Amazing megalithic structures and their photographs. Megalithic structures - erected before the Flood - Earth before the Flood: disappeared continents and civilizations The main types of megalithic structures and their characteristics

1) Menhirs (from the Celtic word menhir) - one of the types of megalithic monuments in the form of individual vertically placed stones, sometimes forming parallel rows several kilometers long; found in Brittany (France), England and Scandinavia; on the territory of the USSR - in the Caucasus and Siberia.

2) Dolmens (from the Breton words tol - table, and men - stone) - structures of the Neolithic, Bronze and Early Iron Ages * in the form of huge stones, placed on edge and covered with a massive slab on top; found in Europe, India and other countries; in the USSR - in the Caucasus and Crimea; they had not only funeral, but also religious and magical significance.

*) Neolithic era - the last era of the Stone Age: 6-5 millennium BC. - 2nd millennium BC Characterized by a settled population, the emergence of cattle breeding and agriculture, and the invention of ceramics; stone tools are well polished; a variety of products made of bone and wood; spinning and weaving appear. Ancient bronze is an alloy of copper and tin; deposits of these metals are rare in nature, therefore bronze was highly valued and was accessible to few - along with bronze products, people continued to use stone tools, until the 7th century BC, when they began to mine iron from bog and other ores widely distributed in nature. Iron turned out to be an inexpensive and widely available metal of high quality; it soon replaced bronze products and became firmly established in the life of the peoples of the Old World. The Iron Age began.

3) Cromlechs (from the Breton words crom circle and lech - stone) are structures of the Neolithic era and mainly of the Bronze Age in the form of round fences made of huge stone blocks and pillars (up to 6-7 meters in height); found in Europe, Asia and America; most of them in Western France(Brittany) and England; they certainly had religious and magical significance.

In the southern Russian steppes, until recently, cromlechs were preserved, encircling many mounds of the Yamsk culture of the 3rd millennium BC. This is a belt of large stone blocks or slabs placed on edge, with a diameter of up to 20 meters. According to academician A.A. Formozov, slabs of such a cromlech near the village of Verbovka in the Dnieper region, dragged 60 kilometers from near Chigirin, were covered with various geometric patterns. Once upon a time, a wooden tent rested on this stone ornamental frieze, and the earthen and turf base of the entire structure was hidden in the depths."

Cromlechs are structures of great antiquity, from various countries and peoples. H. P. Blavatsky in her "Secret Doctrine" mentions "a mysterious people who built circles of stones in Galilee and covered Neolithic flints in the Jordan Valley."

Both Western European and Russian researchers worked thoroughly on the study of megaliths, all of them have long been registered and described in detail in the scientific literature; a map of dolmens around the world has even been compiled. But little is still known about the occult significance of megaliths, and this information is often contradictory. It is impossible to use all the existing literature for a short article, so we must give preference to just a few serious fundamental works that deserve the greatest confidence. Such a work for us, esotericists, is, first of all, the “Secret Doctrine” of H. P. Blavatsky, in the second volume of which a thorough description is given of the most outstanding megalithic structures in many countries ancient world and their occult significance is explained. Therefore, we will use the material collected by H. P. Blavatsky and supplement it with information from other also reliable and trustworthy sources. Here is what H. P. Blavatsky writes about megalithic structures:

"The modern archaeologist, although he will speculate ad infinitum about dolmens and their builders, actually knows nothing about them or their origin. Nevertheless, these strange and often colossal monuments of rough stones, usually consisting of four or seven gigantic blocks, placed side by side, scattered in groups or rows throughout Asia, Europe, America and Africa. Stones of enormous size are placed horizontally and variously on two, three or four blocks, and in Poitou on six or seven. the devil", druidic stones and the tombs of giants. The stones of Carnac at Morbigan, Brittany (France), stretching for almost a mile and numbering up to 11,000 stones distributed in rows, are twin brothers of the stones at Stonehenge (England). The conical menhir at Loch Mariaker at Morbihan it measures 20 yards in length and about two yards across. The menhir at Champ Dolin (near Saint-Malo) rises thirty feet above the ground and goes fifteen feet underground. Similar dolmens and prehistoric monuments are found at almost every latitude. They are found in the Mediterranean reservoir; in Denmark among the local mounds from twenty to thirty-five feet in height; in Scotland, in Sweden, where they are called Ganggriften (or graves with corridors); in Germany, where they are known as the graves of giants (Günen-greb); in Spain, where the Antiguera dolmen is located near Malaga; in Africa; in Palestine and Algeria; in Sardinia, together with Nuraghi and Sepolture dei Giganta or tombs of giants; in Malabar, in India, where they are called the graves of Daityas and Rakshasas, demon people from Lanka... in Peru and Bolivia, where they are called Chul-pa or burial places, and so on. There is no country in which they are absent."

In this passage from The Secret Doctrine, let us pay attention to the fact that people call megaliths thrones of the devil and Druid stones. Of course, megaliths have never had and have nothing to do with evil, dark forces, and if people call them “thrones of the devil,” this only indicates that in ancient times they were associated with religious and magical actions and ceremonies, because under under the influence of the Christian church, all pre-Christian beliefs and rituals began to be considered pagan, devilish. As for “Druid stones,” of course, not all megaliths are called such, but only those erected on the territory of ancient Gaul, spiritually nourished by the Druids. All megalithic structures that have survived to this day in France were once erected by the hands of the ancient Gauls, and in England by the hands of the ancient Britons, under the instructions and under the leadership of the Druids.

It has been established that most of the surviving megalithic structures such as dolmens, both in Europe and on other continents, are related to the funeral cult: during excavations in or near the dolmens, human bones or urns with ashes are found. But E.P. Blavatsky also drew attention to the fact that not all megalithic (or in her terminology, Cyclopean) structures were intended for tombs. According to her, "it is certain that the two famous mounds, one in the Mississippi Valley and the other in Ohio, respectively known as the Alligator Mound and the other as the Great Serpent Mound, were never intended for graves. The following is a description from one scientific work: “The first of these animals (the alligator) is drawn with considerable skill, and is no less than 260 feet in length... The interior is a pile of stones, over which a form has been sculpted from thin, hard clay. The Great Serpent is depicted with his mouth open as he swallows an egg, the diameter of which was 100 feet at its widest part, the body of the animal bending in grandiose twists and the tail curled into a spiral. The entire length of the animal is 1100 feet. This is a masterful creation, one of a kind... and there is nothing on the Old Continent that would represent any analogy to this,” however, with the exception of its symbol of the Serpent (Cycle of Time) swallowing an egg (Cosmos).

E.P. Blavatsky is certainly right: in ancient times, megalithic structures were erected not only as tombs of ancestors, but also had a higher purpose, for example, religious and religious-magical, as occult centers, a kind of “radio station” (for international communication initiates, for performing cosmic mysteries, etc.). We must not forget that in ancient times, not only in the Paleolithic, but also in the Neolithic era, man was closer to nature than now, he was in a living, indissoluble connection with it, then the mineral kingdom stood closer to the human world, between man and stones there was contact and even a kind of mutual understanding.

