Megalithic structures that form a circle are called. Famous megalithic structures

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 High Quality, soon replaced bronze products and firmly entered 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 are 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 foundation 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 people call them "throne the devil", druidic stones and the graves 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 St. 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, preserved 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 direction and guidance 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 it 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 it,” 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 moved, spoke, uttered 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”.

“The Ophite 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, transmitted 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 rocking stones and says that they are "stones placed on 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 on distance.

Finally, Svid speaks of a certain Herescus, who could, at one glance, distinguish motionless stones from those that were 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 the "mountain peaks" in Western England. All scientists believe that all these "swaying 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, this issue needs to be thoroughly studied.

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, discussing 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 had to be 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 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 citing 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 names corresponding to these masses. Moreover, these huge, swinging stones, sometimes called Pouters, placed with one end at the point of such a perfect equilibrium, that the slightest touch is enough to set them in motion... reveal the most positive knowledge of statics. Mutual opposition, 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 Hugh Sestrenzis, desiring to personally ascertain 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 The scholar William Salisbury confirms this fact by testifying to the presence of this stone in the master of a church where he saw it in 1554. This reminds us of what Pliny says about the stone left by the Argonauts at Sisicum and which the inhabitants of Sisicum 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, also penetrated 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 notes 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, dedicated 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 (Morbigan), and then they turned West again and arrived, continuing to go overland to the north-western cape of the New Continent", to that land "which is now the British Isles, which were then not yet separated from the main continent. The Ancients the inhabitants of Picardy could cross into Great Britain without crossing a 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 goal long journey 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 may 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 sailors of Tire and Sidon, who in later times were destined to make their dangerous journeys along the coast of Africa, have not yet been born. We only know with certainty 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 gigantic monuments are symbolic records of world history. They are not Druidical, 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 can be 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 megaliths that have survived to this day in eastern and southern Asia and on the territory of the USSR.

In eastern Indochina, in Upper Laos On the Changning 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 Rade, 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 somewhat preceding Indian influence in Indochina.

Ancient megaliths, and all the main types of these structures known to modern scientists, have been preserved to this day in Tibet, a country that has 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 Karnak megaliths, 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 stones of Stonehenge 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 Druid 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 densely forested valley of the Dhansira River, 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."

Dimapur was located in the valley of the Dhansira River in the 16th century - ancient capital Kachari state, which in the XIV-XVII 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 newly arrived 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 was thrown with difficulty by ten people. 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 streets in a small village. It was not for nothing that the Adyghe people called 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 get stone for paving roads and foundations of dwellings, or even just for fun. Now in Bogatyrskaya Glade only the teeth of split slabs stick out of the ground. The dolmens were destroyed before archaeologists had time to seriously study them. Even where roofs and walls have been preserved, everything inside has been dug up by treasure hunters, "The bones of the buried and the clay vessels were broken and thrown out. Therefore, our information about 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 construction undoubtedly had to have a common origin... There is no doubt that dolmens are drawn to coastal areas, indicating the role of maritime relations in the spread of these unique 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 the stones into the very different eras both for religious 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 immobile 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 do not at all resemble burial houses. 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. The grave with a canopy and other treasures in the Maykop mound is even older than the 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 in the southern regions of Transcaucasia the potter's wheel spread from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. The inhabitants of the northwestern Caucasus hoeed the ground, 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, mastered iron and saddled a horse. A 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 looks ridiculous. Devoting one's life to the creation of monumental tombs seems pointless to us, but you never know less strange ideas took hold of humanity for centuries, and 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. We chose the smallest one and brought a crane to it. No matter how they fastened the loops of the lifting steel cable to the cover plate, it did not budge. The second tap was called. 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 the calculations of B. A. Kuftin, the top 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 "to highlight the structural elements in the building - the supports supporting the arch and to express the feeling of strength, 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. Solidity and indestructibility make Caucasian tombs similar to 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. The local population still vaguely remembered worship at ancient graves, and in some places continued perform these rituals. The Adygeans were confident that damage to the dolmens would entail pestilence and misfortune. The feeling of reverence 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 their slabs to be used as crushed stone for the Black Sea Highway. As sad as it may be, our tractor drivers also like to try on dolmens “whoever takes whom” will break the tractor stone house or it will break. 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

People are puzzled by the pyramids Ancient Egypt and similar structures in Central and South America, and wonder how early people could lift and move such huge blocks of stone? Of course they couldn't do that. Early humans did not build these structures.

