In Tunis the dolmen is not uncommon, and several groups or cemeteries have been reported.  Near Ellez occurs a type of corridor-tomb in which three dolmen-like chambers lie on either side of a central passage, and a seventh at the end opposite to the entrance.  The whole is constructed of upright slabs of stone, and is surrounded by a circle formed in the same way.

Morocco, too, has its dolmens, especially in the district of Kabylia, while near Tangier there is a stone circle.

Off the north coast of Africa, and thus on the highway which leads from Africa to Europe, lie the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa.  The latter is volcanic in origin, and its surface presents no opportunity for the building of megalithic monuments.  Lampedusa, on the other hand, consists of limestone, which lies about in great blocks on its surface.  On the slopes of the south coast there are several remains of megalithic construction, but they are too damaged to show much of their original form.  However, on the north side of the island there are megalithic huts in a very fair state of preservation.  They are oval in form and have in many cases a base course of orthostatic slabs.

Some miles to the north of Linosa lies the much larger volcanic island of Pantelleria, also a possession of Italy.  Here megalithic remains both of dwellings and of tombs have been found.  On the plateau of the Mursia are the remains of rectangular huts made of rough blocks of stone.  These huts seemed to have formed a village, which was surrounded by a wall for purposes of defence.  In the huts were found implements of obsidian and flat stones used for grinding.

[Illustration:  FIG. 20.  Plan of the Sese Grande, Pantelleria. 
               (Orsi, Monumenti Antichi, IX.)]

The tombs of the people who inhabited this village are, unlike the houses, circular or elliptical in form.  They are locally known as sesi. The smaller are of truncated conical shape, the circular chamber being entered by a low door and having a corbelled roof.  In one of the sesi a skeleton was found buried in the contracted position.  The finest of the tombs, known as the Sese Grande, elliptical in form (Fig. 20), has a major diameter of more than 60 feet, and rises in ridges, being domed at the top.  It contains not one chamber, but twelve, each of which has a separate entrance from the outside of the sese. To judge by the remains found in the sesi they belong entirely to the neolithic period.

The island of Malta as seen to-day is an almost treeless, though not unfertile, stretch of rock, with a harbour on the north coast which must always make the place a necessary possession to the first sea power of Europe.  Much of its soil is of comparatively modern creation, and four thousand years ago the island may well have had a forbidding aspect.  This is perhaps the reason why the first great inroads of neolithic man