probably frightened multitudes from the coast into the interior, but there is no proof that they ever made any extensive settlements in the centre of the country, nor on its west or north coast. It was different with the Romans: with them the genius of conquest was strong; they longed to annex all Spain to their dominions, and no doubt drove all those who were impatient of their yoke into the remote districts of Portugal and the rugged fastnesses of the Asturias and the northern mountains. It is also probable that many, to avoid their oppressions, sought refuge beyond the sea; but the great migrations are probably due to the intolerance of the early Christian missionaries. It thus seems that it was to avoid Carthaginian rapacity, Roman tyranny, and Christian intolerance, that the unfortunate aborigines were forced first into the fastnesses of the hills, and thence driven literally into the sea, to seek refuge from their oppressors in the islands of the ocean.[1]
Such an hypothesis seems perfectly consonant with all the facts as we now know them, and it also accounts for the absence of dolmens in the centre of Spain; for if this is correct, these migrations took place in the pre-dolmen period, and just as we find the Bryts beginning to use stones after having been driven from the fertile plains of the east into the fastnesses of Cumberland and Wales, so we find the Spaniards first adopting rude-stone monuments after having been driven into Portugal and the Asturias.
The one point which this theory does not seem to account for is the presence of dolmens in Andalusia. They however are, if I am not mistaken, an outlying branch of the great African dolmen field, and belong to the same age as these do, of which we shall be better able to judge presently. That there was a close or intimate
- ↑ "In the year B.C. 218, the second and fiercest struggle between the rival republics of Carthage and Rome was commenced by Hannibal taking Seguntum. The Peninsula thereafter became the theatre of a war afterwards carried by Hannibal into Italy, which was not concluded till 202 B.C., when Spain was added to the growing Italian Republic. But the nation of Spain did not willingly bow to the yoke. One of the bloodiest of all the Roman wars commenced in Spain 153, and did not finally terminate for twenty years, during which cities were razed to the ground, multitudes massacred and made slaves, and the triumphant arms of Rome borne to the Atlantic shores. Here, therefore, is an epoch in the history of the Spanish peninsula which seems completely to coincide with the ancient traditions of the Scoti, and the knowledge we possess of the period of their arrival in Ireland."—Dan Wilson, 'Prehistoric Annals of Scotland,' p. 475.