Pyramids

Egyptian pyramids are the greatest architectural monuments Ancient Egypt. The largest pyramid is the Cheops pyramid. Initially its height was 146.6 m, its height has now decreased to 138.8 m. The length of the side of the pyramid is 230 m.

The pyramid is made of 2.5 million stone blocks; no cement or other binders were used. On average, the blocks weighed 2.5 tons, but in the King's Chamber there are granite blocks weighing up to 80 tons. The pyramid is an almost monolithic structure - with the exception of several chambers and corridors leading to them.

Curse of the Pharaoh

The curse of the pharaohs is a curse that supposedly befalls anyone who touches the graves of royalty and mummies of Ancient Egypt. The curse is primarily associated with deaths that occurred over the next few years after the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.

The main facts stated in the “curse” are as follows:
1. Lord Carnarvon died 4 months after visiting the tomb.
2. a few days after Carnarvon, archaeologist Arthur Mace died;
3. Radiologist Archibald Douglas-Reid soon died;
4. a few months later, the American George Gould, who also visited the tomb, died;
5. in 1923, Carnarvon’s half-brother, traveler and diplomat Colonel Aubrey Herbert, died of blood poisoning;
6. in the same year, a member of the Egyptian royal family, Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey, who was present at the opening of the tomb, was shot and killed by his wife;
7. in 1924, the Governor-General of Sudan, Sir Lee Stack, was shot dead in Cairo;
8. Carter's secretary Richard Bartel died unexpectedly in 1928;
9. in 1930, Bartel's father Sir Richard, Baron Westbury, jumped out of a window;
10. In 1930, Carnarvon's half-brother committed suicide.
Reports of Lady Almina Carnarvon's death from an unknown insect bite at the age of 61 are false, as she died at the age of 93 in 1969.

Did King Tut's tomb contain information about the nature and timing of the past Pole Shift, and is this related to the Curse of the Mummy? Did the establishment kill those who threatened to publish or use information about the timing to silence these people? It is no secret that the elite (including the Vatican) are aware of the approaching cataclysms that will be caused by the next passage of Nibiru (or Planet X). It is clear that these were not accidents, but the result of efforts to destroy those who owned the information or made it clear that they would seek to use this knowledge.

The Pyramid of the Sun is the largest building in the city of Teotihuacan and one of the largest in Mesoamerica. Situated between the Pyramid of the Moon and the Citadel in the shadow of the massive Cerro Gordo mountain, it is part of a large temple complex. The Pyramid of the Sun is the third largest pyramid in the world after Great Pyramid in Cholula, Mexico and the Pyramids of Cheops.

Ancient Chinese burial mounds. In popular publications and television films, especially in English, the mounds of Ancient China are called “pyramids.” The first report of the existence of the giant so-called “White Pyramid” was delivered in 1945 by a US pilot. Subsequently, the existence of pyramidal hills was confirmed north of the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an.

Pyramids discovered around the world and buried under shifting sands or under haphazardly growing plants have similarities in appearance, and these similarities are not accidental. for similar purposes. The pyramids were astronomical instruments that allowed giant humanoids to determine when their planet, the 12th planet, was approaching and direct their shuttles to it. spaceships. Since the 12th planet visits the solar system on average every 3,600 years, those who built the pyramids also built them for their followers, and wanted to make them lasting - like a written record that could not be lost. The shape of the pyramids allows them to survive earthquakes and hurricanes and thus was the chosen shape. After the passage, when the pole shift changed the landscape of the earth's surface, the pyramids lost their value as astronomical instruments, but their durability protected them from disappearing from the earth's surface. Thus, they have become another part of the puzzle that humanity is grappling with in its attempts to solve it.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a stone megalithic structure in Wiltshire (England). It is located approximately 130 km southwest of London, approximately 3.2 km west of Amesbury and 13 km north of Salisbury. One of the most famous archaeological sites in the world, Stonehenge consists of ring and horseshoe-shaped structures built from large megaliths. The first researchers associated the construction of Stonehenge with the Druids. Excavations, however, have pushed back the creation of Stonehenge to the New Stone and Bronze Ages. Dating material for sarsen boulders, available in very limited quantities, points to 2440-2100 BC. e.

