Types of megalithic architecture: manifestations of the imagination of the ancients. Megalith Main features of megalithic structures

On the surface of the globe, with the exception of Australia, there are many mysterious and ancient buildings. Modern research has shown that they were erected in the Neolithic, Eneolithic and Eneolithic periods. Previously, it was believed that they all represented one common culture, but today more and more scientists are questioning this theory.

So, who and why were such megalithic structures created? Why do they have one shape or another and what do they mean? Where can you see these monuments of ancient culture?

Before considering and studying megalithic structures, you need to understand what elements they may consist of. Today it is generally accepted that the smallest unit of construction of this type is a megalith. This term was officially introduced into scientific terminology in 1867, at the suggestion of the English specialist A. Herbert. The word “megalith” is Greek and translated into Russian means “big stone”.

An accurate and comprehensive definition of what megaliths are does not yet exist. Today, this concept refers to ancient structures made of stone blocks, slabs or simple blocks of various sizes without the use of any cementing or binding compounds or solutions. The simplest type of megalithic structures, consisting of just one block, are menhirs.

Main features of megalithic structures

In different eras, different peoples erected huge structures from large stones, blocks and slabs. The temple in Baalbek and the Egyptian pyramids are also megaliths, it’s just not customary to call them that. Thus, megalithic structures are various structures created by different ancient civilizations and consisting of large stones or slabs.

However, all structures considered megaliths have a number of features that unite them:

1. All of them are made of stones, blocks and slabs of gigantic size, the weight of which can range from several tens of kilograms to hundreds of tons.

2. Ancient megalithic structures were built from strong and resistant to destruction rocks: limestone, andesite, basalt, diorite and others.

3. No cement was used during construction - neither in the mortar for fastening, nor for the manufacture of blocks.

4. In most buildings, the surface of the blocks from which they are made is carefully processed, and the blocks themselves are tightly fitted to each other. The accuracy is such that it is impossible to insert a knife blade between two megalithic blocks of volcanic rock.

5. Quite often, later civilizations used the preserved fragments of megalithic buildings as foundations for their own buildings, which is clearly visible in the buildings in Jerusalem.

When were they created?

Most megalithic sites located in Great Britain, Ireland and other Western European countries date back to the 5th-4th millennia BC. e. The most ancient megalithic structures located on the territory of our country date back to the 4th -2nd millennia BC.

The entire variety of megalithic buildings can be conditionally divided into two large groups:

• funeral;
• non-funeral:
• profane;
• sacred.

If everything is more or less clear with funerary megaliths, then scientists are making hypotheses about the purpose of profane structures, such as various giant layouts of walls and roads, military and residential towers.

There is no accurate and reliable information about how ancient people used sacred megalithic structures: menhirs, cromlechs and others.

What are they?

The most common types of megaliths are:

• menhirs - single, vertically installed stelae stones up to 20 meters high;
• cromlech - a union of several menhirs around the largest, forming a semicircle or circle;
• dolmens - the most common type of megaliths in Europe, are one or more large stone slabs laid on other blocks or boulders;
• covered gallery - one of the types of dolmens connected to each other;
• trilith - a stone structure consisting of two or more vertical stones and one laid horizontally on top of them;
• taula - a stone structure in the shape of the Russian letter “T”;
• cairn, also known as “gury” or “tour” - an underground or above-ground structure, laid out in the form of a cone of many stones;
• stone rows are vertically and parallelly installed blocks of stone;
• seid - a stone boulder or block installed by one or another people in a special place, usually on a hill, for holding various mystical ceremonies.

Only the most famous types of megalithic structures are listed here. Let's take a closer look at some of them.

Translated from Breton into Russian it means “stone table”.

As a rule, it consists of three stones, one of which lies on two vertically installed ones in the shape of the letter “P”. When constructing such structures, ancient people did not adhere to any single scheme, so there are many options for dolmens with different functions. The most famous megalithic structures of this type are located on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Africa and Europe, in India, Scandinavia, and the Caucasus.

Trilith

Scientists consider trilith to be one of the subspecies of dolmen, consisting of three stones. As a rule, this term is applied not to separately located megaliths, but to monuments that are components of more complex structures. For example, in such a famous megalithic complex as Stonehenge, the central part consists of five trilithons.