H.P. Blavatsky in the second volume of her “Secret Doctrine” refers to the extensive work of De Mirville: “Memoires adressees aux Academies”, which contains historical evidence that in ancient times, in the days of miracles, both pagan and biblical stones they moved, spoke, pronounced prophecies and even sang... In “Achaica” we see how Pausanias admits that at the beginning of his work he considered the Greeks very stupid for their “worship of stones.” But when he reached Arcadia, he adds: "I changed my mind." Therefore, without any worship of stones or stone idols and statues, which is one and the same thing - a crime for which the Catholics of the Roman Church foolishly reproach the pagans - one can be allowed to believe in what so many great philosophers and holy men believed in, without deserving the nickname "idiot" from modern Pausanias.

The reader is invited to contact the Academie des Inscriptions if he wishes to study the various properties of flints and stones from the point of view of magical and psychic powers. In the poem about the Stones, attributed to Orpheus, these stones are divided into ophites and siderites, into the “Snake Stone” and the “Star Stone”.

“Ophyte is rough, hard, heavy, black and has the gift of speech: when thrown, it makes a sound like the cry of a child. It was through this stone that Helenius predicted the death of Troy, his homeland.”

Sanchuniathon and Philo of Byblos, speaking of these “betyles,” call them “animate stones.” Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidore and the physician Eusebius asserted before him. In particular, Eusebius never parted with his ophite, which he wore on his chest and received prophecies from it, conveyed to him “in a quiet voice, reminiscent of a light whistle.” Of course, this is the same as the “still small voice” heard by Elijah after the earthquake at the entrance to the cave.

Arnobius, a holy man who “from a pagan became one of the lights of the church,” as Christians tell their readers, confesses that when he encountered one of these stones, he could never resist asking him a question, “to which he sometimes received answer in a clear and distinct voice." Where, then, is the difference between a Christian and a pagan ophite, we ask?

The famous stone at Westminster was called Liafail, the "speaking stone," and it raised its voice only to name the king to be chosen. Cambree, in his work "Celtic Monuments," says that he saw it when it still had the inscription:

Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem. Rocking stones or "logan" have various names: such as clacha-brath among the Celts, "stone of fate or judgment"; the prophecy stone or "test stone", and the stone oracle; the moving or animate stone of the Phoenicians; grumbling stone of the Irish. The Bretons have their "swinging stones" in Huelgoat "e. They are found in the Old and New Worlds; in the British Isles, France, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc., as well as in North America. (See " Letters from North America"Hodson, vol. II, p. 440). Pliny mentions several of these in Asia. (" Natural history", vol. I, p. 96). And Apollonius of Rhodes expands on the rocking stones and says that they are "stones placed on the top of the Mound, and they are so sensitive that thought can set them in motion" (Ackerman, "Art . index", p. 34), no doubt referring to the ancient priests who moved such stones by will at a distance.

Finally, Svid speaks of a certain Herescus, who could, at one glance, distinguish motionless stones from those endowed with movement. And Pliny mentions stones that “ran away when a hand touched them” (See Abbot Bertrand’s “Dictionary of Religions”).

H. P. Blavatsky draws attention to the ruins of Stonehenge, where, according to her, there are real forests of rocks - huge monoliths, some of them weigh about 500,000 kilograms. There is an assumption that these "hanging" stones in the Salisbury valley represent the remains of a Druid temple. They are distributed in such a symmetrical order that they represent a planisphere. They are set on such a remarkable point of balance that they seem to scarcely touch the ground, and although they can be set in motion by the slightest touch of a finger, yet they would not yield to the efforts of twenty men if they attempted to move them.

H. P. Blavatsky considers most of these monoliths to be relics of the last Atlanteans and disputes the opinion of geologists who claim their natural origin: as if the rocks were weathered, i.e. under atmospheric influences they lose layer after layer of their substance and take on this form; these are" mountain peaks" in Western England. All scientists believe that all these "rocking stones owe their origin to natural causes, wind, rain, etc., causing the destruction of rocky layers" and strongly reject the statement of H. P. Blavatsky, especially for the reason that according to their observation, “this process of changing rocks continues around us to this day.” Therefore, it is necessary to thoroughly study this issue.

Geologists admit that often these gigantic blocks of stone are completely alien to the places where they are now located and belong to rocks that are found only far beyond the seas and are completely unknown in the places where they are now found.

"William Tooke, speaking of the huge blocks of granite scattered in southern Russia and Siberia, says that where they are now there are no rocks or mountains, and that they must have been brought "from afar with the help of fabulous efforts." Charton speaks of a sample of such rock from Ireland, which was analyzed by a famous English geologist, who determined its origin was foreign, perhaps even African.

This is a strange coincidence, for Irish tradition attributes the origin of its round stones to a sorcerer who brought them from Africa. De Mirville sees in this sorcerer the “damned Hamite.” We see in him only an Atlantean, or perhaps even one of the early Lemurians who survived before the birth of the British Isles.

"Dr. John Watson, speaking of the moving rocks or "swinging stones" placed on the slope of Golkar ("Sorcerer"), says: "The amazing movement of these blocks, set in balance, caused the Celts to equate them with the gods." Flinders Petrie's work "Stonehenge" states that: "Stonehenge is built of stone located in the area of ​​​​red sandstone or sarsen stone, locally called "gray rams." But some of the stones, especially those said to be of astronomical significance, were brought from afar, probably from Northern Ireland."

In conclusion, it is worth quoting the thoughts on this issue of one scientist in an article published in 1850 in the Archaeological Review: “Each stone is a block, the weight of which would test the most powerful machines. In a word, there are blocks scattered throughout the globe, blocks, at the sight of which the imagination is confused and the designation of which by the word materials seems meaningless; they should be called by names corresponding to these bulks. In addition, these huge, swinging stones, sometimes called Pouters, placed with one end on the point of such a perfect. balance, that the slightest touch is enough to set them in motion... reveal the most positive knowledge of statics, surface and plane, convex and concave in turn - all this connects them with cyclopean structures, which can be said with sufficient reason, repeating the words of De la Vega that "apparently the demons worked more on them than the people."

And further H. P. Blavatsky writes: “We do not intend to touch upon the various traditions associated with swinging stones. However, it may not be a bad idea to remind the reader of Giraldus Cambrenzis, who mentions the same stone on the island of Mona, which returned to its place, despite to all efforts to keep it in another. During the conquest of Ireland by Henry II., Count Hugo Sestrenzis, wanting to personally verify the truth of this fact, tied the stone of Mona to a much larger stone and ordered them to be thrown into the sea. The next morning the stone was found in its usual place. The scientist William Salisbury confirms this fact, testifying to the presence of this stone in the church, where he saw it in 1554. This reminds us of what Pliny says about the stone left by the Argonauts in Sizicum and which the inhabitants of Sizicum placed in the Prytheneum. , “from which he escaped several times, so that they must have weighed him down with lead.” But here we are dealing with huge stones, attested by all antiquity as “living, moving, speaking and self-moving.” They also seemed to be able to put people to flight, for they were called "routers", from the word "rout" or "to put to flight". De Musso points out that they were all prophecy stones and were sometimes called "mad stones."