Stonehenge is ancient, much more ancient than people believe. It was created so early that it is not imprinted in any cultures, and all the threads are broken. Stonehenge is neither a sundial, nor a device for astronomical measurements, nor a place of worship or sacrifice, nor a meeting place. All these interpretations are only an attempt by mankind to explain the purpose of Stonehenge, since the true explanation can lead to too much confusion.

So what exactly is Stonehenge? Stonehenge was erected by order of a reptilian king who lived on Earth so long ago, when people first appeared. However, the structure was intended for the emerging people who existed at that time. This is a subliminal message containing a sadistic message and influence on those who will be sacrificed. People should look at Stonehenge and imagine the desperate efforts of an innocent person lying on a table under a knife. Why was there another table there? So that they represent a bunch of villains surrounding the victim. Why is there a circle there? So that they do not imagine any force penetrating inside the circle to save the victim. Why else is all this out in the open? Stonehenge was built in order to fulfill the purpose that its creators intended - to penetrate into the subconscious of humanity.

If the value of pi in Babylon is 3.125, then the circumference of the Sarsen circle at Stonehenge is 3650 imperial inches, which is represented in the great pyramid. This is a coded message representing the period of Planet X's orbit.

Easter Island

Like most other oral traditions, the folklore of the inhabitants Rapa Nui passed down from time immemorial through many generations, and therefore it is unknown whether these stories are based on historical facts. At the center of most stories about the statues is the mystical idea that the massive megaliths moved by using "mana" or divine energy. Those who possessed "mana" were able to direct the movement of the "moai" (i.e., the statue) to its intended place. Accounts of who actually possessed the "mana" vary widely.

In 1919, British archaeologist Catherine Routledge, who lived on Easter Island for a year, wrote in her journal: “There was an old woman who lived at the southern edge of the mountain and occupied the position of cook for the statue makers. She was the most important person among the influential circles and moved the statues with the help of supernatural forces ("mana"), placing them everywhere at will." Earlier messages left by visitors to the island indicate that the statues were placed by the mythical King Tuu Ku Ihu and the god Make-Make. It was known that there were even special priests who moved the moai at the request of those who wanted to have them on their ancestral land or on ahu (a base made of wind-blown sand).

And this is a pedestal under the moai on the island. Easter:

The giant humanoids have long faces, but the discovered skulls, usually described as alien, do not belong to these humanoids. The heads on Easter Island were designed to intimidate because the appearance of these faces was, and indeed is, the structure of their faces.

Megaliths of South America

Sacsayhuaman is a large ceremonial complex in Cusco, according to legend it was built by the first Inca king, Manco Copac. According to scientists, the megalithic structures were built in the tenth to thirteenth centuries. The best preserved area of ​​the complex is a large square with three massive terraces adjacent to it.

The stones used in their construction are among the largest of any pre-Columbian structure. The giant boulders fit each other so precisely that you can’t even fit a sheet of paper between them. It is believed that this technology, as well as the rounded corners of the stones, allowed Sacsayhuaman to move numerous destructive earthquakes that took place in Cusco.

Not far from Sacsayhuaman, sixty kilometers northwest of Cusco, there is another megalithic site - Ollantaytambo. In the nineteenth century, the ruins of the city attracted scientists from all over the world, who were extremely surprised by the way the buildings were constructed. During its heyday, Ollantaytambo was a fairly large settlement.

Its plan is typical of the Incas - four transverse streets intersected seven longitudinal ones, with a large square in the center. The city consisted of residential buildings, temples, warehouses, as well as public services - it even had some kind of water supply. Most of the structures were built from large stone blocks, closely fitted to each other.

Situated high in the mountains near the Chilean town of San Clemente, the El Enladrillado site is the subject of much debate among scientists, as well as the source of myths and legends. WITH Spanish"El Enladrillado" literally translates to "stone floor." Actually, this phrase perfectly describes this area.

El Enladrillado is the stonework that covers the surface of the earth. It is made of large boulders that fit tightly together. At the same time, the shape of the masonry resembles a triangle, with its apex pointing towards the Descabezado Grande volcano.

Tiwanaku or Taipicala is an ancient site in Bolivia, 72 km from La Paz near eastern shore Lake Titicaca. According to excavation materials, this settlement dates back to 1500 BC. e.