Another type of megalithic building is the cairn, or tour. This is a cone-shaped mound of stones, although in Ireland this name refers to a structure of only five stones. They can be located both on the surface of the earth and under it. In scientific circles, a cairn most often means megalithic structures located underground: labyrinths, galleries and burial chambers.

The oldest and simplest type of megalithic structures are menhirs. These are single, vertically mounted massive boulders or stones. Menhirs differ from ordinary natural stone blocks in their surface with traces of processing and in the fact that their vertical size is always larger than the horizontal. They can be either free-standing or part of complex megalithic complexes.

In the Caucasus, menhirs were shaped like fish and called vishap. On the territory of modern France, in the Crimea and the Black Sea region, quite a lot of anthropomorphic magalites - stone women - have been preserved.

Rune stones and stone crosses created much later are also post-megalithic menhirs.

Cromlech

Several menhirs, installed in the form of a semicircle or circle and covered with stone slabs on top, are called cromlechs. The most famous example is Stonehenge.

However, in addition to round ones, there are also rectangular cromlechs, as, for example, in Morbihan or Khakassia. On the island of Malta, cromlech temple complexes are built in the shape of “petals”. To create such megalithic structures, not only stone, but also wood was used, which was confirmed by finds obtained during archaeological work in the English county of Norfolk.

"Flying Stones of Lapland"

The most common megalithic structures in Russia, strange as it may sound, are seids - huge boulders mounted on small stands. Sometimes the main block is decorated with one or more small stones arranged in a “pyramid”. This type of megalith is widespread from the shores of Lakes Onega and Lake Ladoga to the coast of the Barents Sea, that is, throughout all parts of Russia.

On and in Karelia there are seids ranging in size from several tens of centimeters to six meters and weighing from tens of kilograms to several tons, depending on the rock from which they were made. In addition to the Russian North, quite a lot of megaliths of this type are found in the taiga regions of Finland, northern and central Norway, and the mountains of Sweden.

Seids can be single, group or massive, including from ten to several hundred megaliths.

Noun, number of synonyms: 8 dolmen (3) cairn (2) cromlech (3) ... Synonym dictionary

megalith- a, m. mégalithe gr. megas big + lithos stone. An ancient structure made of huge stones, which mostly served as a grave monument or sanctuary. Krysin 1998. Megaliths of Crimea and the Caucasus. Nature 1931 5 482. Megalithic aya, oe. Krysin... ... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

Megalith- (megalith, Greek “big stone”), religious buildings made of huge stones. blocks (processed and unprocessed), were erected in such different places as the Inca Empire, Dr. Egypt, o. Easter. Usually M. are large blocks built into tombstones, etc.... ... The World History

megalith- A large stone used in some past cultures as a monument or in the construction of buildings... Dictionary of Geography

Megalith S-3 PM- (TU 5730 003 43184789 2005) – is a plasticizing additive (based on C 3) with a water-reducing and anti-frost effect (up to 15°C), provides the ability to carry out concrete work in the cold without heating materials and ... Encyclopedia of terms, definitions and explanations of building materials

M. An ancient religious building made of huge unprocessed or semi-processed stone blocks (which served as a grave monument or sanctuary in the 3rd-2nd millennium BC). Ephraim's explanatory dictionary. T. F. Efremova. 2000... Modern explanatory dictionary of the Russian language by Efremova

Megalith, megaliths, megalith, megaliths, megalith, megaliths, megalith, megaliths, megalith, megaliths, megalith, megaliths (Source: “Full accentuated paradigm according to A. A. Zaliznyak”) ... Forms of words

megalith- megal it, and... Russian spelling dictionary

Megalith- an ancient structure made of huge stones; lane in the original metalowa twarz metal face: ஐ Terminus put the captured mice into a cage, his megalithic face came very close to Pirx’s eyes, but the robot apparently did not notice him.… … Lem's World - Dictionary and Guide

Books

• Escape geometry. Poems, Petrushkin Alexander. Alexander Petrushkin was born in 1972 in the city of Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region. Published in the magazines Ural, Khreshchatyk, Uralskaya Nov, Den and...
• Geometry of Escape, Alexander Petrushkin. Alexander Petrushkin was born in the city of Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region. Published in the magazines “Ural”, “Khreshchatyk”, “Uralskaya Nov”, “Day and Night”, “Neva”, “Children of Ra”, “Air”, “Znamya”, “Text…

