Famous Russian dolmen explorer. History of dolmens

Dolmens are special buildings made of huge stones and intended for burial and religious ceremonies.

The history of the origin of dolmens

It is believed that the first dolmens appeared in the fourth millennium BC. The first was the Iberian Peninsula. But according to some sources, already in the fifth millennium they were already on the island of Sardinia. North Africa and Sicily were next in line. Then Asia Minor. This is the third millennium. And at the same time, dolmens appeared in the Western Caucasus. After the first millennium BC, dolmens were no longer built.

16th century Careful study of the dolmens of the Caucasus.

1660. Priest Johan Picardt from the Netherlands claims that dolmens are the work of giants. When people began to take stones for their needs (construction).

1734. In the Netherlands (the city of Drenth), a law is passed on the protection of mysterious structures.

1912 Painstaking study of dolmens by archaeologists and other scientists. What was not found during the excavation: ceramic fragments, axes made of silicon, beads made of amber. And, of course, the remains of human bodies. Food was left in ceramic vessels for the dead.

Where can you see dolmens?

• North Africa
• South and Southeast Asia(India and Indonesia, Vietnam and Korea)
• Russia (Western Caucasus)
• Europe

Moreover, in different territories there can be a completely different number of dolmens: for the whole of China, for example, there are less than a thousand, and in Korea more than thirty thousand.

How a dolmen works. Types of dolmens

• Tiled. It makes up more than 90% of all dolmens. Six plates were used, corresponding to the faces of the cube. There is a hole on the front wall of the dolmen. It can be varied in shape: round, oval, square. There may also be a special plug that closes the hole. False portal dolmen is a term meaning the absence of a hole in the building, more often it is located behind or on the side.
• Composite. Made from blocks. The simplest design is a large stone, placed on others in the form of the letter P.
• Semi-monolithic, or trough-shaped. A depression was made in the stones from the rocks, covered with a slab.
• Monolithic. It was located directly in the rock.

The parts of the dolmen are connected firmly, there are almost no gaps between the plates. Granite slabs, sandstone or limestone were used for construction.

• Another type of dolmen with a mound. It was built at ground level, and a mound was poured over it.
• Dolmen in the shape of the letter T. The main part of the structure was combined with a corridor in one variation or another.

Another important nuance is the decoration of dolmens. Some of them contain patterns on both the outer and inner surfaces. The drawings are represented by zigzag lines, labyrinths, geometric shapes and even landscapes.

Appointment of dolmens does not cause controversy among scientists. Archaeological excavations have repeatedly confirmed that the dolmens were a kind of funeral.

How were ancient dolmens built?

To begin with, they chose a stone in places nearby, but rather stone slabs. But if there was no material nearby, they could be brought. Then the turn came to the processing of stone. They did this with the help of tools, and also took wedges from wood. After that, the stone was left for certain time to make it stronger. The stone was polished with special graters and only then was used for the construction of dolmen tombs.

Dolmens in Russia

There are about two thousand dolmens. Mostly in the Caucasus region. Resort towns Sochi, Tuapse, Gelendzhik, Novorossiysk can boast of the presence of these mysterious buildings. The dolmens of the Western Caucasus have been studied most fully and in detail by the domestic scientist V.I. Markovin. He owns descriptions of more than two thousand dolmens. In 1971, the scientist investigated the dwellings of dolmen builders. Markovin believed that these people were not familiar with either iron or pottery. The main tool for farming was a hoe, and they had not even heard of a plow. Other scientists also wonder how such buildings were created without special tools. According to historians, earlier there were about thirty thousand dolmens in the Caucasus. But as a result of the wars, they were destroyed.

There are also burial places of this kind in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic. They differ in that the plates in them are conscientiously aligned. In Russia, dolmens are not protected, which is why some have a desire to get some benefit from them. The ruin of dolmens is due to forestry workers, sectarians, black diggers, tourists, businessmen and many others.

Issues still unresolved:

1. The average weight of a plate ranges from five to twenty tons. How were they delivered and transported at that time?
2. What tools were used to process the slabs?
3. How did the builders achieve the perfect correlation of the plates with each other?
4. How were ornaments and drawings applied on the stone?
5. What civilization do these structures belong to?

Interesting structures in the Caucasus - dolmens. They are found on almost every continent except Australia. So in France there are about 4500 of them. And in Madagascar, for example, dolmens very similar to those in the Caucasus were built back in the 19th century, but it would never even occur to anyone now to seriously talk about any historical connection between them.

The slabs from which the dolmens are built contain quartz, which carries the energy of the dolmen. Each dolmen has a round hole with a diameter of about 40 cm, which, almost always, goes towards the water (stream, river, sea).

Sochi scientist V. Kondryakov superimposed the layout of dolmens on the geological map of the area, and it turned out that all the dolmens are located on the fault line of the earth's crust. Such zones are sometimes called "places of power".
To solve the problem of the origin of dolmens in the Caucasus, archaeologists will have to answer a more important question: how did this grandiose culture, which left us a legacy of thousands of dolmens in the vast territory of the Western Caucasus, disappear and why, after almost 1500 years, disappeared?

