globular (for rodent-free storage), part of which was underground, and open bowls, probably used for gruel or mush made from the seeds of wild and cultivated plants.39 After the first pots-blackened, brown or reddened as the case might be-creams and mottled grey began to appear (in Anatolia, for instance).40 Cream-ware especially lent itself to decoration. The earliest decorations were made by hand, then by pressing such things as shells into the clay before firing.41 Lids, spouts and flaring rims also evolve, and from here on the shape and decorations of pottery become one of the defining characteristics of a civilisation, early forms of knowledge for archaeologists for what they reveal about ancient societies. The Woman and the Bull, identified by Cauvin as the first true gods, as abstract entities rather than animal spirits, found echoes elsewhere, at least in Europe in the Neolithic period. They occurred in very different contexts and cultures, together with a symbolism that itself differed from place to place. But this evidence confirms that sedentism and the discovery of agriculture did alter early humans' way of thinking about religion. Between-roughly speaking-5000 BC and 3500 BC, we find the development of megaliths. Megaliths-the word means 'large stones'-have been found all over the world but they are most concentrated, and most studied, in Europe, where they appear to be associated with the extreme western end of the continent- Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, Britain and Denmark, though the Mediterranean island of Malta also has some of the best megalithic monuments. Invariably associated with (sometimes vast) underground burial chambers, some of these stones are sixty feet high and weigh as much as 280 tons. They comprise three categories of structure. The original terms for these were, first, the menhir (from the Breton men = stone and hir = long), usually a large stone set vertically into the ground. The cromlech ( crom = circle, curve and lech = place) describes a group of menhirs set in a circle or half-circle (for example, Stonehenge, near Salisbury in England). And third, the dolmen ( dol = table and men = stone), where there is usually an immense capstone supported by several upright stones arranged to form an enclosure or chamber.42 The practice now is to use plain terms such as 'circular alignment' for cromlech. Most of the graves were originally under enormous mounds and could contain hundreds of dead. They were used for collective burial, on successive occasions, and the grave goods were in general unimpressive. Very rarely the chambers have a central pillar and traces of painting can be seen. As Mircea Eliade has said, all this 'testifies to a very important cult of the dead': the houses where the peasants of this culture lived have not stood the test of time, whereas the chamber tombs are the longest-surviving structures in the history of the world. Perhaps the most impressive structures of all are the stone temples of Malta, which some archaeologists consider may have been a sacred island in pre-history. The most striking, according to Colin Renfrew, is at Ggantija on Gozo, the more northerly of the Maltese archipelago. 'In front of the Ggantija is a spacious terrace, some forty metres wide; supported by a great retaining wall, the facade, perhaps the earliest architecturally conceived exterior in the world, is memorably imposing. Large slabs of coralline limestone, set alternately end-on and sideways-on, rise to a height of eight metres; these slabs are up to four metres high for the first course, and above this six courses of megalithic blocks still survive. A small temple model of the period suggests that originally the facade may have been as high as sixteen metres.'43 In one of the other Maltese temples, Tarxien, on Malta itself, relief carvings of spirals were found, together with friezes of animals and, most surprising of all, 'a large fragment of a colossal statue of a seated woman. Originally she must have attained a height of two metres in the seated position. This must be the earliest colossal statue in the world.'44 Several smaller stone structures have also been found, most of them 'fat ladies', 'splendidly plump personages in stone'.45 The basic idea, of a seated goddess, possibly pregnant, certainly recalls the Natufian figures discussed by Cauvin. What ideas lay behind the worship in these temples? Renfrew's researches on the island of Arran, in Scotland, have shown that the tombs there are closely related to the distribution of arable land and it therefore seems that these tomb/temples were somehow linked to the worship of a great fertility goddess, which developed as a cult as a result of the introduction of farming, and the closer inspection of nature that this would have entailed. We can, however, say a little more about this set of beliefs. Although it is