In the stone circle of an ancient cemetery, in a place of worship of old, forgotten and eternal gods, pulsating with ancient magic and power, the Wall Crawler raised his hands and a bloody knife. And he screamed. Jubilantly. Wild. Inhuman.
Everything around froze in horror.
Andrzej Sapkowski "God's Warriors"

Among the windy heaths, above the heather, under the low, restless sky - hieroglyphs on gray stone. Worn out by time, lost, alien to our world, thrown into it from another, unknown reality, separated by the abyss of centuries. Carrying the stamp of eternity, the wreckage of forgotten eras has survived more than one generation of legends, in which there is no longer a drop of truth. But still filled with strange strength and invincible greatness. Awe-inspiring even now. Megaliths.

Megaliths (“big stones”) are usually called prehistoric structures made of huge stone blocks connected without the use of mortar. But this definition is very imprecise. A significant part of archaeological sites classified as megaliths are not, in the strict sense, structures at all, since they consist of a single monolith or several slabs not connected to each other.

In addition, the stones of megalithic buildings are not always large. Finally, some buildings that were built already in historical times are often classified as megaliths, but either using cyclopean blocks (the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek) or without the use of mortar (Machu Picchu in Peru, 16th century).

What then unites the megaliths? Perhaps monumentality and an aura of mystery. Megalith is the creation of a departed, often nameless people. This is a message from the unimaginably distant “pre-legendary” past. Monument to an unknown builder.

ETERNAL STONES

Alien, surreal, and contrary to all known principles of architecture, the appearance of megaliths feeds the vast “modern mythology” full of Atlanteans, Hyperboreans and other representatives of highly developed civilizations that have sunk into oblivion. But there are at least two reasons not to take such speculation seriously. Firstly, they still do not provide a clear explanation for the appearance of megaliths. Secondly, the real secrets of history are more interesting than the imaginary ones.

The simplest megaliths, those that cannot yet be considered structures, include the sacred stones of seida and menhirs - oblong, roughly processed blocks vertically stuck into the ground, broken off from the rock. A little later they are replaced by orthostats, distinguished by their flat shape and the presence of at least one carefully smoothed edge on which magical signs were drawn or carved.

Single menhirs and seids, as a rule, served as objects of worship. Sacrifices were made near the largest Rudston monolith in England, 7.6 meters high, decorated with fossilized dinosaur tracks. On the plains, glacial blocks always attracted attention and, quite possibly, could be considered the house of the spirit or the weapon of the ancestor. Smaller menhirs usually served as tombstones for leaders. In any case, it was for this purpose that the last of them under the camera was installed at the beginning of the last century in Indonesia. The largest cluster of 3,000 orthostats is the Carnac Stones in Brittany, a prehistoric cemetery.

In some cases, menigirs were placed in a group, forming a circle of cromlechs marking the boundaries of the cult place. Often, in the center of the decorative fence, a platform lined with stone was found, on which the bodies of the dead were burned or animals and captives were sacrificed. Ceremonies, meetings, celebrations and other public events could also be held here. Cults changed. Cromlechs are more durable than religions.

The use of megalithic structures as observatories is also possible. To accurately determine the position of the Moon and the Sun (from the shadow), unshakable landmarks were required. Menhirs placed in a circle fulfilled this role. It should be noted that in the Middle Ages, observatories had a similar structure.

Already in ancient times, people sought diversity and were not afraid of experiments. An epochal step forward, a real breakthrough in stone architecture, were thauls - structures made of a large stone mounted on a small one. Then trilithons appeared - arches of three stones - the beauty and pride of Stonehenge. The stability and durability of these structures led primitive builders to the idea of ​​​​building dolmens - the first stone buildings in human history.

There are a lot of mysteries associated with dolmens, as well as with other simple megaliths. For example, they can never be associated with any specific archaeological culture - that is, with an ancient people whose migrations are tracked by scientists using characteristic ceramics, arrowheads and other finds. The stone does not reveal the age of the building and does not say anything about the creators. Determining the date of the appearance of a dolmen, as a rule, is possible only with an accuracy of several centuries. And during such a period of time, the population of the country changed more than once. The artifacts discovered in and around the structure do not say anything, since it is known that megaliths, passing from hand to hand, remained “in use” for thousands of years.