TYPES OF DOLMENS

Along the Black Sea coast and in the mountains of the Western Caucasus, there are unique ancient structures - dolmens. Outwardly, they look like stone houses or birdhouses, where each wall can weigh tens of tons.
During the global warming of the climate on Earth (11 - 8 millennia ago), favorable conditions were created for human life and development.

At the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age, in many parts of the world, megalithic structures(from the Greek "mega" - huge, "lithos" - stone). These are the pyramids of Egypt, Stonehenge in England, rows of stone pillars-menhirs in the west of France. All of them were built of huge stones almost at the same time (4-2 millennium BC). In the same era, dolmens appeared in the Western Caucasus and, despite severe destruction, they are the best of the structures of this type, not only in Russia, but throughout the world. Presumably in the area of ​​Gelendzhik, Novorossiysk, Shapsugskaya there were more than 1500 dolmens, now the number of intact and not much destroyed is more than 150. And the largest dolmens are destroyed, mainly. In total, there were more than 7 thousand of them in the Western Caucasus.

a) Usually a tiled dolmen consists of 4 walls, a cover and a floor consisting of one large or several smaller (heel) slabs. The chamber is rectangular or trapezoidal. The side plates are slotted into which the perfectly matched rear and front plates fit. The front plate, framed by the protrusions of the side plates and an overhanging visor, forms a portal. Since dolmens were usually located under barrow mounds, the same ledges protected the mound from sliding onto the front slab of the dolmen. Sometimes an additional portal or dromos corridors were attached to the dolmen.
b) Composite dolmens are quite rare buildings and have a wide variety of options. Such dolmens were built from separate blocks. The shape of the chamber in plan: rectangular, trapezoidal, horseshoe-shaped, round and multifaceted.
c) Trough-shaped dolmens are common. in the rock or huge boulder stone, a recess was cut, similar to a deep trough, then covered with a slab from above or overturned upside down. A hole and portal protrusions were made.
d) Dolmens-monoliths are entirely carved from one block of stone or in the rock. They are very rare.
The holes of the dolmens were closed with stone plugs - phallic-shaped bushings weighing up to 150 kg.

ORIGIN OF DOLMENS

Translated from the Low Breton language (in French Britain), dolmen means "stone table". They are divided into four types: tiled, composite, trough-shaped and monoliths.
The question of the origin of dolmens in the Caucasus is not simple enough. Nowhere in the world have yet been found such monuments that would be structurally close and at the same time preceded the Caucasian ones.
Early dolmens in the Western Caucasus appear on a large territory, have a perfect shape and certain proportional mathematical relationships of the inner chamber of the dolmen.
Plates weighing from 3 to 30 tons are connected by grooves with an accuracy of millimeters. For the construction of dolmens, certain rocks of sandstone are selected and sometimes moved for tens of kilometers. Moreover, traces of roads along which stones could be transported are not found.

On the early dolmens there are the same type of thematic drawings, possibly having a technical or philosophical significance. On some dolmens, an ornament of vertical and horizontal zigzag lines, as well as triangles, is depicted.
There are also weak traces of the presence of a primitive man who made early single burials inside dolmens. It turns out that they left behind the most mysterious monuments that have passed through the millennia - these people did not leave behind any houses, nothing even more significant ... Some scientists believe that the dolmens were built by wild, illiterate people who were afraid of the forces of nature. But is it possible now to repeat the feat of the ancient builders?
It also seems unusual that in the early stages of the appearance of dolmens in the Western Caucasus, the evolution of development is not traced - from more primitive forms and technology to more complicated ones, but perfect complex structures immediately appear.
In the late period of construction, tiled dolmens lose their clarity of proportions, false portal, trough-shaped dolmens appear, composite dolmens are built - with false vaults and monolithic dolmens are carved in the rocks, which more resembles a monument erected in honor of a tiled dolmen.
Subsequently, the construction of dolmens ceased, and many of them are already used for secondary burials and as a kind of ossuary. (mospagebreak)

DRAWINGS ON THE WALLS OF DOLMENS

The drawings on the walls of dolmens left by their builders have come down to us. Often on the front plate of tiled dolmens, horizontal rows of herringbone notches are visible.
There is a pattern on dolmens, made in the form of zigzags in several rows. Some archaeologists see in these drawings the image of water. Markovin writes "... they could symbolically depict water in zigzags. Since ancient times, moisture, and even snakes, have been depicted in such a graphically laconic way throughout the East, underworld"Naturally, the zigzags decorating the dolmens and symbolizing water could be interpreted as a kind of well-wishes for the return of the souls of the dead. Water, being the constant giver of life and fertility, was also an all-cleansing agent."
Other archaeologists see in dolmen patterns " topographic map terrain", where the waves indicate the river valleys.
On the front plate of some dolmens there is a portal similar to a table. As if on a dolmen, a dolmen was drawn - a "stone table", on which four convex hemispheres were sometimes depicted. There is also a convex frame of the dolmen hole.

WHERE ARE THE DOLMENS?

The dolmens of the Caucasus are located from the Taman Peninsula to the Colchis Lowland at a distance of 480 km - in length and from 30 to 75 km - in width. Dolmens usually stand in groups and occupy comfortable and fairly flat areas along the watershed elevations, on the flat tops of the spurs of the mountains. They stand along the river basins, turned by the portal into open space - mainly to the south, east, or in an intermediate direction - between south and east.