High in the mountains of South America there are traces of ancient civilizations with features similar to the ancient civilizations of Egypt. These are structures that were built from large stone blocks and that were paved and reinforced in the same way as the Great Pyramids. Space ports on high plateaus, which may be clearly visible from space, are still hardly recognizable from the surface of the Earth. In the humid jungle to the north lie the outlines of cities abandoned for unknown reasons. This land is fertile, the water supply is plentiful, and yet they are there unattended and uninhabited. Legends say that human sacrifices were made on pyramid-like platforms and that hearts were ripped out of the chests of living people, but no evidence of this practice exists among local peoples. Who built it and where did they go?

All these traces of ancient civilization are only traces that remained from humanoid aliens from the 12th planet who left the earth. Human sacrifice - never a practice of the native population - was also discontinued, as this savage method of punishment was used by the master aliens to keep their wayward human slaves on a tight leash. After they left, the frightened people either left there to wander, or played politics, according to which they chose new owners for themselves for one day. If people don't have the technology to make a city function, then cobblestone streets and stone structures become unnecessary burdens. People were forced to walk much further to work the fields or to go hunting. Why did they have to go through all these tedious steps? Soon the cities were abandoned by everyone except the monkeys, lizards and vines that crawl through everything in the jungle.

Baalbek is the oldest and the most majestic city on Earth, the ruins of which are located at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, 85 kilometers northeast of Beirut in Lebanon. The Sumerian chronicles mention that Baalbek was built at the same time as the pyramids of Giza. The buildings of Baalbek are amazing in their size. On the Baalbek terrace there once stood a grand temple of Jupiter.

In the southeast wall, the base consists of nine rows of stone blocks weighing more than 300 tons each. In the southwestern wall of the base lie three colossal megalithic blocks of absolutely incredible size, called Trilithon - the Miracle of the Three Stones. Each of them reaches a length of 21 meters, a height of 5 meters, and a width of 4 meters. They weigh 800 tons each. Moreover, these monoliths lie at an eight-meter height. Traces of mechanical processing of the planes are visible on the blocks.

Contrary to the sometimes encountered statement, the so-called. The “Southern Stone” was not at all thrown by the builders along the road and was not lost during transportation - it remained lying in the quarry, and was not even completely separated from the rocky base. The slope of the block is determined by the general slope of the surface that the rock mass had in this place.

Giant humanoids from the 12th planet, which entered the legends of many earthly peoples, wandered around the Earth and even in those places where there were no legends about their presence. These humanoids are recorded in the mythology of Europe as Greek gods or as Vandal Visigoths, in Africa - in the memory of the Dogon tribe, in South and Central America - in the cities of the Maya and the Incas. However, they also visited Australia and the East, although the only traces of them there are artificially made objects. The gods of the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Babylonians, the Germanic Visigoths, the gods of the ancient Mayans and Incas are, almost down to the individual, members of the royal family from the 12th Planet, stationed on Earth to oversee the development of mines.

Avebury

Avebury is a cult site dating back to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Ages, consisting of megalithic tombs and sanctuaries. It is located in Wiltshire, England, and takes its name from a nearby village. According to archaeologists, the complex was created and intensively used in the period from 2100 BC. e. to 1650 BC e.

Scientists associate the buildings of Avebury with the Bell-Beaker culture. It consists of a huge cromlech with an area of ​​11.5 hectares and a diameter of over 350 meters, surrounded by a ditch and rampart, with approximately 100 stone pillars located along its inner edge, each weighing up to 50 tons.

Avebury and the Dark Star. People who settled in the Avebury area in the past and began laying stone circles here witnessed an amazing astronomical phenomenon. In any case, it is interesting that the third circle with an additional sinuous trail extending from it, located near Avebury, indicates a Planet X-like object.

It seems that Babylonian culture allows for a similar double interpretation. At the top of this stele is an image of a trinity of bright astronomical objects - the Sun, the Moon and the third radiating planet. Please note that the stele below depicts the Babylonian deity Marduk, a deity closely associated with the planet Nibiru. It is interesting to compare this image with the later alchemical image of the dragon, symbolizing Azoth, with its two suns and moon. Planet X, represented as the Second Sun, and the winding, undulating path are depicted as crop circles in many places.