What can also be quite puzzling is the fact that similar, almost identical megaliths are scattered over a huge area - from the Caucasus to Portugal and from the Orkney Islands to Senegal. In this regard, even a version was put forward about a certain “dolmen culture”, whose representatives once inhabited all these territories. But the hypothesis was not confirmed. No traces of such people were found. Moreover, it was discovered that the age of two identical dolmens located next to each other can differ by a couple of thousand years.

In fact, the similarity of dolmens from different countries is explained by the fact that the idea lying on the surface naturally occurred to many people. Any child could make a “house” by placing four flat stones on an edge and placing a fifth one on top of them. Or cover the hole in the stone with a flat block (trough-shaped dolmen). Admiring his creation, the young architect grew up, became a leader and encouraged his fellow tribesmen to build a life-size structure.

One thing can be said with certainty: the appearance of the first megaliths is associated with the transition of the population to a sedentary lifestyle. Wandering hunters had no desire to move the boulders they encountered during migrations. And the groups of people were too small to carry out large-scale work. The first farmers had the opportunity to engage in capital construction. The only thing missing was experience. And for a long time they couldn’t think of anything better than digging two stones into the ground and placing a third on them.

Apparently, the dolmens were crypts. In some of them the remains of hundreds of people were found. The decayed bones formed layer after layer, and new graves were dug right in the resulting mass. Other dolmens are completely empty. Probably, over the past millennia, someone took the trouble to clean them out.

Path in the labyrinth

A special category of megaliths are flat cairns - lines or drawings laid out from small stones. This includes numerous “stone boats” - Viking burials made in the shape of a ship outlined by boulders, and a unique “stone eagle” - an image of a bird with outstretched wings, created by an unknown tribe of North American Indians. But the most famous flat cairns are the “labyrinths” found in Scandinavia, Finland, England, northern Russia and even on Novaya Zemlya. Rows of stones form an intricate, spiraling path. These are the least noticeable and, at the same time, extremely impressive megaliths. For the labyrinth is a powerful symbol that weaves together reality. The path to the land of spirits is winding. Who left these stone seals, unsolved signs on the northern, meager land? Like most megaliths, labyrinths are anonymous. Sometimes they are associated with the proto-Sami tribes, but the Sami themselves know nothing about spirals. In addition, labyrinths are widespread far beyond the boundaries of the settlement of the ancestors of this people. The Nenets have a separate opinion on this issue, who consider the flat cairns to be the work of the Sirtya - a short, stocky people of blacksmiths who have long gone underground.

But sooner or later, building simple stone boxes ceased to be satisfying. The dolmen is impressive enough to glorify an individual clan, but not enough to become the pride and cult center of an entire tribal union. People already wanted more. At least just in size.

Individual dolmens began to line up in a long corridor, often with side branches. Sometimes two corridors connected by passages were built. Natural slabs were difficult to match in shape, and for the construction of “walls” masonry began to be used, as in composite dolmens, or solid polished blocks, as in tiled ones.

But even in this case, the structure did not seem majestic enough. Therefore, a colossal cairn was poured on top of the “multi-series” dolmens - an artificial structure in the form of a pile of stones. In order to prevent the pyramid from settling, it was “propped up” with a ring of orthostats along its perimeter. If there was more than one belt, the result was something similar to a ziggurat. The scale of Neolithic gigantomania can be judged by the fact that such structures, which had long ago taken the form of sloping hills, were in modern times operated as quarries for decades before workers discovered the internal chambers.

The most impressive of the Neolithic monuments are now called “corridor tombs” or “megalithic temples.” But the same structure could combine functions or change them over time. In any case, the mounds were poorly suited for rituals. It was too cramped inside. Therefore, cairns continued to coexist with cromlechs until people learned to build real temples, under the arches of which not only priests, but also believers could fit.