WHEN WAS DOLMENS BUILT?

Archaeological sites can be dated in several ways. One of them is to analyze the evolutionary development of manufacturing techniques, the forms of ancient products, and many other features. For example: the study of the "cultural layer" in the earth. When people live in one place for a long time, a layer of earth is formed, mixed with fragments of ceramics, discarded or lost tools, weapons, remains of dwellings, animal bones, etc. Some peoples replaced others and the layers increased, sometimes reaching several meters. Quite naturally, what is deeper is something ancient.
Another method is radiocarbon dating. Extracting the organic remains of that time, for example, coals, bones, the content of the isotope of radioactive carbon C14 is measured in them. Thus, archaeologists came to the conclusion that the West Caucasian dolmens were built from 3500 BC. to 1400 BC, i.e. dolmens from 5500 to 3400 years old.(mospagebreak)

BURIALS INSIDE DOLMENS

During excavations inside the dolmens, archaeologists find the burial places of ancient people of the Bronze Age already known to them from the ground burial grounds. The skeleton is in the so-called "crouched position" by archaeologists, when all the bones of a person are pressed unnaturally close to each other. This position is also called the fetal or fetal position. This could have an important meaning for ancient people, who probably believed that from what position a person is born, in the same position he should leave this world.
Next to the deceased, his things are found, stone and the first bronze tools, dishes made of gray clay.
Since then and until our time, many peoples lived in the Western Caucasus. Many of them, without building dolmens, made burials of their ancestors, up to the late Middle Ages. These were different tribes of the Caucasus, nomads, as well as Scythians and Greeks.
In the vicinity of Khosta, in the village of Kudepsta, in addition to cave sites, dolmens and sacrificial places were also discovered.
In addition to the tombs themselves, dolmen culture includes fragments of rocks found near dolmens with pits, circles and other images carved on them that had cult significance.
A special place is occupied by the Kudepsta "sacrificial" stone, known to the local population as the "Circassian" stone. This is a block of sandstone, in plan having the shape of a triangle, each side of which is about 5 m long. Two recesses in the form of seats are carved in its northeastern edge. Behind the seats, on the upper plane of the stone, two parallel trough-shaped depressions up to 2 m long and up to 1 m wide were made. Four pits were carved here, a bowl-shaped depression up to 0.2 m in diameter. Next to the first block lies another, of the same size. Cup-shaped depressions are also visible on its surface. In front of the boulders, the remains of a stone foundation from a building were found, which, judging by the nature of the fragments of pottery, belongs to the early Middle Ages. The mutual position of the boulders and the foundation suggests that at that time the boulders no longer played any role in the life of the local population. The nature of stone processing, individual design details and the fact that the complex of blocks was independent of the foundation make it possible to attribute this monument not to the 16th-17th centuries, as was thought so far, but to the dolmen period (3-4 thousand years BC), when these the stones undoubtedly played the role of a sanctuary.

LEGENDS ABOUT DOLMENS

The mountain peoples of the Adyghes, or as they were also called earlier, the Circassians, who lived in the Western Caucasus, considered dolmens to be sacred structures, revered them and guarded them. The Cossacks who arrived here in the last century called the dolmens "heroic hut", "didova" or "devil's hut". Highlanders called them houses of dwarfs ("ispun").
The Europeans who arrived in the Western Caucasus wrote down many legends in which they told how the giants built houses for dwarfs.
"Once upon a time, in a time that Almighty Allah alone knows and remembers, in this rich region, then covered with impenetrable forests, only two tribes of people lived. A tribe of large, like oak, terrible-looking giants and a tribe of small dwarfs. Giants lived in the river valleys and hunted, and the dwarfs lived high in the mountains, near the snows - in dark, cold caves and practiced witchcraft. when the dwarfs, having no strength at all, were very cunning. The two tribes lived for a long time, not seeing and not knowing each other. But one day the dwarfs went down to the valley and saw the giants when they were playing games, throwing rocks at each other, and for The little dwarfs, by cunning and sorcery, soon managed to subdue the stupid giants and forced them to serve themselves. The dwarf giants ordered the giants to build them comfortable little dwellings. and the valleys were built for the dwarfs with stone huts with small round holes through which only dwarfs could get inside. Many years have passed since that time, there are no dwarfs, and their solid stone huts still stand today.

Dolmen - (Celtic) "tol" - table, "men" - stone. those. "Stone table". They belong to the culture of "megaliths" - (from Greek) "huge stones". The bearers of this amazing culture are not precisely defined, but the monuments left by them are truly grandiose. The European name is not accidental, dolmens are quite widespread. An interesting sequence of their distribution can be traced. Early dolmens are found on west coast Black Sea, then the band of their distribution extends to Asia Minor, then the Middle East.