The rocking stone is recognized by science. But why does it swing? One would have to be blind not to see that this movement was another means of divination and that for this reason they were called “stones of truth.” (De Mirville, ibid., p. 291).

Richardson and Barth are said to have been amazed to find in the Sahara Desert the same trilithons and raised stones that they had encountered in Asia, the Caucasus, Circassia, Etruria and throughout Northern Europe. Rivett-Carnac of Allahabad, a renowned archaeologist, expresses the same amazement after reading the descriptions given by Sir J. Simpson of cup marks on stones and rocks in England, Scotland and other Western countries, "showing an extraordinary resemblance to the signs on the boulders that surrounded the mounds near Nagpur - the City of Snakes. The outstanding scientist saw in this "another and very unusual addition to the whole mass of evidence that a branch of nomadic tribes, which in an ancient era passed through Europe, penetrated also into India." "We say, Lemuria, Atlantis and its Giants and the earliest races of the Fifth Root Race, all had a hand in the construction of these betyls, litas and generally "magic stones." The bowl-shaped marks noted by Sir J. Simpson, and the "recesses cut into the surface" of rocks and monuments found by Rivett-Carnac, "of various sizes from six inches to one and a half inches in diameter and from one to one and a half inches in depth, usually placed along perpendicular lines, showing numerous variations in the number and size and distribution of cups" - are simply the recorded records of the most ancient races. Whoever carefully examines the drawings made from the same signs in the "Archaeological Notes on Ancient Inscriptions on Rocks in Kumaon, India", etc., will find in them the most primitive style of marks or recordings. Something similar was adopted by the American inventors of the Morse telegraph code, which reminds us of the Ogham letter, a combination of long and short lines, as Rivette-Carnac describes it, “carved into sandstone.” Sweden, Norway and Scandinavia are full of similar recorded records, for Runic letters resemble signs, in the form of a bowl and long and short lines. In the Tome of Johannes Magnus one can see the image of a demigod, the giant Starhaterus (Starkad, a student of Hrosaharsgrani, a magician), who holds under each hand a huge stone with runic inscriptions on it. This Starkad, according to Scandinavian legends, went to Ireland and performed wonderful feats in the North and South, East and West. (See "Azgard and the Gods", pp. 218-221).

This is history, for the past of prehistoric times testifies to the same fact in later centuries. Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the most ancient “rocks of fate” of the oldest peoples; and their movement or swing was a completely clear code for the initiated priests, who alone possessed the keys to this ancient method of reading. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that it was by order of the oracle, whose voice spoke through “those huge blocks of stone, raised by the colossal power of the (ancient) giants,” that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Thus, Pliny says:

“In India and Persia, it was from her (the Persian Otisoe) that the magicians had to seek advice when electing their rulers.” (Pliny - “Natural History”, 37, 54). And further Pliny describes a block of stone over Kharpasa in Asia, and installed in such a way that “the touch of one finger can set it in motion, while it cannot be moved from its place by the entire weight of the body.” (Ibid., 2, 38). Why, then, could not the rocking stones of Ireland, or at Brimham, in Yorkshire, serve for the same methods of divination and prophetic messages? The largest among them are obviously relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller ones, like the rocks of Bringham, with rotating stones on their tops, are copies of older stones. If in the Middle Ages the bishops had not destroyed all the plans of Dracontia that only they could lay their hands on, science would have known more about these stones. But nevertheless we know that they were in general use throughout many prehistoric centuries, and they all served the same purpose, for divination and magical purposes. E. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published an article in the "Antiquites de France" (Vol. IX) proving the identity in the location of Chatamperamba ("Field of Death" or ancient burial places in Malabar) with the ancient tombs at Karnak; that is, that they have "an elevation into the central grave."

Esotericists know that in ancient times initiates of all nations, including the Slavic Magi, traveled a lot and visited occult and religious centers of other, often very distant countries. H. P. Blavatsky writes about such travels of Egyptian priests - initiates; According to her, there are records that they “traveled northwards overland, along a path that later became the Strait of Gibraltar, then turned north and passed through the future settlements of the Phoenicians in southern Gaul; then further north until they reached Karnaca (Morbihan), and then they turned west again and arrived, continuing to go overland to the northwestern cape of the New Continent,” to that land “that is now the British Isles, which were then not yet separated from the main continent of the Ancients. the inhabitants of Picardy could cross to Great Britain without crossing the canal. The British Isles were connected to Gaul by an isthmus, which has since been covered by waters."

H. P. Blavatsky poses the question: what was the purpose of the long journey of the Egyptian priests? And how far back should the time of such visits be taken? According to her, “archaic records indicate that initiates of the second sub-race of the Aryan family moved from one country to another for the purpose of overseeing the construction of menhirs and dolmens, colossal Zodiacs made of stones, as well as tomb sites that were to serve as receptacles for the ashes of future generations. When did this happen? The fact of their passage from France to Great Britain by land can give an idea of ​​the time when such a journey could have been made by land.”

This was when “the level of the Baltic and North Seas was 400 feet higher than at present. The Somne Valley did not yet exist to the depth that it has now reached; Sicily was connected to Africa, the Barbary possessions to Spain, Carthage, the pyramids of Egypt, the palaces of Uxamala and Palenque did not yet exist, and the brave navigators of Tire and Sidon, who in later times were destined to make their dangerous voyages along the coast of Africa, were not yet born. All we know with certainty is that European man was a contemporary of the extinct species of the Quaternary era.

"The above-mentioned journeys of the Egyptian initiates, namely, had to do with the so-called Druidic remains, like Karnak in Brittany and Stonehenge in Great Britain. And all these giant monuments are symbolic records in world history. They are not druidic, but universal. Also, it was not the Druids who built them, for they were only the heirs of the legends about the Cyclops, bequeathed to them by generations of powerful builders and “magicians, both good and bad.”

This is what H. P. Blavatsky writes. It also recalls the striking similarities between the ancient colossal buildings in Peru (for example, at Kuenlap) with the architecture of the archaic European peoples. According to her, the similarity between the ruins of the Inca civilization and the Cyclopean remains of the Pelasgians in Italy and Greece is not a mere coincidence - there is a certain connection between them, which is explained simply by the origin of the groups of peoples who erected these structures from one common center on the Atlantic continent.

The above information about ancient megalithic structures from the “Secret Doctrine” of H. P. Blavatsky is very interesting and significant, but not complete. Therefore, let us supplement them with some data on the megaliths that have survived to this day in the eastern and south asia and on the territory of the USSR.