Newgrange

Newgrange is a megalithic cult building in Ireland, a corridor tomb, part of the Brú na Bóinne complex. Newgrange dates back to 2500 BC. e. The structure, with a diameter of 85 meters and a height of 13.5 meters, has a 19-meter gallery, which points strictly to the southeast and leads to a cruciform hall. The most delightful time to visit Newgrange is December 21st, and the days before and after. At dawn, during the winter equinox, the sun's rays rush straight into the small hole above the entrance to the gallery, reach the farthest stone and then fill the entire room with light. Some researchers believe that Newgrange is the oldest "astrological" building of its kind on earth.

If the Anunnaki built the Great Pyramids as an astronomical device so that the Anunnaki remaining on Earth could determine when their home planet, Nibiru, would enter the solar system, were other such observation devices built during the same time period? Human estimates place the Great Pyramids as being built approximately 4,000 years ago, while New Grange is estimated to be over 5,000 years old. If the Great Pyramids were built for the astronomers existing among the Anunnaki waiting for the next passage of Nibiru, then the New Grange was the type of structure built in case of disaster. What if the plague comes, because then astronomers will lose the ability to track the calendar! Their knowledge, of course, was recorded in writing, but we are talking about problems that were unresolved due to the uncertainty of the number of days, weeks or months that had passed. In this case, a team would be sent to an observation site such as New Grange to mark the onset of the Winter Solstice and quickly report it to the astronomical center.

New Grange is famous for witnessing the arrival of the solstice moment, when around the dawn of the Winter Solstice the sunlight enters it. Since the former North Pole was located on the island of Greenland, and the crustal shift during the last shift simply pulled the island of Greenland to a more southern latitude, at the solstice only the nature of the observation before and after the solstice changed. - The arc of the trajectory of the Sun's movement in winter in the Northern Hemisphere in the direction from north to south, and therefore it ultimately looks into the hole in which the moment of the Winter Solstice is recorded. Further, at more northern latitudes, the Sun peered into the hole earlier. Does any sunlight come through this hole before or after the solstice? Of course, why not? After all, a hole is not a point. But the approximate time of the Winter Solstice can be registered.

Megaliths in Siberia

Have you seen this yet? March 10, 2014 In Gornaya Shoria, in southern Siberia, researchers have found an exceptionally huge wall of granite stones.

Some of these giant granite stones are estimated to weigh over 3,000 tons, and as you'll see below, many of them were cut "with flat surfaces, right angles and sharp edges." Nothing of this magnitude had ever been discovered before. Most big Stone, found near megalithic ruins in Baalbek, Lebanon, weighs less than 1,500 tons. So how did someone cut 3,000 tons of granite stones with unprecedented precision, move them up the side of a mountain and stack them 40 meters high?

The Anunnaki were helped to lift the large stones from which they created their pyramids and walls by aliens who are able to control gravity in relation to their ships, themselves and objects, such as large stones. Their ships float not with the help of jet propulsion, but due to the creation of a separate gravitational field inside the ship. Contactees report floating in the air during visits. Thus, the discovery of massive megaliths should not be a surprise. The Anunnaki were present on Earth even before humanity was genetically engineered from apes. The land was sparsely populated, so their mining operations did not interfere with the efforts of genetic engineers. Due to their long stay on Earth, they were or were buried under shifting soil, puzzling modern man.

Dolmens

Dolmens are ancient funeral and religious structures belonging to the category of megaliths (that is, structures made of large stones). The name comes from appearance structures common in Europe - a slab raised on stone supports, resembling a table. The main function for dolmens of all types is burial.

Why would early man cremate his dead? Today there are cultures in New Guinea that eat their dead to gain the strength and wisdom of the deceased. This approach to using the dead is common throughout the world. The practice can be found in Africa and South America, and was also practiced in China in the past. This is the basis of cannibalism. So given that the Anunnaki were viewed by early man as powerful and dominant giants, and given that early man would in all likelihood thus try to eat a dead Annunaki to gain these qualities, the Anunnaki regularly burned their dead. What is the reason that no Anunnaki mummies or graves have been found? They were burned and their ashes scattered.

Megalithic structures appeared and spread widely during the Bronze Age. Megaliths include the following structures:

• menhirs;
• dolmens;
• alinemans;
• cromlechs;
• covered walkways;
• and other buildings made of large stone blocks and slabs.