Palestine - North Africa - Spain - Portugal - France - Holland - northern Germany - along the Danube to the Balkans - West Bank Black Sea. Thus, a closed loop is traced. Apparently, the carriers of the "Dolmen" culture migrated along this route. True, there are separate dolmens in Central Africa, and India, and even in Japan. But still, the dolmens of the North-Western Caucasus became the most interesting for researchers. The name Stone Table was given for a reason - the presence of a massive lid, which crowns almost every dolmen, makes it look like a table. Almost all of the Caucasian dolmens are individual, although for decades archaeologists have not abandoned their attempts to find some mathematical regularity in their structure. But in the words of the famous Soviet archaeologist Markovin, a researcher of dolmens who devoted several decades of his life to them, this is an idea with the systematization of these stone monuments “art for the sake of art”, like medieval scholasticism. It is unlikely that the ancient builders suspected some of the mathematical patterns under which their researchers tried to bring the dolmens. Rather, it is important to understand what their creators tried to show by building dolmens.

Scientific studies of the Caucasian dolmens begin at the end of the 17th century, when the famous Russian naturalist and geographer Pallas first made detailed descriptions of these buildings found by him on the Taman Peninsula. True, he somewhat underestimated their age. Pallas discovered in one of the dolmens several objects of a later time than the burial structures themselves. Therefore, he dated them to the time of Greek colonization. Later, such scientists as Tebu de Marigny, Frederic Dubois de Montpere, Felitsyn, Veselovsky and others were engaged in the study of dolmens. Since the middle of the 20th century, archaeologists Teshev, Kondryakov, Autlev, Markovin have been dealing with this problem. Thanks to their work, many questions regarding dolmens have now been revealed.
The distribution band of the Caucasian dolmens extends from the Taman Peninsula to Abkhazia in a length of 480 km. Its width varies from 30 to 75 km. Dolmens are not randomly located, they can usually be found along river basins and near passes. A map of the distribution of dolmens, when combined with a map of the strike of the main rocks, showed that these buildings were always located where there was material suitable for their construction. In total, according to archaeologists, there are about 2,500 dolmens in the Kuban. Local buildings, despite their certain resemblance to European dolmens, also have their own characteristics, for example, almost all Caucasian dolmens have a hole made on the front side, as a rule, of a round shape, the diameter of which ranges from 37 to 43 cm. Apparently, Caucasian dolmens are later than European ones. and this is traced by their more regular form. According to Jessen, they date back to about 2500 BC. AD the period of construction of dolmens lasted about 900 years, after which the traces of their builders disappear.
The nature of the finds made in the dolmens allows us to draw two conclusions - these were burial structures. remains of human burials (usually bones sprinkled with red ocher) and grave goods were found in untouched dolmens. - the second conclusion is that these are undoubtedly religious buildings, as evidenced by their monumentality, astronomical orientation (some researchers conclude that the openings of the dolmens are directed to the place of sunset on certain days).
Despite the fact that Vladimir Ivanovich Markovin rejected attempts at mathematical systematization, he himself and his colleague Pshemaf Ulagaevich Autlev systematized dolmens into five main groups.

1. Tiled - the most common type of dolmens, about 90% of the total number of known ones. The name comes from the form and principle of construction. It was built from five massive stone slabs (hence the name), Four slabs made up the walls, the fifth - the ceiling. The thickness of the walls is from 30 to 60 cm in the form of a truncated pyramid. With great care, V. I. Markovin, after carefully measuring, deduced the proportion of the ratio of the front, rear and equal side plates. It turned out that the builders of dolmens had a certain architectural module, i. a unit of measure, by which the entire structure was repaired. This module is equal to 1/10 of the front plate. The general proportion of most of the tiled dolmens was 10 x 12 x 8 (the ratio of the front, side, and rear sides, respectively, of the inner chamber of the dolmen).

The slabs are massive, hewn and are not inferior in thickness to modern artificial panels. We must not forget that there were no cranes and tractors in the era of the construction of ancient structures.
Dolmens in the full sense of the word are the creation of human hands. Historians unanimously regard them as ancient monuments architecture. It is with the description of megaliths that almost all educational courses in the history of architecture begin, because works of architecture inextricably combine solutions to practically necessary utilitarian tasks, with purely artistic creativity. Each epoch has its own architecture, the images of which actively influence the consciousness of a person's feelings. It should be added that architecture is not only a building business or purely artistic creativity; it is a synthesis of both.
Famous art historian Mikhail Vladimirovich. Alpatov, studying ancient megalithic monuments as architectural structures, wrote: "One can imagine with what sense of dignity and creative satisfaction people looked at these monuments, who with their efforts defeated the physical resistance of the stone." When building a dolmen, a person, in his words, “limits space by piling up material; for the first time here, the bearing and resting parts are clearly contrasted; this opposition became the basis of architecture” From the internal space of the dolmen “the interior had to develop” - “The beginning of order, first of all rhythm, is manifested in dolmens, the beginning of which in one form or another became the basis of the artistic language of architecture.” Proportionality and scale can be added to these qualities, because they create a feeling of strength and grandiosity. As a rule, sandstones and quartzites were the material for the construction of dolmens. And the softer the stone was, the more correct the shape of the dolmens themselves and the slabs that made them up. Archaeologists have restored the construction technology of these tombs with great certainty. First, a massive block of approximately the right thickness broke off from the formation. A thin gutter about 1 cm deep was knocked out along the contour of the future slab. After 20-30 cm, along the perimeter of the future slab (along the gutter), through holes were drilled into which wooden wedges were tightly driven. After that, the gutter was poured with water, and after a while the tree swelled, and the stone cracked. It turned out a blank for the future dolmen slab.