In eastern Indochina, in Upper Laos on the Channing Plateau, megalithic structures are still preserved - concentric rows of monolithic stones. According to M. Kolani, the Puok people living on this plateau claim that these megaliths served as a meeting place for the Kha Tuongs, and the central stone was occupied by the supreme leader. About who the Kha-Thuongs were, Kolani cites a legend widespread in Upper Laos:

"The Kxia-tuongs were the ancestors of the kings of the country. Having been defeated by the Thais, descending from Tibet, they went south and ended up in the region between Bandon and Annam. Their descendants became the kings of water and fire. The first lives in Patao-Ya, the second in Patao -Lum.* All Kha consider these kings to be the descendants of the ancient Jarai kings and revere them.

This legend tells about events of ancient times. It is significant that the myths about the kings of water and fire are supplemented by the peoples of eastern Indochina with a whole series of legends about migrations from the distant North, during which the people were led by sorcerers armed with magic swords and who brought with them the foundations of the megalithic cult and ideas of power. Similar legends about the arrival from the distant North were preserved among other Indonesian peoples of eastern Indochina: the Rada, the Jarai and others. Unfortunately, the legends do not contain precise instructions about the route of these migrations; only the arrival from the north along the Mekong is mentioned.

*) The etymology of the Jarayan term “patao” is significant. According to the scientist S. Meyer, this word means not only “king”, but also “stone”. Therefore, the Jarai kings are primarily the guardians of the sacred stone in which the spirit of Yang Patao resides. The word "Yang" actually means "spirit".

In her work on the megaliths of Laos, M. Kolani did not resolve the issue of the ethnicity of the builders of the megaliths, but this is not of significant importance for us; the main thing is that she rightly considers the megaliths of Laos to be one of the stages of megalithic migration and, based on the finds of iron objects accompanying them, dates them to the first centuries of our era, i.e. a time slightly preceding Indian influence in Indochina.

Ancient megaliths, moreover, all the main types of these structures known to modern scientists, have been preserved to this day in Tibet, a country that has still been relatively little explored and is fraught with many surprises. In 1928, the Central Asian expedition of Nicholas Roerich discovered typical menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs in the Trans-Himalayan region. N.K. Roerich writes:

"You can imagine how wonderful it is to see these long rows of stones, these stone circles, which vividly transport you to Carnac, to Brittany, to the ocean shore. After a long journey, the prehistoric Druids remembered their distant homeland... In any case, this discovery completed our quest for the movement of peoples."

Thus, according to the highly authoritative opinion of N.K. Roerich, the ancient Celts, the builders of the megaliths of Karnak, came to Europe from Tibet (or one of the countries adjacent to it) and on the new lands they developed, on the territory of modern France and Belgium, began to build according to tradition , under the leadership of their spiritual leaders the Druids, the same megalithic structures as in their distant Asian ancestral home.

Very unique megalithic structures were discovered in Tibet by Yuri Nikolaevich Roerich (the eldest son of Nicholas Konstantinovich). Northeast of Lhasa, he discovered a whole group of megaliths, of which the outermost stone has the shape of an arrow and, in his opinion, should be considered as a symbol of lightning, and in general this entire area with megaliths is a reflection of the cult of nature and, as it were, represents a stage for cosmic rituals.

Other researchers hold a similar opinion: Z. Hummel, G. Tucci and A. Franke; they believe that Tibetan megalithic structures are labyrinthine sites for cosmic mysteries.

A similar interpretation is given by the English astronomer J. Hawkins to the famous megalithic structure of Great Britain - Stonehenge. He compared his observations with the stories of the descendants of the Celtic priests (Druids) and then processed all the data obtained using an electronic computer. As a result, he came to the conclusion that the seemingly strange arrangement of the Stonehenge stones accurately reflects the position of the rising and setting sun on certain days of the year and that with the help of this structure it is even possible to predict eclipses.

Most of the megalithic structures scattered throughout the face of the earth are a reflection of the idea that found its most vivid embodiment in ancient Gaul, in the Druidic megaliths. However, not all megaliths are related in spirit to the Druid ones and are related to the telluric and cosmic mysteries. For example, in eastern India, in the valley of the Dhansira River, covered with dense forests, amazing stone monoliths have been preserved to this day, which are 16 huge blocks of sandstone arranged in four rows. Images of peacocks, parrots, buffaloes, and various plants are carved on them. Judging by their shape (these monoliths are shaped like male and female fertility symbols), they belong to the phallic cult. Führer-Haimendorff calls this group of monoliths "a stone orgy of fertility symbols."

In the valley of the Dhansira River in the 16th century there was Dimapur - the ancient capital of the Kachari state, which in the 14th-17th centuries. extended its power to a significant part of modern Assam. But the possibility cannot be ruled out that the monoliths were created not by the Kachars, but by the vanished civilization that preceded them, as some researchers are inclined to think (this issue has not yet been finally resolved).

Finally, it should be noted that in South-East Asia, the Malacca Peninsula had its own special civilization in ancient times, the development of which was stimulated by constant ties with India, China and the countries of the Arab East. One of the foundations of this peculiar civilization was “an ancient cult of stones, now hardly accessible to direct observation, but once the most important component of natural, in particular cosmological Cults, as can be judged by Skeet’s remark: “... some Malays imagined that the firmament is something like a stone or rock, which they call “batu hampar”, i.e. flat stone, and the appearance of stars is explained (as they thought) by the fact that light penetrates through holes made in this stone."

Let us now consider the megaliths of the Caucasus, based on the work of academician A.A. Formozov: “Monuments of primitive art on the territory of the USSR”, Moscow, 1966, p. 128; The fourth chapter of this study (pp. 76-87) is devoted to Caucasian dolmens.

On Black Sea coast In the Caucasus, significant groups of dolmens have survived to this day near Gelendzhik, Dzhubga, Lazarevsky, Esheri and some other places. These tombs of the primitive era are strange stone houses, built from five huge hewn slabs. The earliest of them were built more than four thousand years ago, and the latest date back to the middle of the first millennium BC. It was then (about five hundred years BC) that real dolmens stopped being built in the Caucasus, but crypts similar in shape, built not from monoliths, but from small stones, were erected until the 11th-12th centuries. new era.)

Once upon a time, before the conquest of the Caucasus by Russia, there were thousands of dolmens there, standing untouched for 3-4 thousand years. But after the annexation of the Caucasus to Russia, their number began to quickly decrease, because the Russian population did not spare these alien and “orphan” ancient monuments.*

The dolmens of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus are, indeed, cyclopean structures, although they were erected not by giants, but by ordinary people. For example, one of the dolmens on Esheri is made of slabs 3.7 meters long and up to half a meter thick. Its roof alone weighs 22.5 tons. It is not easy to lift such a weight to the level of the walls, and this is by no means the only problem. Stones were often delivered many kilometers away. Far from the mountains in the steppe Kuban region, a dolmen was found covered with a slab, which ten people with difficulty threw down. Undoubtedly, it would be necessary to try many variants of funeral structures in order to arrive at the classic design: four slabs placed on an edge, carrying a fifth slab - a flat ceiling... The whole complexity of this matter can only be comprehended through personal experience.