very variable, megalithic sites are often sited so that 'the countryside falls into certain patterns around them. The classic megalithic site is on a platform part-way down a spur which runs from higher ground behind. From the site itself, a bowl or valley in the land will be noticeable below, while the horizon will be surrounded by ridges of hills which wrap around behind the spur.'46 These sitings are believed to relate to ancient beliefs about sacred landscape-geomancy. 'The happy site is almost always sheltered by the hills, slightly elevated within them, and connected to them by land through which the geodic currents flow. In the angle formed by the junction of such hills, the geomancer looked for a "little hollow or little mound", from which the chain of hills around can be seen to form "a complete horseshoe" with one side open, and streams that run away gently rather than steeply.'47 From about 1930 onwards, modern dowsers have explored megalithic sites and picked up very powerful reactions in their vicinity. One dowser, Guy Underwood, published in 1969 a map of primary dowsing lines under Stonehenge which showed that twenty lines converged on the site.48 Some, but by no means all megalithic sites are also grouped in straight lines that, when connected on a map, link several places which, in England, have names that end in the syllable 'ley'. (These are called leylines.) Whether there is anything to this, it does seem to be true that several megalithic circular alignments were prehistoric astronomical observatories. Knowledge of the sun's cycle was clearly important for an agricultural community, in particular the midwinter solstice when the sun ceases to recede and begins to head north again. From the mound, features on the horizon could be noted where the midwinter solstice occurred (for example), and stones erected so that, on subsequent years, the moment could be anticipated, and celebrated. Sun observatories were initiated round 4000 BC but moon ones not until 2800 BC. Tombs usually faced east. Chris Scarre, of Cambridge, argues that many of these huge stones are taken from sacred parts of the landscape, 'places of power'-waterfalls, for example, or cliffs, which have special acoustic or sensory properties, such as unusual colours or texture, and are taken to form shrines in areas that are important for hunting or domestication. This, he says, explains why these stones are transported sometimes over vast distances but are otherwise not modified in any way.49 There may however be a further layer of meaning on top of all this. A number of carvings have been found associated with megalithic temples and observatories-in particular, spirals, whorls and what are called cup-and-ring marks, in effect a series of concentric Cs.50 Elsewhere in Europe, as we shall see in just a moment, these designs are related to what some prehistorians have referred to as the Great Goddess, the symbol of fertility and regeneration (not everyone accepts this interpretation). In Germany and Denmark, pottery found associated with megaliths is also decorated with double circles and these too are associated with the Great Goddess. Given the fact that, in the very earliest times, the fertility of women must have been the greatest mystery and greatest miracle known to mankind, before the male function was discovered, and given the fact that menhirs almost by definition resemble the male organ, it is certainly possible that the megalithic cromlechs were observatory/temples celebrating man's new-found understanding. The sexual meaning of menhirs is not simply another case of archaeologists reading too much into the evidence. In the Bible, for example, Jeremiah (2:27) refers to those who say to a stone: 'You have begotten me.' Belief in the fertilising virtues of menhirs was still common among European peasants at the beginning of the twentieth century. 'In France, in order to have children, young women performed the glissade (letting themselves slide along a stone) and the friction (sitting on monoliths or rubbing their abdomen along certain rocks)'.51 It is not difficult to understand the symbolism. The midwinter solstice was the point at which the sun was reborn. When it appeared that day, the standing stones were arranged so that the first shaft of light entered a slit in the centre of the circular alignment, the centre of the world in the sacred landscape, which helped to regenerate the whole community, gathered there to welcome it. A good example of this is Newgrange in Ireland. One final word on megaliths. While Orkney and Malta cannot really be called part of the same early culture, there are signs in both that there was a special caste of people, apart from the general population, in sizeable megalithic communities. 'In Malta, the skeletons of those associated with the temples after 3500 BC indicate a lightly-muscled people, who ate a special diet which wore down their teeth very little for Neolithic times.' The bones of animals slaughtered at an uneconomically early age, associated with inhabitants who lived in houses luxurious for the time, suggests that there was already in existence a