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Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, born July 1818, was a French anthropologist and palæontologist. His special interest in cave drawings involved him in the exploration of the caves of southern France, and exploration of the earliest peoples to dwell in Europe. His article describing the megalithic monuments of the Iberian peninsula was published in Popular Science Monthly, volume 31.
NOTHING in the ancient history of man is of more considerable interest than are those monuments, at once rudely grand and mysteriously simple, which have been designated megalithic. They may be simply raised stones, isolated menhirs, cromlechs arranged in a circle, or artificial caves formed by placing flat flags horizontally on standing supports. Dolmens or covered passages were usually buried under masses of earth or stones, so as to form veritable tumuli; but they always present the common character of being constructed in rough blocks, virgin of all human labor.
Megaliths are important on account of their number and their dispersion. They are to be found, with a likeness running through them all, in places most remote from one another, on different continents. At Carnac and at Kermarin are immense rows of stones, of which the menhirs of the Khasias of India appear like exact copies. Similar dolmens are standing in Palestine, Ireland, and Hindostan. Megaliths can be found in Peru and among the aboriginal monuments of North America, in Spain and Denmark, in the Orcades and the islands of the Mediterranean, on the shores of the Black Sea and of the Baltic, at the foot of Mount Sinai, and in Iceland at the edge of the eternal glaciers.
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"A Witch Shall Be Born," one of the Conan the Cimmerian stories by Robert Ervin Howard, and the source of the famous crucifixion scene. First published in Weird Tales in December 1934, this print comes from the Avon Fantasy Reader (1949).
The story concerns a witch replacing her twin sister as queen of a city state, which brings her into conflict with Conan who had been the captain of the queen's guard. Themes of paranoia, and the duality of the twin sisters, are paramount in this story but it also includes elements of the conflict between barbarism and civilization that is common to the entire Conan series. The novella as a whole is considered an average example of the series though one scene stands out. -
Howard's stories of the wanderings of Conan the Cimmerian through the realms of the pre-Glacial era were based upon a carefully structed "history" of those ages devised before starting his series … this careful groundwork which makes these tales so colorfully realistic, so vivid, so varied in background. We sense that he has woven into his literary tapestry not merely varicolored threads but clothes of different textures, so that his prehistoric kingdoms are national not merely because he calls them by different names but because he has thought of them as different in culture, approach, tradition. — Excerpted from Avon Fantasy Reader (1949)
Taramis, Queen of Khauran, awakened from a dream-haunted slumber to a silence that seemed more like the stillness of nighted catacombs than the normal quiet of a sleeping place. She lay staring into the darkness, wondering why the candles in their golden candelabra had gone out. A flecking of stars marked a gold-barred casement that lent no illumination to the interior of the chamber. But as Taramis lay there, she became aware of a spot of radiance glowing in the darkness before her. She watched, puzzled. It grew and its intensity deepened as it expanded, a widening disk of lurid light hovering against the dark velvet hangings of the opposite wall. Taramis caught her breath, starting up to a sitting position. A dark object was visible in that circle of light—a human head.
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