Megalithic structures can be found in every corner globe: in the Caucasus, Crimea, Western and Northern Europe (England, France, Denmark, Holland), India, Iran, the Balkan Peninsula, North Africa and other countries.

Figure 1. Megalithic structures. Author24 - online exchange of student work

History of the appearance of megalithic structures and types

Appearance various types megalithic structures are often associated with cults of veneration of ancestors, the sun or fire, and totems. Large-scale work on processing and moving stone blocks was carried out with the help of a huge number of people in a primitive community of labor organization. The most common monuments of this type are dolmens.

Definition 1

Dolmens are burial structures that consist of several slabs arranged vertically and covered with a horizontal slab.

The weight of the slabs reached several tens of tons. Initially, dolmens reached a length of two meters, their height did not exceed 150 centimeters. However, over time, their size became larger; the approach to them was arranged in the form of a stone gallery. The length of such galleries could reach 20 meters. Another type of megalithic structures are menhirs.

Definition 2

Menhirs are vertically installed stone pillars that have a rounded cross-section, a height of up to 20 meters, and a weight of about 300 tons.

Menhirs are located near dolmens, so there is an assumption that funeral rites connect them. Menhirs can often be found in small groups that are arranged in parallel rows. It happens that the length of such rows reaches 30 kilometers.

An example is Carnac in Brittany, where the number of menhirs reaches 3000. It is believed that each menhir is a monument to a deceased person.

Note 1

Menhirs did not arise out of vital necessity, when a person needed to build a home or warehouses. The creation of menhirs was based on an idea that is not related to the struggle for existence. But, despite this, considerable efforts were made to extract, deliver and hoist these blocks, which reached impressive sizes and considerable weight.

The fact of such a rapid spread of this type of megalithic structure indicates that menhirs were a kind of expression of ideas that were the same for the people of that era, regardless of their actual location.

It is no coincidence that these stones were enormous in size and weight. If we take into account their historical relationship with subsequent structures that had architectural features, then a menhir is a funerary monument or monument that is similar in its memorial column, but a dolmen is a crypt, tomb or sarcophagus. The cromlech at Stonehenge is already a kind of temple, albeit a very primitive one.

Definition 3

Cromlechs are large groups of menhirs that are arranged in closed circles. Sometimes circles consist of several rows of vertically placed stones.

An example of a complex megalithic structure is Stonehenge. This is a circle with a diameter of 30 meters, which consists of vertically placed stones. From above they are covered with horizontal slabs. In the middle of the structure there are two rings of low stones, and between them there is a third ring of tall blocks arranged in pairs. In the center is a single stone, which is believed to be an altar. Stonehenge is a famous megalithic structure, which already has such architectural elements as center, rhythm, symmetry.

In this type one can see a structure in which a technical problem not only found a certain type of solution, but also received an aesthetic embodiment, which indicates the architect’s mastery of a sense of rhythm, space, form, scale and proportions. Other megaliths do not possess such qualities, since according to all the above characteristics, they are all closer to amorphous natural creatures than to the work of human hands.

Despite this, the cromlech located in Stonehenge also cannot be called an architectural structure. It is too massive in relation to the horizontals, its verticals are too heavy. The technicality of the appearance in this case prevails over its artistic composition. Exactly the same as in all other structures that preceded the formation of the cromlech:

• dugouts;
• semi-dugouts;
• huts;
• above-ground adobe structures that had a utilitarian purpose.

The artistic form arose only when the utilitarian form reached perfection. It was also at the final stage of the Bronze Age, when crafts and the artistic industry actively emerged.

A huge number of megalithic structures have been collected in the Caucasus. Stone alleys, which in Armenia were called the stone army, became widespread here. There are also stone images of fish, which were the personification of the deity of fertility.

Magical architecture of megalithic structures

The origins of architecture date back to the late Neolithic. At that time, stone was already used to create monumental structures. All megaliths of antiquity can be divided into two large groups:

• Ancients architectural structures prehistoric societies: cromlechs, menhirs, dolmens, temples of Malta. Almost unprocessed stones were used to build such structures. Cultures that used such structures are called megalithic. This culture also includes labyrinths made of small stones, as well as individual stone blocks with petroglyphs. Megalithic architecture also includes dolmens of the Korean nobility and tombs of Japanese emperors.
• Megalithic structures of more developed architecture. These are structures made of large stone blocks that have a regular geometric shape. Such megalithic architecture is characteristic of early powers, which were not built in later times. This includes monuments of the Mediterranean: megalithic structures of the Mycenaean civilization, pyramids in Egypt, the temple mount located in Jerusalem.