The era of megaliths, which began in prehistoric times, has no clear boundaries. It did not end, but only gradually faded away as construction technologies improved. Even in relatively later eras, when the methods of constructing an arch became known, and buildings were built from cut stone and brick, the demand for giant blocks did not disappear. They continued to be used, but rather as a decorative element. And even knowing how to fasten stones with mortar, architects did not always find it necessary to do this. After all, polished stones, fitted to each other, equipped with protrusions and grooves, looked better. Finally, even an unprocessed block sometimes turned out to be in place. The boulder that serves as the base for the equestrian statue of Peter I in St. Petersburg is a typical megalith.

Titan Towers

Scottish Borchs and Mediterranean Nuraghes are relatively late megaliths, dating back to the Bronze Age. They are towers made of small unprocessed stones without the use of mortar. And the fact that many of these structures, held together only by the weight of the material, still stand today evokes great respect for the builders. The creation of the Borkhs is attributed to the Picts, and the Nuraghes to the Chardins. But both versions are not indisputable. In addition, all that remains of these peoples themselves are the names given to them by foreign chroniclers. The origins and customs of the Picts and Chardins are unknown. And this makes it even more difficult to unravel the purpose of numerous (more than 30,000 nuraghes were built in Sardinia alone) but non-functional structures. Brochs resemble fortifications, but were hardly used for defense because they did not have loopholes and could not accommodate a sufficient number of defenders. They did not light a fire, did not live in them, did not bury the dead and did not store supplies. The objects found in the towers belong almost exclusively to the Celts, who settled Scotland centuries later and tried to come up with some use for the towers. However, they were no more successful than archaeologists.

SECRETS OF THE BIG STONE

The question remains “how”. How did people deliver huge stones without heavy equipment, how did they lift them, how did they cut them? It is these mysteries that inspire the authors of alternative hypotheses. Which, however, is based on a banal lack of imagination. It is difficult for an unprepared person to imagine how barbarians use stone tools to hew a giant block and manually set it in place. Anyone can imagine how the Atlanteans who have disappeared to who knows where are doing all this for unknown reasons and in an unknown way is within the power of anyone.

But the alternative reasoning contains a fundamental flaw. With cranes and diamond saws, we do not use huge stone monoliths. This is irrational. More convenient materials are now available. Megaliths were built by people who were simply not yet capable of building otherwise.

The stone is really difficult to work with other stone or copper. Therefore, only in the Iron Age did they begin to build from relatively compact hewn “bricks”. After all, the smaller the block, the larger its relative surface. So the Egyptians did not at all seek to complicate their work by using one-and-a-half and two-ton blocks to build the pyramids, which, of course, were not easy to transport and lift. On the contrary, they made it as easy as possible. After all, with the reduction of blocks, the costs of their production would increase sharply, but transportation costs would decrease slightly.

The same weight would have to be transferred. The creators of megaliths thought the same way.

Assessing the complexity of a task “by eye” often leads to mistakes. It seems that the work of the builders of Stonehenge was enormous, but, obviously, the costs of constructing the smallest of the Egyptian and Mesoamerican pyramids were incomparably higher. In turn, all the pyramids of Egypt taken together took four times less labor than the canal alone - a 700-kilometer “understudy” of the Nile bed. This was truly a large-scale project! The Egyptians built pyramids in their free time. For the soul.

Was it difficult to trim and sand a 20-ton slab? Yes. But every peasant or hunter in the Stone Age, during his life, in between cases, in the evenings making the necessary tools, brought about 40 square meters of stone to an almost mirror shine, choosing, if possible, the hardest rocks: only diamond cannot be processed by chipping and grinding on wet sand .

It seems difficult to deliver huge stones not only without equipment, but also without horses, even without a wheel. Meanwhile, under Peter I, frigates were transported along the route of the future White Sea Canal in this way. Peasants and soldiers pulled the ships along wooden rails, placing wooden rollers on them. Moreover, the cargo had to be dragged onto multi-meter cliffs more than once. In such cases, it was necessary to build a mantel, and sometimes use counterweights in the form of cages with stones. But when giving the order, the king probably did not think long, since we were talking about a completely ordinary operation. The Spaniards also thought it was faster and safer to drag galleons from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean through the Isthmus of Panama than to drive them around Cape Horn.