*) Academician A.A. Formozov writes: “The most dolmens were in the Kuban region - in the upper reaches of the Belaya River and along the valleys of Pshekha, Fars, Gubs and Khodzi. At the “heroic glade” near the village of Novosvobodnaya at one time there were 360 ​​dolmens. in rows, they resembled the streets in a small village. It was not for nothing that the Adyghe people called the dolmens “syrpun” - the houses of dwarfs, and the Kuban Cossacks - “heroic huts”. Then, over the course of three to four decades, the Cossacks destroyed the ancient tombs, sometimes to obtain stone for paving roads and roads. foundations of dwellings, or even just for fun. Now in Bogatyrskaya Meadow only the teeth of broken slabs stick out from the ground; they were destroyed before archaeologists had time to take them seriously. Even where the roofs and walls were preserved, everything inside was dug up by treasure hunters. the bones of the buried and the clay vessels were broken and thrown out. Therefore, our information about the dolmens is very incomplete.”

However, archaeologists did not find traces of such architectural experiments on the Caucasian coast; dolmens of the classical type immediately began to be built here. According to A.A. Formozov, dolmens, very similar to those in the Caucasus, were built in the same era in Syria, Palestine in North Africa, Spain, France and England, Denmark and the southern regions of Scandinavia, Iran, India and south-east Asia. At the same time, they were built by “different tribes and not always in the same era, but the idea of ​​such a building undoubtedly had to have common origin... The attraction of dolmens to coastal areas is undeniable, indicating the role of maritime relations in the spread of these peculiar tombs."

Where did the idea of ​​building dolmens come to the Caucasus? Archaeologists do not give an accurate and substantiated answer to this question, but based on logical conclusions, we believe that this idea came to the Caucasus from ancient Gaul - from the Druids, with whom the builders of the Caucasian dolmens were in spiritual communication.

Caucasian dolmens were undoubtedly erected as funeral structures. But it is also certain that during the construction of these tombs and funerals, special rites were performed, and then periodically repeated sacrifices were made. Researchers noticed that there is usually a flat area in front of dolmens standing on a mountain slope. Near the village of Kamennomostskaya, large pillar-shaped stones - menhirs - are dug around the site. There are similar sites or “courtyards” in other countries - in Spain, England and France.* There is no doubt that some religious and religious-magical ceremonies were performed on these sites. It is also possible that, like the Druid megaliths, these Caucasian structures were erected at places where telluric currents crossed, where there was particularly strong electromagnetic voltage. According to Paul Boucher, the Druids used these structures as a kind of wireless telegraph stations, thus maintaining regular communication with very distant countries. In this way contact was established between initiates of different tribes and peoples. It is possible that the initiates of the Caucasus were also included in this chain.

*) A.A. Formozov notes that on the top slab of the dolmens or on special stones in front of them, in some places there are cup-shaped recesses for sacrifices and libations. The Adyghe tribe of Shapsugs brought sacrificial food to the dolmens back in the 19th century. This ritual has been preserved since ancient times, when relatives of the buried came to the cemetery with food.

Similar sacrifices also existed among the steppe people of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages. So near Simferopol in the village. A large rectangular slab was found in Bakhchi-Eli; on its upper end there are two rows of round recesses. The same bowl-like depressions were hollowed out on stones in various eras for both cultic and practical purposes. Stones with pits were found even at the Mousterian site of La Ferrassie. In the 19th century, ethnographers unexpectedly discovered similar indentations on recent peasant tombstones in Brittany, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland and began asking questions about their purpose. The Bretons poured water into these motionless vessels “to cool the souls of the dead.” Often water was replaced with milk. In the Scandinavian countries, offerings were placed there “for children” and for “dwarfs,” in other words, food for the little soul of the deceased. From century to century these rituals were performed in old cemeteries, and they were transferred to new burials.

In Azerbaijan, where there are many ancient cup stones, in villages to this day cups are knocked out on gravestones. Similar monuments existed in the Northern Black Sea region. There is information about a stone covered with pits that stood among the mounds near the village of Rozmaritsina in the Kherson region.

Some archaeologists think that the dolmen reproduces the shape of an Egyptian tomb - a mastaba. And according to A.A. Formozov, “solidity and indestructibility make the Caucasian tombs similar to the Egyptian pyramids. The similarity is natural. Both were supposed to serve as eternal dwellings for people who considered this life only a temporary refuge and embodied the belief in another life in monumental stone tombs."

Which tribes built the Caucasian dolmens? According to A.A. Formozov, settlements of tribes who buried their dead in dolmens were discovered both on the Black Sea coast and in the Kuban region. Traces of dwellings revealed during excavations are absolutely not similar to burial houses. The dwellings have adobe floors, walls made of wattle fence coated with clay, and in rare cases, foundations made of small pieces of torn stone. The builders of the dolmens, the giants of Adyghe legends, who mowed quadrangular blocks on their shoulders, actually lived in miserable shacks. Moreover. On the Belaya River and in the vicinity of Adler, in several caves, sites with the same pottery as in the mounds near the station were studied. Newly free. People huddled there in caves, like Neanderthals.

In the 2nd millennium BC. e. Very rich leaders have already emerged among the population of the Caucasus. A grave with a canopy and other treasures in the Maikop mound even older than dolmens. Yet, until the Iron Age, the foundations of the primitive community in the Caucasus were not shaken. Probably the entire family worked on each stone crypt. Fifteen hundred people spent their energy and time to adequately arrange the transition of their fellow man to another world, and none of them thought that it would be better to use this energy and time on cultivating the fields, improving tools or artistic creativity.

"The people who built the dolmens sculpted the dishes by hand, although the potter's wheel spread in the southern regions of Transcaucasia from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. The inhabitants of the northwestern Caucasus hoeed the land, not thinking about the plow, long known in Mesopotamia, they used many bone and stone tools of purely Neolithic forms and hunted with such primitive weapons as slings (balls for slings were found more than once during excavations of dolmens. And with all this technical poverty, the same people moved twenty-two-ton monoliths, which were not approached by later tribes familiar with the plow). and the potter's wheel, who mastered iron and rode a horse. A most characteristic example of the one-sided development of society - a phenomenon that amazes us in history from antiquity to the present day. In the 20th century, it seems absurd to us to devote our lives to the creation of monumental tombs, but you never know. less strange ideas took hold of humanity for centuries, or even millennia. And these false premises were not always fruitless for culture, for art. So here too - excessive, hypertrophied concern for the afterlife and the eternal houses of their ancestors led primitive man to architecture."

The construction of dolmens was extremely difficult and complex, taking into account the primitive technology of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. This is clearly proven by a case cited by A.A. Formozov. In 1960, it was decided to transport (I emphasize: not to build a new dolmen, but only to transport the old one a relatively short distance by truck along a good highway) to Sukhum, to the courtyard of the Abkhazian Museum, one dolmen from Esheri. They chose the smallest one and brought him to him crane. No matter how they fastened the loops of the lifting steel cable to the cover plate, it did not budge. They called the second tap. Two cranes removed the multi-ton monolith, but they were unable to lift it onto a truck. For exactly a year the roof lay in Esheri, waiting for a more powerful mechanism to arrive in Sukhum. In 1961, using this mechanism, all the stones were loaded onto vehicles. But the main thing was ahead: to reassemble the house. Before this was achieved, a fair amount of time passed, the trees of the museum garden were stripped, and one wall of the dolmen was broken. Still, the reconstruction was only partially completed. The roof was lowered onto four walls, but they could not rotate it so that their edges fit into the grooves on the inner surface of the roof. In ancient times, the plates were fitted so close to each other that a knife blade could not fit between them. Now there is a big gap left here.