The most beautiful megalithic structures in the world

Gobekli Tepe, Türkiye. The complex is located on the Armenian Highlands. This megalithic structure is considered the oldest in the world. According to historical data, it was formed in the 10th–9th millennium BC. People at that time were engaged in gathering and hunting. The shape of this megalithic temple resembles circles, of which there are more than 20 pieces. According to experts, this architectural complex was deliberately covered with sand. Its height reached 15 meters, and its diameter was 300 meters.

Megaliths in Carnac (Brittany) France. Many megalithic structures were represented as ceremonial centers in which cults for the burial of the dead were carried out. This includes the megalith complex in Carnac (Brittany), which is located in France. It contains about 3000 stones. The megaliths reached a height of 4 meters, they were arranged in the form of an alley, the rows ran parallel to each other. This architectural complex can be dated back to the 5th–4th millennium BC. There were legends that Merlin ordered the ranks of Roman legionnaires to be turned to stone.

Figure 8. Megaliths at Carnac (Brittany), France. Author24 - online exchange of student work

Nabta Observatory, Nubia, which is located in the Sahara. Some megalithic structures were previously used to determine astronomical events (equinox and solstices). At that time, a megalithic structure was found in the Nubian desert in the Nabta Playa area, which was used for astronomical purposes. Thanks to the special arrangement of the megaliths, it was possible to determine the day of the summer solstice. Archaeologists believe that people then lived seasonally, only when there was water in the lake. That's why they needed a calendar.

Stonehenge, UK, Salisbury. Stonehenge is a megalithic structure, which is presented in the form of 82 columns, 30 stone blocks and five huge trilithons. The weight of the columns reaches 5 tons, stone blocks - 25 tons, and huge stones weigh 50 tons. The stacked blocks form arches that previously pointed to the cardinal directions. According to scientists, this structure was erected in 3100 BC. The ancient monolith was not only a lunar and solar calendar, but was also an exact cross-section of the solar system.

Figure 9. Stonehenge, UK, Salisbury. Author24 - online exchange of student work

By comparing the mathematical parameters of the geometric figures of the cromlech, it was possible to establish that they all reflect the parameters of the various planets of the solar system, and also model the orbits of their rotation. What is surprising is that Stonehenge is a representation of the 12 planets of the solar system, although today it is believed that there are only 9 of them. Astronomers have long believed that there are two more planets beyond the outer orbit of Pluto, and the asteroid belt is the remains of a previously existing 12th planets. How could the ancient builders of the cromlech know about this?

There is another interesting version about the purpose of Stonehenge. During the excavation of the path along which ritual processions were carried out, the hypothesis that the cromlech was built along the relief of the Ice Age was once again confirmed. This place was special: the natural landscape was located along the solstice axis, connecting heaven and earth.

Cromlech Broughgar or Sun Temple, Orkney. Initially, this structure had 60 elements, but today only 27 rocks have been preserved. The place where the cromlech is located is ritual. It is “stuffed” with various mounds and burials. All the monuments here are united into a single architectural complex, which is preserved by UNESCO. Today, archaeological excavations are being carried out on the islands.

Temples of Ggantija in Šara. It is located in the central part of the island of Gozo and is one of the world's most important attractions. The megalithic structure is presented in the form of two separate temples, each of which has a concave façade. In front of the entrance there is a platform made of stone blocks. Most ancient temple architectural complex consists of several semicircular rooms arranged in the shape of a trefoil.

Figure 10. Ggantija Temples in Šara. Author24 - online exchange of student work

Scientists believe that such a trinity is a symbol of the past, present and future. According to historians, temple complex- This is a sanctuary for worshipers of the goddess of fertility. However, there is a version that the Ggantija temple is a tomb, because the population of the megalithic era followed traditions. They revered their ancestors and erected tombs, and later these places became sanctuaries where they worshiped the gods.

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 - big stone) - structures made of huge stone blocks, 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 a most difficult task for primitive technology 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 weighing up to 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.