Valuable information was provided by a study of Maltese megalithic temples, one of which was suddenly abandoned during construction. Everything that workers usually took with them - stone rollers and sleds - remained in place. Even drawings have been preserved that looked like a miniature model of the structure (this is how they built it - from a model, not from paper - until the 18th century). In addition, in Malta, and later in other megalith-rich regions, “stone rails” were discovered - parallel grooves left by repeated rolling of round stones under heavy sleds.

Hobby holes

The megalithic structures of Skara Brae are unique primarily in that they are residential. Typically, Neolithic people built houses from eternal stone only for the dead. But Scotland at that time was the northern outpost of agriculture. So the surprisingly short people, smaller than the pygmies, who decided to settle on this harsh land, had to dig in conscientiously. The lack of wood also had its effect. The “hobbits” could only rely on logs carried by the sea waves. Another interesting feature of these megaliths is that there is little in their masonry that would deserve the epithet “mega”. The stones are mostly small. The houses were clearly built by one family, who were unable to deliver a monolithic dolmen slab to the site and install it on the structure. The “hobbit” roofs were made of wood and turf. But in each room there were several miniature megaliths - stone stools and whatnots.

But still, wasn’t the work too much? Was it really necessary for unknown barbarians to complicate their already difficult life by delivering and lifting 50-ton blocks of Stonehenge? And not for the sake of profit, but for beauty, for glory. Realizing that the arches of the cult center can be made of wood.

The inhabitants of Neolithic England thought not too much. The Romans believed exactly the same thing, using record, unimaginable 800-ton blocks in Baalbek, although they could have easily gotten by with ordinary ones. The Incas agreed with them, cutting intricate puzzles out of stone to assemble the walls of Machu Picchu. Megalithic buildings amaze the imagination even now. They struck him then too. They hit much harder. With their work, the builders glorified the deity, and a little - themselves. And considering that they achieved their goals - although their names are forgotten, their glory, having survived the birth and end of many civilizations, thunders through the millennia - can we say that the work was too great?

On the contrary, it was a very economical solution.

What to play?

Rise of Nations (2003) Age of Empires 3 (2005) Civilization 4 (2005)

The term is not exhaustive, so a rather vague group of buildings falls under the definition of megaliths and megalithic structures. In particular, large-sized hewn stones, including those not used for the construction of burials and monuments, are called megaliths.

A separate group is represented by megalithic structures, that is, objects largely consisting of megaliths. They are distributed all over the world. In Europe, for example, this is Stonehenge, structures Cretan-Mycenaean culture or Egypt. In South America - Machu Picchu, Puma Punku, Ollantaytambo, Pisac, Sacsayhuaman, Tiwanaku.

Their common characteristic feature is stone blocks weighing sometimes more than a hundred tons, often delivered from quarries located tens of kilometers away, sometimes with a large difference in height relative to the construction site. In this case, the stones are processed in such a way that it cannot enter the joint between the blocks. razor blade .

As a rule, megalithic structures did not serve as housing, and from the period of construction to the present day no records have survived about the technologies and purpose of construction. The lack of reliable written sources and the fact that all these structures have suffered significantly under the influence of time make the task of exhaustive research almost impossible, which, in turn, leaves a vast field for various guesses.

The purpose of megaliths cannot always be determined. For the most part, according to some scientists, they served for burials or were associated with the funeral cult. There are other opinions. Apparently, megaliths are communal buildings (the function is socializing). Their construction represented a most difficult task for primitive technology and required the unification of large masses of people.

Some megalithic structures, such as complex of more than 3000 stones in French Brittany), were important ceremonial centers associated with the cult of the dead. Other megalith complexes have been used to determine the timing of astronomical events such as solstices and equinoxes.

Megalithic structures are subject to a specific architectural design. Based on their appearance, researchers divide them into three groups: menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs. These words themselves came to us from ancient Breton language. It was the language of the people of Brittany, a peninsula in Northwestern France.

MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS IN BRITTANY

Brittany is, of course, a country of megaliths. It was from the words of the Breton language, at the end of the 17th century, that the names of the main types of megalithic buildings were compiled (dolmen: daol - table, men - stone; menhir: men - stone, hir - long; cromlech: cromm - rounded, lec'h - place). In Brittany, the era of megalithic construction began around 5000 BC. and ended around 2500 BC. The builders of the megaliths were not the autochthonous population of Armorica. They came from the shores of the Mediterranean, gradually moving northwest from the southern and western shores of the Iberian Peninsula, densely populating first the coast of Morbihan, between the rivers Vilaine and Ethel, and then other lands of what is now Brittany, rising deep into the peninsula along the rivers and moving along the coast...