archaeologists have found both unused blanks of future slabs and the tools with which these slabs were processed. A hole was punched in the front plate. After careful cutting and fitting, the slabs were transported to the place of assembly (sometimes several kilometers away, given the mountainous and wooded area). Transportation took place apparently with the help of both human traction and oxen traction. The slabs were transported on log-skating rinks, alternately placing them under the movable slab (the famous Thunder-Stone was transported in a similar way, for the monument to Peter in St. Petersburg). The place for the construction was not chosen by chance, not far from the water (usually along the banks of rivers), and on a hill, or on the slopes of mountains (usually, these are places where the sunset is clearly visible). A powerful stone foundation was laid out from two or three large stones, less often from one. For tiled dolmens, grooves were knocked out at the joints of the plates and their installation began. First, the front and rear plates were installed using props, and then the side plates were attached to them from the sides. The joints were so tightly fitted that the surviving dolmens could not even fit a sheet of paper into them. Sometimes a temple was built around the dolmen, most likely intended for ritual sacrifices. After that, an earth embankment was made on one of the sides of the building, and the top cover-slab was rolled over it. The hole was closed with a mushroom-shaped stone plug. Based on the fact that a dolmen usually weighs several tons, according to the calculations of archaeologists, approximately 50-70 people took part in its construction. The dolmen did not immediately become a tomb. There are dolmens in which there have never been burials, this fact suggests that most likely the dolmen was not built for a specific person, but the burial was carried out in it, after a certain period, after its construction. All tiled dolmens have a "portal" i.e. the front and side plates protrude 30-40 cm beyond the junction. Some scientists attribute the presence of the portal to the fact that the dolmen personified the transition to the other world. And the portal thus could represent the gate. Like it or not, some dolmens have such a massive portal that they had to make additional props for it. All dolmen slabs had a trapezoid shape in plan, and in general the tiled dolmen has the shape of a truncated pyramid, which ensures the overall strength of the structure.

Thus, the building expands to the base and to the "portal".

2. The next type of dolmens - systematized by Markovin - is a composite dolmen, which is not built from five huge slabs, but from a larger number of smaller stones. An analysis of the study of these buildings showed that at first it was a necessary measure, because. there might not be enough large stones and they were replaced with smaller parts.
Dolmens have been found, which have three monoliths at the base and one of the walls is made up of several stone blocks. Later, a composite dolmen becomes an end in itself for its builders, and due to the greater plasticity of the architecture of these buildings, dolmens of the most unusual form begin to appear.
Even round in plan, although it should be noted that composite dolmens are relatively rare. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, due to their structural features, they are less durable and less resistant to the elements and human barbarity. Secondly, due to the greater complexity of the technology, fewer of them were built.

3. No less interest was caused by the so-called. “Trough-shaped” dolmens are the third type of dolmens identified by V.I. Markovin. In the very name of their clue to their features.
A dolmen chamber was hollowed out in a large stone block, the outer part of the stone was cut. A hole was punched in the front plate. Then a lid was mounted on the resulting "trough". These dolmens, due to the more complex construction technology, are also rare.

4. Even less often "trough-shaped" and "composite" monolithic dolmens are found, which are much smaller than all the others. The name itself speaks of their structure - they are hollowed out in a large block. At the same time, a “portal” is necessarily imitated, which indicates their later origin than the tiled dolmens. They are extremely rare.

5. Finally, the fifth group can be divided into "false portal" dolmens. Their name comes from a strange design feature. If in all dolmens with a portal, the hole is located on the vertical axis of symmetry, then in the “false portal” dolmens, the hole is either absent altogether, or is located in the rear or side slabs. What explains this feature of their construction, scientists have not yet undertaken to answer reliably. These dolmens are also very few, we can say only a few. The closest one to Anapa is located in the valley of the river. Jane.

Findings of primary objects placed in dolmens by their builders help archaeologists answer some historical questions about the bearers of this material culture. For example, that, despite the later period of the existence of the dolmen culture. Pottery and metallurgical production was a level lower than that of the bearers of the "Maikop" culture. Also, archaeologists have not been able to find the remains of the settlements of the dolmen builders, which is not yet clear. Apparently, this bygone civilization embodied all its achievements in these grandiose structures paying less attention to the domestic side of life. To this day, dolmens, their history, despite the great interest in them both from science and from the inhabitants, remain the greatest mystery of mankind.