How were dolmens built in ancient times with extremely limited technical means? Reconstructing mentally the successive stages of their construction, A.A. Formozov writes that “the material was dragged from the quarry on oxen. Obviously, they used the simplest rollers, levers, adding earth, temporary supports that supported the slabs in a vertical position until the ceiling pressed on them. But in the foreground was the muscular labor of many, many dozens of people. According to B.A. Kuftin’s calculations, the upper slab of the Esher dolmen was lifted by at least 150 people.

Now about the size of the Caucasian dolmens. If we look at the table with this data, we will notice that the further from the sea, the smaller and smaller their dimensions. In Asheri, the height of the front slab is about 2.5 meters, and the length of the side walls is 3-3.5 m. Equally massive stones were used in the ancient cemeteries of Gelendzhik, Dzhubga, Lazarevsky. The walls of the Pshad dolmen reach a length of even 4 m. The Kuban “heroic huts” of Bagovskaya, Novosvobodnaya, and Dakhovskaya villages are much smaller: their façade is no higher than a meter, and the total length is on average 1.8 m. In the more eastern regions there are no real dolmens , but here on Kafar and Teberda medieval crypts imitating them in shape were found. They are rectangular in plan, with a round entrance hole, but are already made up of many small stones.

So A.A. Formozov comes to the conclusion that “from archaeological monuments one can judge the very process of spreading the idea of ​​​​a dolmen from the coast to the more remote corners of the Caucasus. We see that another process was going on in parallel: people gradually made their task easier: first they reduced the size of the tombs , and then they began to build them from the same material as the huts, abandoning the stones of the monoliths."

By placing massive slabs with precise construction calculations, the creators of dolmens proved themselves to be “skillful architects. Almost everywhere, the side slabs and roof protrude somewhat above the front wall. The result is a U-shaped portal. The back wall is usually lower than the front, and the roof lies inclined. All this allows highlight the structural elements in the building - the supports supporting the arch and express the feeling of strength and inviolability of the dolmen. It was the desire for strength that required the construction of dolmens from five large slabs, and not from paving stones or torn stone. Monolithicity and indestructibility make the Caucasian tombs similar to the Egyptian pyramids." These are the Caucasian megaliths. We can only talk about their sad fate. Here is what A.A. Formozov writes:

“Caucasian tribes of the Iron Age took care of ancient cemeteries. A hundred years ago, Russian Cossacks, who settled in the Kuban region, came across completely intact dolmens. Most of them were plugged with (stone) plugs. Local population still vaguely remembered the worship at ancient graves, and in some places continued to perform these rituals. The Adyghe people were sure that damage to the dolmens would lead to pestilence and misfortune. The feeling of respect for distant ancestors and the fear of disturbing their peace for forty centuries was passed on from grandfathers to fathers, from fathers to children, and even to peoples alien by origin.

This phenomenon is observed wherever there are megalithic monuments. In Brittany, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, sick people were brought to them in the hope of healing, and girls who dreamed of getting married went to pray. French ethnographers described round dances around menhirs. There are known church messages from the Middle Ages that prohibited pilgrimages to these pagan buildings. But in the fight against millennia-old beliefs, the church was powerless. Then the “Christianization” of megaliths began. Crosses were installed on them, and churches were erected above some dolmens.

The same thing happened in Transcaucasia. Here the menhirs had sanctuaries, they sacrificed roosters and rams, and stone pillars on their knees slid down a certain number of times. Christianity legalized these rituals. And here we find chapels above the menhirs.

Protected by popular worship, the megaliths of Brittany and Transcaucasia have safely survived to this day. The dolmens were out of luck. In 1897, the founder of the Ekaterinodar Museum E.D. Felitsyn complained: “The highlanders, our predecessors in the Trans-Kuban region, generally treat ancient monuments with great respect, no matter what they are. Unfortunately, the Kuban Cossacks, having inherited their places, do not imitate this commendable trait of the mountaineers." (E.D. Felitsyn. - Kuban antiquities. Ekaterinodar, 1879, p. 13). Even before the revolution, hundreds of dolmens were destroyed. Often they were broken without a purpose, just to “test their strength.” Even intelligent engineers contributed to the destruction of monuments by ordering the use of their slabs for crushed stone for the Black Sea Highway. As sad as it may be, our tractor drivers also like to try on dolmens “who will take whom” - whether the tractor will break the stone house or break down. And here are the results. In 1885, there were 360 ​​dolmens in Bogatyrskaya Polyana, and in 1928 - 20, and now there are none at all.

So, the dark, illiterate Adyghe people did not damage the dolmens in any way, and the people with a higher culture wiped them off the face of the earth. The solution to the paradox is that for the Adyghe people “syrpun” was something sacred, but for the Russians it was alien, unusual and unnecessary.

Now the fate of the silent witnesses of the past worries not only archaeologists and art historians. The losses from the destruction of monuments became too obvious. Let us learn a lesson from the history of dolmens. In our opinion, it is formulated as follows: monuments can be preserved by those who love them, who value them, but not by those who wonder “why is all this necessary.” In the old days, religion protected them, now culture protects them. In a period when religion lost its former role, and understanding of the value cultural heritage not yet, archaeological objects and works of ancient art usually perish. It was under such circumstances that the dolmens of the Kuban region perished.

Their fate is dramatic and surprising. Four thousand years ago, carried away by the doctrine of life and death borrowed from somewhere from outside, the tribes of the northwestern Caucasus began to build megalithic tombs designed to last for centuries. The oldest and largest dolmens appeared on the shores of the Black Sea. The creators of these tombs were not mythical giants. These were people who lived in caves or villages made of adobe and wattle, "turluch" houses, who became acquainted with metal relatively recently. Each tomb required many days of hard work, and yet one generation after another gave up their daily activities for its sake.

Gradually, the idea of ​​dolmens spread from the coast to the mountains and crossed the Caucasus ridge... Century after century flashed by, the world was transformed beyond recognition, and the old Shapsugs still carried food for the spirits to the dolmens. Then a foreign people came and destroyed the “heroic huts.” This is the history of dolmens. Really, standing in front of the last of them, there is something to think about." This is what academician A.A. Formozov writes.

Dr. A.M. Aseev
Asuncion, November 1972

The origins of architecture date back to the late Neolithic. It was then that stone was already used for the construction of monumental buildings. But the purpose of most of the monuments that have come down to us from that period is not known.

