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Blanckenhorn maintained (Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1907, p. 368) that iron was generally known in India at least as early as 1500 B. C., but he was unable to produce proofs for this assertion, and as little was G. Oppert able conclusively to prove that it was known as early as 1000 B. C. It was merely a conviction of Oppert which he could argue with probable reasons, but not support with positive proofs. Hence I would emphasize the statement that iron finds made in strata of old East India ruins of the tenth to fifteenth pre-Christian centuries do not justify the conclusion that there existed a native iron industry among the Hindus. Such objects only prove that the ancient Hindus were acquainted with iron utensils, but not that they actually made them. We have few accounts of the use of iron by the Hindus, and these scarcely favor the assumption of a native iron industry, but rather suggest that the Hindu iron utensils of the tenth to fifteenth centuries B. C. were foreign importations, and the Phenicians will probably have to be considered as the importers of such iron manufactures. For in my opinion it has been proven above that the Phenicians at least as early as 3000 B. C. had regular commercial relations with India which they carried on from Eloth-Aelana on the Red Sea. If, then, at the period 1300 B. C., iron and steel utensils were practically unknown to the Hindus, as may well be assumed, while among the Phenicians they were objects of common barter, it seems natural that the latter carried such articles to India to use for barter. It is therefore not only not impossible but very probable that in excavations in India, especially on the sites of harbors, such solated imported Phenician iron and steel articles will be found.

As regards an iron industry among the Chinese, I have thus far not come across any views of sinologues on our problem. This indifference of the students of Chinese history is regrettable for the progress of this investigation, the more so since China is probably to be looked upon as a second independent source of a native iron industry and so also of independent inventors of iron implements.

Such contributions as anthropologists, ethnologists, historians, and naturalists could make to the elucidation of our problem have to a great extent been presented, but as to the cooperation of philologians, there is much left to be desired from them. A great desideratum is an examination of the cuneiform texts for the first mention of iron, and of possibly still greater importance is a study of the Egyptian inscribed monuments for the same purpose. On the other hand, comparative philology could in many cases indicate the way in which different peoples became acquainted with the metal and at the same time received and adopted its name. It is probable that the name

1 Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1908, p. 60.

given the metal by the inventors of ironworking migrated along with the metal to very many peoples, and philologians could therefore render valuable help in the search for the earliest iron industry.

I can not close this discussion without referring with special satisfaction to von Luschan's lucid and thorough treatise on African ironworking and the furnace apparatus and blowing apparatus employed by the Negroes. A continued comparison of these utensils with those in use among peoples of other continents, will doubtless yield some important conclusions as to the age and peculiarity of ironworking among the Negroes as well as among other peoples. Similarly, we gratefully hail the investigations of Olshausen, Grosse, Busse, Krause, and Giebeler of the quarrying of iron in prehistoric time, especially in Germany, which are valuable contributions to our question. Although I can not agree with these investigators on every point, I am glad to state that on the principal questions there is general agreement. In the near future I hope to present a separate study on the chemico-technological side of the quarrying of iron and of metals in general in antiquity.

1 Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1909, pp. 22-53.

2

Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1909, pp. 60-101.

THE KABYLES OF NORTH AFRICA.

[With 12 plates.]

By A. LISSAUER.1

While traveling in Algeria a year ago for recreation the only object I had in view, like all tourists, was to receive the passing impressions of landscape and art as they offered themselves along the road. Soon, however, there was pressed upon my attention many interesting questions about the historic and prehistoric periods of the country. I could not resist their fascination, and thus I became more and more engaged in studying the archeological and anthropological problems which the natives of Algeria and the surrounding countries, the home of the Kabyles, offer to the investigator. I pass over the numerous beautiful monuments of historic time, for they are described in every guidebook.

But besides these memorials of the ten invasions of various peoples of historic time, from the Phenicians to the French, there exist in north Africa thousands of megalithic tomb structures about which history has nothing to say. Some of them fully resemble those of Europe; others are peculiar to that region.

These megalithic monuments may be divided into two classes:

I. DOLMEN, MENHIR, AND CROMLECH, AS THEY ALSO OCCUR IN EUROPE.

1. In Morocco there were still, in 1876, about 70 dolmens preserved in five groups between the Straits of Gibraltar and the River Loukhos (the Lixus of the ancients), and at Beni Snassen, on the frontier of Algeria. A group of about 40 menhirs, which as late as 1830 numbered 90, was also in Mzora, south of Tangier; finally, there were then still in existence, west of Fez, a number of cromlechs. The tombs are hidden in a hill so that only the stone covers are exposed on the surface. They contain crouching skeletons and coarse, poorly

1 Translated, by permission, from the German: Archäologische und anthropologische Studien ueber die Kabylen. Von A. Lissauer, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vol. 40, part 4, 1908. Berlin, 1908, pp. 501-529.

made potsherds, intermingled with coal. Alongside of a dolmen lay three silex axes and a crude figure of reddish sandstone.

2. In Guyotville, near Algiers, only nine out of several hundred dolmens, which in the middle of the last century were still standing upright and since then carried off by inhabitants for house building, are now preserved in perfect condition. These were saved through the interest of the late German professor, Kuester, an instructor at the Lyceum, in Algiers, who acquired these remnants, together with a vineyard. One dolmen contained two crouching skeletons, the bones of a child, a bronze bracelet, and potsherds.

3. At Bou Nouara, near Constantine, on the road to Guelma, there is a large number of dolmens, mostly surrounded by stone circles (pl. 1); as also at Sigus (pl. 2 and pl. 3, fig. 1), Ksar Mahidjiba (pl. 3, fig. 2), and El Kheneg, all in the neighborhood of Constantine.

4. At Bou Merzoug, near Oulad Rahmoun, there are about 1,000 dolmens, inclosed by one or more stone circles. Their contents consisted of cowering skeletons, accompanied by copper rings, pots, bowls, and horse bones. One tomb contained iron rings, copper rings, and plates, fragments of worked flint, potsherds of very fine clay, and a bronze medal of Faustina.

5. At Roknia, on the road from Guelma to Hammon Meskoutine, there are several thousand dolmens, with contents similar to the preceding.

6. At Henchir el Hadjar, in the territory of Enfida, in the regency of Tunis, there were still preserved in 1904 about 400 dolmens, mostly passage graves, often surrounded with cromlechs or stone circles. The tombs are often built entirely in the ground, so that only the flat stone cover on the surface indicates the tomb. They comprise up to six stone chambers, each with a threshold stone, and contain crouching skeletons of both sexes with platyknemic tibia and potsherds.

7. Still farther south the existence of megalithic monuments has been discovered; as a cromlech of the expedition Choisy at Ain Messine, between Laghouat and El Golea, and a dolmen of Johnston in Uganda.

II. MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS PECULIAR TO THE LAND OF THE KABYLES.

Only the most important will be mentioned here.

1. Quadrangular gigantic chambers at Ellez, in the neighborhood of Le Kef in Tunis. They are chambers of four large stone plates, with doors and small windows in the doorplates. Two rows of five such chambers each are separated by a passage and covered with stone plates in form of a gable roof. The general entrance to the cemetery is closed with four large stone plates.

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