What do historians say about dolmens? With this question, we turned to ancient history, captured in the sailing directions of ancient Greek navigators. And here's what we dug up in them.
A long time ago, the land in these places was covered with thick fogs. High bare rocks interspersed with deep crevices. Smoke and gas bubbled up from the underground depths. The earth breathed. At the foot of the rocks splashed the waves of a deep salt lake.
From the cold valley, in search of warmth, small, evil pygmies came here. During the day they climbed high mountains, and at night climbed into deep caves. It was warm underground there, and most importantly, hot golden rivers flowed. It was possible to boil bird eggs in molten gold and eat them.
Life in the dungeon delayed the development of this people. They were small, black, cruel and very bloodthirsty. This people had a hard life. One day they saw white giants. They were kind and hardworking creatures. They were constantly building something. They looked at the little pygmies, how they shivered from the cold into the cold, how the hot sun burned down on them and took pity on them. The giants built huge stone houses and allowed the dwarfs to live in them. The houses were so big that the dwarfs couldn't even get into them. Then the giants taught the dwarfs how to tame hares. The dwarfs sat on the hares and made them jump into the houses through a small hole.
This is the only information about dolmens that comes from the depths of centuries. They let on strange structures magical fog, through which it is almost impossible to see time, let alone the builders themselves. Who were these mysterious giants - the builders of dolmens?
Gradually the lake rose and turned into a huge sea. It connected with the Mediterranean Bosporus. The highly developed civilization of the ancient Greeks rushed in search of new lands.
For a long time, the ships of the Argonauts - the first navigators - crashed on the wandering rocks of Plankta, which were located at the exit from the Bosporus to the Black Sea. One day, a wise captain took on his ship a soothsayer named Phineus. He sent a dove ahead of the ship. The bird flew between the rocks. They dispersed, stopped in place and never closed again.
Since then, the history of the Black Sea coast began to be written. “A dead place, completely covered with fogs. Huge black birds are found here - griffins, capable of pecking a person; Amazon women who kill any man who steps ashore; barbarian tribes live in the rocks. They either sacrifice any alien to their gods or eat them, and the skulls serve as cups for them, ”the civilized Greeks described the Black Sea coast in this way. "A place in hell," they said.

However, despite all the difficulties, ancient researchers found that in those places where high rocks were not yet covered with vegetation, right in the crevices one could see frozen rivers of real gold. The gold rush filled the sails of the desperate Greeks. The Odyssey describes the extraordinary dangers that accompany sailors. Cyclopes, sorcerers, sea passions - all this was here, on the shores of the Black, inhospitable sea.
I had to fight with local tribes - pygmies, who desperately defended their possessions. After all, golden rivers are the only source of heat in the deep underground, it was the source of their life. The Greeks called the Pygmies "Keepers of Gold".
The territory from Sochi to Novorossiysk has not been conquered for a long time. It was an ominous place, it brought only death and misfortune.
Gradually the rocks were covered with sand, earth and vegetation. The golden rivers have cooled down. And the pygmies have gone into oblivion. Maybe they live somewhere deep underground and protect their wealth, or maybe they have learned to survive on the surface of the earth. Greek written sources tell that for a long time wild tribes of barbarians lived here, first cannibals, then sea pirates, and later slave traders. They worshiped their gods by sacrificing people. Highly developed peoples did not like these places.
Hordes of Scythians roamed past, fought with the barbarians, but no one managed to penetrate the terrible, hermitic world of savages.
The bloodthirsty spirit of the most ancient tribes disappeared, scattered over the earth and left behind strange monuments.
Not a single ancient Greek written source, replete with fantastic details about Cherno sea ​​coast, does not talk about dolmens. As if before and during the Greek colonization there were no stone structures here.

Scientists believe that the construction of dolmens took place in the era from 2400 to 1300 BC. e. in the Bronze Age. In those days, the peoples of the Zigs, Achaeans, Geniokhs stood out. These warlike tribes, following their more ancient ancestors, were engaged in piracy. They captured people and turned them into slaves. Later, the geniokhs became slave traders. On the sea coast Tuapse for a long time there was one of the largest slave markets. In the 4th century BC e. one of the kings of the Bosporus, Eumenes, entered into a war with the geniokhs and cleared the sea of ​​pirates.
The name "dolmen" itself comes from the Celtic words tol - table, men - stone: a stone table. In northern European countries, having massive ceilings, they resemble huge tables. By the middle of the 19th century, in scientific works, the word “dolmen” was assigned to the ancient buildings of the Western Caucasus, while the local population still continues to call them differently. Among the Adyghes and Abkhazians, these are “ispun” and “spyun” (houses of dwarfs, caves), among Megrelians - “keunezh” (houses of giants), the Cossack population calls them “heroic huts”.

The moment of discovery and the first mention of dolmens in scientific sources belong to the academician (Imperial Academy of Sciences) Peter Simon Pallas. When he first saw dolmens, he compared these structures with tombs, without thinking about their true purpose. This was in 1794.
Traveling through Taman Peninsula, at dusk he saw stone structures that looked like tombs, and described them. Other studies were made in 1818 by Tebu de Marigny in the area of ​​the Pshada River. Pshad dolmens also described James Bell. After these studies, all sorts of speculations and theories were born.
Interest in dolmens increased every year. These shrines seem to fascinate a person, and their extraordinary shape makes you constantly unravel the mysterious belonging.

The systematization of the dolmens of the Caucasus was carried out L. I. Lavrov. In his work, 1139 buildings are indicated (1960).
From 1967 to 1976, the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR created a special detachment for the study of dolmens under the leadership of Vladimir Ivanovich Markovin. Has been researched great amount buildings. In carefully recorded documents, there are 2308 dolmens. Markovin shares his impressions “... when the dolmens began to line up before my eyes not as light houses of cards, but as massive masonry of slabs and stones, towering over my personal dimensions, even at night, alone with my thoughts, I could not move away from the impression of their amazing grandiosity. Their silent combination with the masses of trees and majestic mountain distances seemed eerie.
No traces have been found showing the prehistory of the origin, development and complication of the design features of megaliths. Dolmens remain one of the most mysterious types of archaeological sites, according to scientists. The vast range of their distribution in time and space makes it difficult to recreate a complete picture.