Megaliths(from Greek - large stone) - structures made of huge blocks of stone, characteristic of the late Neolithic. All megaliths can be divided into two categories. The first includes the most ancient architectural structures of prehistoric (preliterate) societies: menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens, temples of the island of Malta,). For them, stones were either not processed at all or with minimal processing. The cultures that left these monuments are called megalithic. Megalithic culture also includes labyrinths (structures made of small stones), and individual stones with petroglyphs (footprints). Also considered megalithic architecture are the structures of more advanced societies (tombs of Japanese emperors and dolmens of the Korean nobility).

The second category consists of structures of more developed architecture. These are mainly structures made of very large stones, which are given a geometrically correct shape. Such megalithic architecture is typical of early states, but was also built in later times. These are monuments of the Mediterranean - Egyptian pyramids, buildings of the Mycenaean civilization, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. IN South America- some buildings in Tiwanaku, Ollantaytambo, Sacsayhuaman. Tiwanaku, Sacsayhuamane, Ollantaytambo.

Menhir– it is usually a free-standing stone with traces of working, sometimes oriented in some way or marking a particular direction.

Cromlech – it is a circle of standing stones, in varying degrees of preservation and with different orientations. The term henge has the same meaning. This term is usually used in relation to structures of this type in the UK. However, similar structures existed in prehistoric times also in Germany (Goloring, Goseck Circle) and in other countries.

Dolmen is something like a stone house.

All of them are united by the name “ megaliths”, which simply translates to “big stones”. 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 with a socializing function. Their construction represented primitive technology a daunting task and required the unification of large masses of people.

Gobekli Tepe, Türkiye Complex on the Armenian Highlands It is considered the oldest of the largest megalithic structures (approximately X-IX millennium BC). At that time, people were still hunting and gathering, but someone was able to erect circles of huge steles with images of animals. The shape of the temple resembles concentric circles, of which there are about twenty. According to experts, the complex was deliberately covered with sand in the seventh millennium BC, so for more than nine thousand years the temple was hidden by the Gobekli Tepe hill, whose height was almost fifteen meters and its diameter was about three hundred meters.

Some megalithic structures were important ceremonial centers associated with the cult of the dead. For example, a complex of more than 3,000 stones in Carnac (Brittany), France. Megaliths up to four meters high are arranged in slender alleys, the rows run parallel to each other or fan out, and in some places form circles. The complex dates back to the 5th–4th millennium BC. There were legends in Brittany that the great Merlin turned the ranks of Roman legionnaires to stone.

Megaliths at Carnac (Brittany) France

Other megalith complexes have been used to determine the timing of astronomical events such as solstices and equinoxes. In the Nabta Playa area in the Nubian desert b A megalithic structure was found that served for astronomical purposes. This archaeoastronomical monument is 1000 years older than Stonehenge. The location of the megaliths makes it possible to determine the day of the summer solstice. Archaeologists believe that people lived here seasonally, when there was water in the lake, and therefore needed a calendar.

Nabta Observatory, Nubia, Sahara

Stonehenge is a structure of 82 five-ton megaliths, 30 stone blocks weighing 25 tons and 5 huge so-called trilithons, stones whose weight reaches 50 tons. Folded stone blocks form arches that once served as a perfect indicator of the cardinal directions. Scientists suggest that this monument was built in 3100 BC by tribes living in the British Isles to observe the Sun and Moon. The ancient monolith is not only solar and lunar calendar, as previously assumed, but also represents an accurate cross-sectional model of the solar system.

Stonehenge, UK, Salisbury.

Mathematical comparison of parameters of different geometric shapes Cromlech made it possible to establish that all of them are a reflection of the parameters of various planets of our system, and model the orbits of their rotation around the Sun. But the most amazing thing is that Stonehenge depicts the orbits of 12 planets of the solar system, although today it is believed that there are only 9 of them. Astronomers have long hypothesized that beyond the outer orbit of Pluto there are two more planets unknown to us, and the asteroid belt, which is located between the orbits Mars and Jupiter are the remains of the once existing twelfth planet of the solar system. How could the ancient builders know about this?

There is another interesting version about the purpose of Stonehenge. Excavations of a path along which ritual processions walked in ancient times confirm the hypothesis that Stonehenge was built along the Ice Age relief, which ended up on the solstice axis. The place was special: an amazing natural landscape was located on the very axis of the solstice, as if connecting earth and sky.

Cromlech Brougar or Temple of the Sun , Orkney Islands. Initially it had 60 elements, but now it consists of 27 rocks. Archaeologists date the Cromlech of Brodgar or the ring of Brodgar to 2500 - 2000 BC. The area where the Brodgar monument is located is ritual, sacred, and communicative. It is literally stuffed with mounds, group and individual burials, even a “cathedral,” as well as the dwellings and villages of Neolithic people. All these monuments are united into a single complex, protected by UNESCO. Archaeological research is currently being carried out in Orkney.

Cromlech Broughgar or Sun Temple, Orkney

Dolmens. Scientists believe that the approximate age dolmens are 3–10 thousand years old. The most famous dolmens are located in Scandinavia, on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts Europe and Africa, on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, in the Kuban region, in India. However, most of them are in the Caucasus - about 2.5 thousand! Here along the Black Sea coast (megaliths generally gravitate towards the seas) you can find “classical” tiled dolmens, monolithic dolmens, entirely hollowed out in the rock, dolmen structures made from a combination of stone slabs and blocks laid in two or more rows. They also talk about the spiritual filling of these amazing structures, their energy charges.

Dolmen in the valley of the Zhane River

Maltese temples were built long before Egyptian pyramids- in the Bronze Age. Their age is more than 5000 years. It is curious that all these structures were built without the use of iron tools. The scale of all megaliths is so grandiose that local residents They were believed to have been built by giant giants. The question still remains open of how ancient people managed to build such tall buildings from huge stones up to 7 meters in size and weighing up to 20 tons, without using a binding solution, if we remember that temples were built even before the invention of the wheel. Scientists have established that the cultures of prehistoric Malta are largely related to Sicily, so it is possible that Malta was the cult center of the Sicilian Neolithic peoples.

There is not a single temple that has survived in its original form to this day. It is believed that only four of them have survived relatively intact - the temples of Ggantija, Hadjar Kvim, Mnajdra and Tarshin. Although they also suffered the sad fate of a not entirely reliable reconstruction.

Temples of Ggantija in Šara(Xaghra - “giant”) are located in the center of the island of Gozo and are one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. Today, the Ggantija temples are believed to have been built around 3600 BC.

The structure consists of two separate temples with different entrances, but a common back wall. Each of the temples has a slightly concave facade, in front of which there is a platform of large stone blocks. Most ancient temple The complex consists of three semicircular rooms arranged in the shape of a trefoil.

Modern scientists believe that such a trinity symbolizes the past, present and future or birth, life and death. According to the popular version temple complex was a sanctuary for the worship of the goddess of fertility. Findings discovered during archaeological work help to draw this conclusion. But there is another version, according to which Ggantija is nothing more than a tomb. People of the megalithic era really devoted too much time and effort to observing traditions. Honoring their ancestors, they erected grandiose tombs, and later, these places were used as sanctuaries where they worshiped the gods.

