens; the circles are called cromlechs. Some of the stones are of gigantic

size, some roughly hewn into shape; others left as when quarried. Their age and

purpose have been much discussed without reaching positive results. It is probable

that, like the lake dwellings, they cover a long range of time, reaching from the dawn

of recorded history some thousands of years back into the unknown past, and that

they were erected by races which have disappeared before the migrations to which

Europe owes her present populations. That most of them were in some way

connected with the worship of these prehistoric peoples is generally admitted; but

whether as temples, tombs, or memorials of historical or mythical events cannot, in

all cases, be positively asserted. They were not dwellings or palaces, and very few

were even enclosed buildings. They are imposing by the size and number of their

immense stones, but show no sign of advanced art, or of conscious striving after

beauty of design. The small number of "carved stones," bearing singular ornamental

patterns, symbolic or mystical rather than decorative in intention, really tends to

prove this statement rather than to controvert it. It is not impossible that the

dolmens were generally intended to be covered by mounds of earth. This would

group them with the tumuli referred to below, and point to a sepulchral purpose in

their erection. Some antiquaries, Fergusson among them, contend that many of the

European circles and avenues were intended as battle-monuments or trophies.

There are also walls of great antiquity in various parts of Europe, intended for

fortification; the most important of these in Greece and Italy will be referred to in

later chapters. They belong to a more advanced art, some of them even deserving to

be classed among works of archaic architecture.

The tumuli, or burial mounds, which form so large a part of the prehistoric remains

of both continents, are interesting to the architect only as revealing the prototypes of

the pyramids of Egypt and the subterranean tombs of Mycenæ and other early Greek

centres. The piling of huge cairns or commemorative heaps of stone is known from

the Scriptures and other ancient writings to have been a custom of the greatest

antiquity. The pyramids and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus are the most imposing

and elaborate outgrowths of this practice, of which the prehistoric tumuli are the

simpler manifestations.

These crude and elementary products of undeveloped civilizations have no place,

however, in any list of genuine architectural works. They belong rather to the domain

of archæology and ethnology, and have received this brief mention only as revealing

the beginnings of the builder's art, and the wide gap that separates them from that

genuine architecture which forms the subject of the following chapters.

MONUMENTS: The most celebrated in England are at Avebury, an avenue, large and

small circles, barrows, and the great tumuli of Bartlow and Silbury "Hills;" at Stonehenge,

on Salisbury Plain, great megalithic circles and many barrows; "Sarsen stones" at

Ashdown; tumuli, dolmens, chambers, and circles in Derbyshire. In Ireland, many cairns

and circles. In Scotland, circles and barrows in the Orkney Islands. In France, Carnac and

Lokmariaker in Brittany are especially rich in dolmens, circles, and avenues. In

Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy, in India and in Africa, are many similar remains.

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