On the this moment the hypotheses that dolmens are ancient Adyghe burials were rejected, otherwise they would not exist, for example, in India. The theory of burial tombs for leaders or priests has undergone serious criticism, since it has not been found in a sufficient amount of material evidence.
We have to assume that the principle and form of dolmens were given by someone once and for all. Dolmens stand in separate places around the world. They maintain the main ratios of sizes, despite the fact that they are located very far from each other.
It was suggested that the dolmens were built in 2 - 3 thousand BC. e. in the Bronze Age as tombs for noble and important people. However, sufficient evidence has not been found that the dolmens were indeed stone burials. In some dolmens, skeletons of people were found, but they were either in a sitting or in a crooked position. This suggests that people could hide in a dolmen from a serious danger and die suddenly. In others, dismembered and neatly stacked bones of people were found. Perhaps they were carefully laid down by the surviving tribesmen after a massacre or an epidemic of disease.
After the establishment of the Center, a group of our researchers collected a lot of material from personal intuitive research and testimonies of local residents who experienced the impact of dolmens.
Very curious conclusions were made, confirming the initial presence of serious scientific and technical knowledge among the builders of dolmens.
Dolmens capture waves, atmospheric vibrations, amplify them and distribute them to the surrounding space in such a way that the human brain is able to distinguish the sent information. Being well versed in the technical intricacies of stone instruments, ancient people used dolmens for various purposes. For example, placing a dolmen with a hole in a valley, river or just a body of water, they forced it to affect the psyche of the enemy, caused mortal horror, anxiety and a desire to move away from strange place. This arrangement of dolmens is just as dangerous now.
Very serious studies of dolmens were made by Ukrainian scientists Furdui And Shvaydak. It is known that dolmens were built exclusively from quartz-containing and granite-containing rocks (granitoids, sandstones). Quartz SiO2 generates an electric current and maintains a constant oscillation (frequency stabilization). This property is used in radio engineering. Under the influence of an electric current, quartz crystals generate ultrasound. When mechanically deformed, quartz is able to generate radio waves.
There are large, medium and smaller dolmens. The resonant frequency of such chambers is 23, 16 and 35 Hz.
Such frequencies are located at the lower threshold of human hearing, adjacent to the infrasonic range. Such acoustic vibrations have an adverse effect. For example, ultrasound from 15 to 40 Hz causes a sensation of drilling the skin with “gimlets”. And a powerful ultrasonic beam on the brain of animals causes physical oppression, turns off the irradiated areas of the brain.
The impact on the human brain of low-frequency oscillations with a frequency of 13 - 25 Hz leads to the resonance of various internal organs. Exposure to a frequency of 25 Hz for 30 minutes causes an epileptic seizure.
The resonant frequency of most Caucasian dolmens is close to this value. It is also known that the impact of low-frequency vibrations close to the natural frequencies of human organs, in particular the heart (6-12 Hz), can be harmful and even fatal.

It is assumed that dolmens at one time were a multifunctional instrument. They not only generated ultrasound, but also radiated it in a direction in the form of a beam (spotlight effect), as evidenced by design features dolmens. They are a bell, expanding in the direction from the rear wall to the front. An important element of the design of dolmens is a hole in their front wall - "manhole". It is located on the center line of the front wall at a certain height from the floor. The diameter of the hole is usually 40 cm.
The holes in the dolmens were closed with special stone plugs - plugs. Their shape is similar to the ultrasonic emitters used in modern technology to focus the ultrasonic flow.
A dolmen installed in some strategically important place (gorge, pass) as a combat installation and “launched” at the right frequency at the right time did not allow the enemies to pass, causing them to feel “drilling gimlets”, and even loss of consciousness and death .

