Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/115

 General Outlines of Sardinian Civilization. 97 wreathed by the imposing nûragh chain, the outline of which arched out or caved in according to the nature of the ground. In the silence of history this hypothesis, better than any hitherto adduced, agrees with the data yielded by the nûragh map. 1 But the chain of evidence is far from being complete ; for had the nuragh scheme, displayed from north to south, been directed as defensive works against the Carthaginians, its outward curve would have faced the great plain occupied by the Libyan colonists, towers would have projected from every spur of the great Gennar- gentu rock, as at the Giarra, and the line protracted perhaps to Nurra in the north ; but it would never have been pushed so far south as Sulcis and Sinis, in the very jaws of the Carthaginians, masters of the whole coast and of its approaches. Even supposing that some of the tribes had attempted to hold the tract interposed between the plain and the unguarded seaboard everywhere accessible in this direction, they would immediately have been separated from the main body, their retreat cut off, and themselves annihilated. But if we accept the nuragh scheme, as successive stages of immigrants who entered Sardinia, as the Phoenicians afterwards, by the west coast, all difficulties are removed, and everything becomes as clear as day. Such a conjecture is strengthened almost to certainty, when we compare the affinity which exists between miraghs and talayots, an affinity so striking as to force the con- viction upon the mind of their having been raised by one and the same people. We have stated elsewhere our reasons for believing that part of the early inhabitants of Sardinia were from Africa. This supposi- tion is confirmed by a curious passage in Diodorus, where we read of " chiefs [Libyan] occupying the country between Africa and the Syrtes, as having no towns, but possessing towers built near the waters, in which they store their provisions." 2 Were these Libyan towers akin to Sardinian nuraghs ? To this question we have no answer ; but we know that nuraghs and talayots constitute a very special type, the leading features of which had been fixed prior to the separation of the tribes, when one group occupied the Baléares, whilst the other settled in Sardinia — a type which was graven on their memory, deeply grafted in their social life, and 1 This hypothesis we borrow from MM. Baux and Gouin. 2 Diodorus, III. xlix. 3. Similar towers were frequently met with in Spain. Livy, xxii. 6. VOL. I. H