DOLMENS

Dolmens are usually “boxes” made up of stone slabs, sometimes joined by long or short galleries. They were collective burial chambers, as evidenced by bone remains and votive treasures (ceramics, jewelry, polished stone axes). Dolmens could be either free-standing structures or part of more complex structures. Let's look at some of them.

Cairn

A cairn is an ensemble of galleries and chambers covered with earth on top, that is, in this case, dolmens formed their skeleton. Relatively many cairns have survived in Brittany, but I would like to dwell on two of them, which are masterpieces of megalithic architecture of the West.

Built around 4,700 BC, this prehistoric necropolis could have been destroyed in our time: it was deliberately turned into a stone quarry for the construction of a tourist road in l955 and only the intervention of one of the most famous Breton archaeologists, Professor Pierre-Roland Giot ) stopped this technocratic barbarism.
To be precise, the monument at Barnenez is a structure of two cairns. It has a total of 72 meters in length and from 20 to 25 meters in width and includes eleven dolmens (in this case representing separate chambers) from each of which a gallery stretches from 7 to 12 meters in length towards the exit. The first cairn (A) was built around 4,350 BC, and the second (B) around 4,100 BC.

The necropolis at Barnenez is one of the most ancient architectural structures on Earth. Older than Stonehenge, New Grange, Egyptian pyramids...

Karin on the island of Gavrinis

This monument of megalithic art, built around 4,000 BC, is remarkable for its interior design. The cairn itself is not complicated: a thirteen-meter corridor leads to the burial chamber. However, its walls are painted with amazing drawings, more abstract than concrete, carved on stone. Among the elements of the fancy ornament there are spiral, cross-shaped and other elements.

Covered alley

There is a type of dolmens called covered alleys. A covered alley is a series of dolmens that make up a gallery, which can end in a chamber not exceeding the width of the gallery, or at a blind end. It looks like this:

Dolmen with gallery

In contrast to a covered alley, a dolmen with a gallery, such as the famous Table de Marchands at Lokmarieker (pictured), is a round or square burial chamber, to which a long corridor leads, which is, so to speak, a passage from the world of the living to the world of the dead (and back probably :)). The plan of this type of dolmen can be supplemented by side rooms (the dolmen at Keriaval, near Pluarnel).

So, nothing is as different from a dolmen as another dolmen. Moreover, not all types of such structures are described here. There are also knee dolmens, transept dolmens (cruciform) and some others. Frankly speaking, some names had to be invented in the process of working on the article, since they simply do not exist in Russian, and literal translations from other languages ​​usually do not reflect the essence of the objects described here.

As we already know, dolmens are both crypts and funerary monuments, as evidenced by the bones and votive warehouses (jewelry, polished axes, ceramics, etc.) found there. We are talking about traces of burials, mostly collective, small or colossal, initially covered with stones (cairns) or earth (mounds), and undoubtedly equipped with additional wooden structures. Breton variations of dolmens are very numerous, and their architecture has changed over time. The most ancient ones were large in size, but the burial chambers in them were reduced; this suggests that they were intended for some of the most important figures of the tribe. Over time, the volume of dolmens decreased, while the size of the burial chambers increased, and they became real collective graves. In the town of Chaussée-Tirancourt, in the Paris Basin, during the study of a similar burial, archaeologists discovered about 250 skeletons. Unfortunately, in Brittany, the acidity of the soil often leads to the destruction of bones. In the Bronze Age, burials again became individual. Later, during Roman rule, some dolmens were adapted to satisfy the religious needs of the conquerors, as evidenced by the numerous terracotta figurines of Roman deities found in them.

How were dolmens built? If you compare the heaviness and bulkiness of these stone structures with the technical arsenal of their creators, then you can only take off your hat to their tenacity and resourcefulness. It was something like this...

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Bottom line

Thus, we already know something about one of the types of megalithic architecture. It's time to move on to the next, no less interesting.