In France, women specially spent nights away near megaliths in order to be cured of infertility, to beg for a happy marriage, and so on. On the back wall of one of the French dolmens there is a relief in the form of a stylized human figure, consisting of parallel lines. Some of these lines resemble human acupuncture lines known to acupuncturists. But most of the lines go far beyond the contours of the human body and rather resemble the lines of his aura. The heart and the lower part of the spine, that is, the most energetically important organs, are especially highlighted in the relief. The drawing is applied "upside down".
Dolmens were used for psychogenic effects on humans. By tuning the dolmen to a certain frequency, it was possible to achieve that a person (priest) entered a special state of trance and began to utter prophecies, just as ancient Greek oracles or Eskimo shamans did.
It is assumed that dolmens were used for technological purposes, for example, for ultrasonic welding of jewelry, in particular, Celtic and Scythian, made, as experts suspect, using a completely incomprehensible technology for attaching small parts to a base, reminiscent of high-frequency or ultrasonic welding.
The West Caucasian dolmens, as suggested by Furdui and Shvaidak, were installed in seismically dangerous areas, along zones of active geological faults. As we already know, these scientists were almost at the truth, they approached the innermost secret of the dolmens and went further, revealing another important function of them - signaling the approaching earthquake. It is known that before a strong earthquake, stresses in rock blocks increase, and small shocks occur. The dolmen could pick up this sound and begin to "buzz", warning the priest and the population about upcoming events.
Studies have shown that dolmens North Caucasus in the bulk adversely affect humans. Their vibrations have a destructive effect on the psyche and body, so it is necessary to communicate with them with extreme caution.
Dolmens were built all over the world: from Japan to the Iberian Peninsula, from India to the Caucasus and from North Africa to the northern regions of Western Europe. Similar monuments are known in South America- Peru, Bolivia. IN Western Europe in England, France, Germany. On islands mediterranean sea– Corsica, Sardinia, Balearic Islands, Malta and Mallorca. They are found in England (the famous Stonehenge), in France, in Germany, in Spain, even in Africa. The shape of the dolmens is different. These are simple high-standing stones, pointed upwards in the form of a pencil (menhirs), and two high-standing stones with a crossbar on top.
On the small Pacific island of Malekula, part of the New Hebrides archipelago, a few decades ago locals erected dolmens and menhirs, reminiscent of those that were built around the world millennia ago. These dolmens were shrines for all the islanders. It was believed that the leader of a secret religious union on the island on certain days listened to the voice of the spirit of great ancestors here and asked him for advice. At certain times of the day stone megalith emits a strong ultrasonic sound, hammering the squeak of bats.
Before sunrise, the stone monument emits pulses of ultrasound, which subside shortly after sunrise. Ultrasonic radiation is most intense and long lasting during the equinoxes, and minimal during the solstices. The individual stones that make up the structure have different sound cycles.

Dolmens are an integral part of the historical landscape of both Europe and other parts of the world. Until recently, the origin of dolmens did not worry humanity too much: ancient tales and legends about some magical creatures, giants or dwarfs who created these megalithic monuments were enough. However, with the beginning of the scientific study of dolmens and other objects of primitive culture, the question of who and how erected dolmens became relevant.

European invention?

The systematic study of dolmens began in Europe only a hundred years ago, at the beginning of the 20th century. Prior to this, dolmens, like other megaliths, were either classified as natural rock formations, or explained by all sorts of legends, semi-fantastic and fantastic. But after the emergence of scientific interest in these ancient monuments and on the basis of the materials of the first archaeological research, dolmens began to be considered as one of the evidence of the antiquity of European civilization.

Initially, dolmens were associated with the northern peoples of Europe, the Celts and Germans, since most of the structures were found in the respective regions (Britain, Northern France, Germany, Scandinavia). However, then the dolmens of the South and of Eastern Europe, North Caucasus. This led to the conclusion that dolmens were a common feature of the tribes that lived throughout Europe several thousand years before our era. Thus, the idea arose that dolmens in particular and megalithic structures in general are a specific cultural and religious sign of "Europeans". That is, the question of the origin of dolmens was decided in favor of the European version.

A worldwide phenomenon?

But soon the fact became obvious that the European theory of the origin of dolmens is too presumptuous. It turned out that dolmens are present not only in Europe, but also in North Africa, the Middle East and even the Korean Peninsula. The approximate time of construction of these monuments varies significantly - from five to six thousand years in the case of the dolmens of the Middle East to two to three thousand years in relation to the megaliths of Korea.

Proponents of the European theory of the origin of dolmens are trying to use this fact to suggest that this type of ancient buildings spread over such a large area from the Old World. However, at present, the theory of the Indian homeland of dolmen culture is considered the most promising. During the excavations, ancient dolmens were discovered on the Hindustan Peninsula. According to some signs, experts put forward cautious assumptions that the type of these dolmens is more archaic even compared to the oldest dolmens in Europe.

There was a hypothesis that dolmens, having arisen as a type of ritual monument in India, subsequently spread to the West in two "streams". The southern direction affected the Middle East, North Africa, the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and Southern Europe. The northern direction of distribution of dolmens included Central Asia, the Caucasus, Eastern and Northern Europe. Naturally, theories about the direct connection of dolmens with the Indo-Europeans were also born, but the wide geographical distribution of dolmens right up to Korea does not yet allow us to confirm these versions.

There is nothing magical about building dolmens

Another problem, which is actively exaggerated primarily by non-professional history buffs, is the “human component” of the question of the origin of dolmens. Who and how built the dolmens is what supporters of non-academic versions of history most often ask about. And they themselves, not taking into account the arguments of historians, answer that there is no rational explanation. Allegedly, dressed in skins, armed only with clubs and stones and having neither writing, nor scientific knowledge, nor technical devices, primitive people could not build dolmens. Since for this it was necessary to move multi-ton stones over considerable distances, they often had to be additionally processed, and then also raised to a height of several meters. And this was decidedly impossible, enthusiasts say, unless some supernatural forces or the help of mysterious powerful civilizations (terrestrial or extraterrestrial) were used.

In fact, science already knows several plausible, and often proven, options for the construction of dolmens in the conditions of 5-6 thousand years ago. The most common way to build dolmens was probably the following. A bulk hill was previously created, inside which vertical stones (one or several) were dug in. Then, along the slope of this embankment, a stone was dragged, which served as a vertical partition, and placed on the stone pillars. After that, the mound was gradually dismantled and a finished structure, a dolmen, remained.

Alexander Babitsky