Perhaps, however, it was not the form of the dolmen which was brought by commerce, but simply the art of architecture in general, and this was adapted to burial purposes.  To this there are serious objections.  In the first place it does not explain why exactly the same types of building (e.g. the dolmen), showing so many similarities of peculiar detail, occur in countries so far apart; and in the second place, if what was carried by trade was the art of building alone, why should the learners go out of their way to use huge stones when smaller ones would have suited their purpose equally well?  That the megalithic builders knew how to employ smaller stones we know from their work; that they preferred to use large ones for certain purposes was not due to ignorance or chance, it was because the large stone as such had some particular meaning and association for them.  We cannot definitely say that large stones were themselves actually worshipped, but there can be no possible doubt that for some reason or other they were regarded as peculiarly fit to be used in sanctified places such as the tombs of the dead.  It is impossible that the men who possessed the skill to lay the horizontal upper courses of the Hagiar Kim temple should have taken the trouble to haul to the spot and use vast blocks over 20 feet in length where far smaller ones would have been more convenient, unless they had some deep-seated prejudice in favour of great stones.

Such are the main difficulties involved by the influence theory.  On the other hand, objections have been urged against the idea that the monuments were all built by one and the same race.  Thus Dr. Montelius in his excellent Orient und Europa says, “In Europe at this time dwelt Aryans, but the Syrians and Sudanese cannot be Aryans,” the inference being, of course, that the European dolmens were built by a different race from that which built those of Syria and the Sudan.  Unfortunately, however, the major premise is not completely true, for though it is true that Aryans did live in Europe at this time, there were also people in Europe who were not Aryans, and it is precisely among them that megalithic buildings occur.

The French archaeologist Dechelette also condemns the idea of a single race.  “Anthropological observations,” he says, “have long since ruined this adventurous hypothesis.”  He does not tell us what these observations are, but we presume that he refers to the occurrence of varying skull types among the people buried in the megalithic tombs.  Nothing is more natural than that some variation should occur.  We are dealing with a race which made enormous journeys, and thus became contaminated by the various other races with which it came in contact.  It may even have been a mixed race to start with.  Thus even if we found skulls of very different types in the dolmens this would not in the least disprove the idea that dolmen building was introduced into various countries by one and the same race.  It would be simply a case of the common anthropological fact that a race immigrating into an already inhabited country becomes to some extent modified by intermarriage with the earlier inhabitants.  The measurements given in the last chapter would seem to show that despite local variation there is an underlying homogeneity in the skulls of the megalithic people.