Megaliths, huge structures made of massive stone blocks, are also found in our country. There are quite a lot of similar structures in Russia, but they are not as well known as the famous Stonehenge in the UK or Ollantaytambo in Peru. We will get acquainted with the ancient megalithic structures found on the territory of Russia further.

The first place we start our journey is Mount Vottovaara - highest point West Karelian Upland - 417.3 m above sea level. The area of ​​the mountain is 6 square meters. km.
The place is just full strange artifacts after which you begin to think about ancient highly developed stone processing technologies, let’s take a better look at the photo.

Mount Vottovaara.
Megalith blocks are scattered.

Was the near block cut at an angle of 90 degrees or a play of nature?

It’s like using a laser:) geologists believe that the cracks and faults were formed as a result of a strong earthquake about 9 thousand years ago. The even planes of the stones are the result of the properties of the local rock - quartzite, the structure of which determines such even planes when split.

So is it nature or man-made? Let's take a closer look.

More like perfectly cut blocks tightly fitted to each other. It’s hard to imagine an ancient ancestor with a copper chisel somewhere on a mountain turning out such even blocks.

Good angle, perfectly straight wall.

Who lost the ball?)

This obviously involved high technology in stone processing, or is it just a play of nature? :)

Mount Pidan.
At first glance, it looks like an unremarkable pile of cracked rock.

But getting closer it looks more like megalithic masonry.

Looking between the blocks, where the stones were less exposed to erosion from wind and rain, you can see the man-made nature and how smooth edges have been preserved.

In the place where the joint of the blocks split apart, an even cut can be seen and the technology for laying these blocks opens before us.

Stone City in the Perm region.
According to scientists, the Stone City is the mouth of a river that flowed into the Permian Sea millions of years ago; this is what explains the beautifully and evenly, at right angles, carved stones, their neat laying and the “channels” of the “mouth” perpendicular to each other.

Stone city.

Look how smooth the sides of the megaliths are, as if they were cut down.

Again the old method of looking between the blocks inside the masonry, look at the far block in the center, an even cut along the entire length of the block.

They say somewhere Kola Peninsula This pool is located right in the rock.

In the south of Western Siberia in the mountainous Shoria in the Mezhdurechensky region there is a small geological village called Kameshki.
Several educated, talented geologists live in this village. These are Alexander Bespalov, Vyacheslav Pochetkin and others. These people have been doing research all their lives. mountain systems Western Siberia. One day they came across strange megalithic structures in the mountains, which they could not explain to themselves. These were walls made of giant stone blocks and strange buildings with vertically mounted stone obelisks. They contacted Georgy Sidorov via the Internet, and the first expedition was assembled.

Mountain Shoria.
Some granite blocks below were made of red granite, topped with blocks of gray granite, and above lay a polygonal masonry of various blocks, both red and gray granite.

The granite in some places melted from exposure to enormous temperatures and flowed under the weight of the upper rows. Kungurov would say about this that these are traces of melting from a thermonuclear explosion :)

The wall is made of polygonal masonry made of multi-colored blocks.

The size of the blocks is impressive; according to one version, the find is a man-made structure over 100 thousand years old.

In the photo, Georgy Sidorov, in his opinion, this entire megalithic structure may be the ruins of an ancient power plant or power plant, which transferred seismic energy to some others.

Looking inside the masonry again, where the blocks were less susceptible to erosion, smooth straight edges are visible, look at how the two blocks lie tightly, the handicraft is better visible here.

Polygonal masonry.

Mountain Shoria. Huge blocks.
at the Department of Radiophysics in Tomsk State University showed photographs on the screen, talked about various types masonry, about stone locks that hold together giant granite blocks and not a single physicist said that all this has natural origin. What surprised them most was how the ancients could lift giant stone blocks to a height of more than 1000 meters and install them there on a special platform.

Then, in the Tomsk branch of the Russian Geographical Society, the photographs were studied by scientific geologists and geographers. Both of them came to the conclusion that the presented artifacts were man-made.

Sklyarov was asked to comment on the find. And what did he say? That all the artifacts found are nothing more than rocks cracked at right angles. That there is nothing man-made here. Just a game of nature, nothing more.
After these words, I am not surprised why LAI does not study Russian megaliths.

Between blocks.

For comparison, on the left is the megalith in Baalbek, on the right is the megalith in the mountainous Shoria, it looks like the author is the same :)

Mount Shaman near the village. Nizhnetambovskoe, Khabarovsk region.

Ancient megalithic masonry.

Again, the handiwork and straight lines are better visible between the blocks.

Large megalith block.

A large megalith block on small stones, this is done for better earthquake resistance.

The megalithic masonry resembles Mountain Shoria.

Kabardino-Balkaria, cave in the Baksan Gorge.
First you need to squeeze into a hole measuring 40 by 120 cm, then climb down a narrow vertical shaft on a rope. It is formed by two parallel stone slabs. After 9 meters there is the first “knee”: the hole goes to the side and immediately breaks down again. Already here you will be covered in absolute silence - not a sound penetrates from outside. Another 23 meters deep - and a new “knee”. To reach the bottom of the cave, you need to overcome more than 80 meters, and it will take a whole hour. But, having passed the “bottleneck”, you will find yourself in a huge room, which the researchers called the “flask”. Inside we will see processed walls made of tuff and granite, composed of polished megaliths of different sizes, tightly fitted to each other.

Descent into the cave.

The edges of the blocks and the seams between them are clearly visible.

The smooth masonry is amazing and the seams are clearly adjusted to each other.

The triangular blocks have moved slightly apart.

Barely noticeable seams of blocks on the left half-lunar wall and on the wall behind it.

How do you like the seams?

Rotate the cave at an angle of 90 degrees. Two large megalithic blocks stand on top of each other.

The technologies for processing stone are amazing, and even more amazing is the comment of the head of the Kabardino-Balkarian geological exploration expedition, Vera Davidenko, but she is a realist and believes that nature can do everything and concluded: “Tuff is an accumulation of products of volcanic ejection - ash, fragments of lava , volcanic glass and, to a small extent, rock fragments that make up the crater walls. The ejecta material was hot during accumulation and therefore, when it solidified, cracks formed separately - that is, the entire tuff massif appeared to be broken into blocks. The depression discovered in the area of ​​the village of Zayukovo is one of these gravitational separation cracks, which is characterized by smooth contact surfaces,” but this is the head of the geological exploration expedition, she probably knows better.

Scheme of the structure.

A little fantasy for the finale) Arakul Shikhan, a strange structure in the middle of the forest. I have everything, kick me :)

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. By 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

Cairn is an ensemble of galleries and chambers covered with earth on top, that is, in in this case dolmens formed their skeleton, as it were. 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 construction 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 deposits (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, while exploring 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 type 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 - West Side 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 - very vague indeed, some pottery and processed flints were found, but the remains of ritual fires, dating from the same time as the construction of the megaliths, suggest that they were outside the habitation zone.

CROMLECHI

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

Cromlechs are ensembles of menhirs standing, most often in a circle or semicircle and connected 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.