MENHIRS

A menhir is a stone pillar dug vertically into the ground. Their height varies from 0.80 meters to 20. Free-standing menhirs are usually the tallest. The “record holder” was Men-er-Hroech (Fairy Stone), from Lokmariaker (Morbihan), which was destroyed around 1727. Its largest fragment was 12 m, and in its entirety it reached 20 m in height, with an approximate weight of 350 tons. Currently, all the largest menhirs in France are located in Brittany:

- menhir in Kerloas (Finistère) - 12 m.

- menhir in Kaelonan (Cote-d'Armor) - 11.20 m.

- menhir in Pergal (Côtes d'Armor) - 10.30 m.

There are also menhirs lined up (let's call them rows of stones), sometimes in several parallel rows. The most grandiose ensemble of this kind is located in Karnak, and has about 3,000 (!) menhirs

Carnac (Morbihan department)

CARNAC is, of course, the most famous megalithic ensemble in Brittany and one of only two (along with Stonehenge) in the world. Brittany, and even France, would not be surprised by menhirs, but Carnac amazes the imagination with the unimaginable concentration of these monuments in a relatively small area. Initially, there were about 10,000 (!) monuments of various sizes in the Karnak complex. In our time, there are approximately 3,000 of them left. This complex of megaliths (mainly cromlechs and menhirs) from the late Neolithic - early Bronze Age (late third - second millennium BC) includes 3 megalithic systems:

Menek is the western part of the Karnak complex. It includes 1,099 menhirs in eleven lines, approximately 1,200 meters long.

Kermario - about 1,000 menhirs in ten lines 1 km long. In the southwestern part, the ensemble is complemented by a dolmen.

Kerleskan - 555 menhirs in thirteen lines, the length of which is 280 meters. In the west these lines are preceded by a cromlech of 39 stones. The highest height of the largest menhir in Kerleskan is 6.5 meters.

By 5000 BC, sites located on the island of Hoedic in Morbihan show the existence of small human groups living mainly by hunting, fishing and collecting shellfish. These human groups buried their dead, in some cases using a special ritual. The deceased was supplied for the journey not only with items made of stone and bone, and jewelry made from shells, but was also crowned with something like a “crown” made of deer antlers. During this era, called the Mesolithic, sea levels were approximately 20 meters lower than today. Starting around 4,500 BC, the first megaliths appear in Carnac (which was also observed in other areas of what is now Brittany by that time).

Let's try to reconstruct the method of erecting menhirs:

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The purpose of menhirs, which are not funerary monuments, remains a mystery. Due to the lack of instructions for use left by the builders for future generations, archaeologists are carefully juggling several hypotheses. These hypotheses, which are not mutually exclusive, vary from case to case and depend on a variety of factors: whether the menhirs are isolated or not; rows of stones are composed of one row or several, more or less parallel; menhirs oriented in a readable way, etc. Some could mark territory, indicate graves, or refer to the cult of waters.

But the hypothesis most often expressed relates to several large rows of stones oriented between east and west. There is an assumption that these are attributes of the solar-lunar cult, coupled with agricultural methods and astronomical observations, and large crowds of people gathered near them, for example, during the winter and summer solstices. “The direction of certain blocks according to privileged directions is amenable to analysis,” emphasizes Michel Le Goffi, a Breton archaeologist, and when cases are repeated, sometimes according to a clearly traceable system, one can rightfully think that this is not accidental. This is almost certain in many cases, as at Saint-Just and Carnac. But doubts will always exist due to the lack of direct evidence. Archaeological finds among the rows of stones are indeed very vague, some pottery and processed flints have been found, but the remains of ritual fires, dating from the same time as the construction of the megaliths, suggest that they were located outside the habitation zone.

CROMLECHI

An example of a cromlech is such a well-known building as Stonehenge.

Cromlechs are called ensembles of menhirs standing, most often, in a circle or semicircle and connected by stone slabs lying on top, however, there are menhirs collected in a rectangle (as in Crucuno, Morbihan). On the small island of Er Lannic, in the Gulf of Morbihan, there is a “double cromlech” (in the shape of two touching circles).
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Comparative table of the number of megalithic structures in France and Brittany.

	Menhirs	Cromlechs	Rows of stones	Dolmens
Total in France	More than 2200			4500
Finistère
Morbihan
Atlantic Loire
Ile de Vilaine
Côtes d'Armor