A mathematical comparison of the parameters of various geometric figures of the cromlech made it possible to establish that they are all 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 burial 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 content of these amazing structures, their energy charges.

Dolmen in the valley of the Zhane River

Maltese temples were built long before the 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 too 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. The oldest temple in 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 a common version, the 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.

Searchers for traces of aliens from outer space are looking for more and more “victims” among ancient buildings in order to declare them the work of space guests. We haven’t really gotten to the megaliths yet! But it's strange. That’s how they ask to be included in modern mythology, these grandiose structures erected at the behest of ancient mythology.

What are megaliths?

Megaliths. "Giant stones" translated. Or rather, structures made of giant stones.

Of course, no matter how large the “pebbles” that make up the megaliths, any of them is inferior to the slabs of the famous Trilithon of the Baalbek terrace, some even to the stone blocks from the Egyptian pyramids. The blocks that make up megaliths usually weigh only tons, and three hundred tons for them is already the maximum, a kind of record. Another thing is that there are megalithic structures made of many hundreds of such “pebbles”.

But if the pyramids were built on the land of a great and powerful civilization, which occupies an honorable place in history, in a country that has long been more than densely populated, and all the pyramids are concentrated, roughly speaking, on a few “pockets” in the Nile Valley, then the megaliths are scattered in a strip the width of hundreds, or even thousands of kilometers. And the length of this strip is amazing.

Who built the megaliths

At first, naturally, it was believed that the megaliths were built by ordinary giants. Creatures that threw multi-ton stones from palm to palm. The Greeks called the structures made of large stones Cyclopean because they were, quite clearly, built by the Cyclops, the one-eyed giants, one of whom was later blinded by Odysseus. According to another ancient hypothesis, these stones could move on their own - for example, to the music of Orpheus. But the version with cyclops was much more popular.

In the 18th century, the “giant” version was decisively rejected. And soon, in return, they decided that these were aliens, accustomed in their homeland to bury their dead in natural caves, and began to build artificial caves in the new lands. But the problem is that in Spain, for example, there are plenty of ordinary caves, but dolmens have appeared literally next to them.

However, let's look at the names they bear different groups megaliths.

Classification of megaliths

A stone slab can simply stand upright, and then it is called the word “menhir”, taken from the language of the Celts, the ancient inhabitants of France, England, Ireland and some other lands. Another, inclined one, can be leaned against this vertical plate. Or a horizontal one can lie on a vertical slab, so that it looks like a table for some giant.

The next step to service is a pair of stones covered with a third one like a roof. This is already the simplest dolmen - a word also Celtic. And no matter how many stones are now connected into a box or chamber with a lid, all such structures are also called dolmens. They often lead into stone galleries or corridors. These stone boxes served as tombs. Where there were no large stones, the chamber could be built from smaller stones. Sometimes, according to a similar plan, tombs were cut into the rocks.

Much depended on the conditions of the area, but not everything. The chalk cliffs of southern England seem designed to be carved into artificial caves, but there the dolmens are built on the surface. And in southern Spain, in some places nearby there are megalithic tombs different types, underground and above ground. Why some of them were built and others were carved is unknown. However, when it comes to megaliths, the word “unknown” is in great use among scientists. Even regarding the fact that dolmens are funerary structures, archaeologists did not immediately manage to come to an agreement. And as to whose tombs these are, disputes continue to this day.

Most of the dolmens were built at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, that is, at the end of the Neolithic and in the Bronze Age. There were, however, places where dolmens continued to be built much later, and those already built were used in many countries as tombs for representatives of more and more generations. Perhaps this is one of the main reasons why archaeologists have so many uncertainties with megaliths - inside the tombs things left by different eras are mixed together.

Are the builders of megaliths one people?

So, megaliths seem to be different. But one of the largest English historians, Gordon Childe, argued that, despite all the diversity of megaliths in this peculiar stone belt connecting England with Japan, we can talk about the general plan of many of them almost regardless of geographical location.

The imagination of scientists has long been struck by this true or imaginary, but, in any case, striking similarity. At one time (which is a century or two for the Bronze Age), tombs of a similar type appear all over the Earth, or rather along the coast of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans and their seas. And before we had time to stop trusting the legends about the giants who built the megaliths, new legends immediately appeared, even brighter and more beautiful (although the legends about “aliens” were still far away - oh, the dark 19th century!).

First of all, the place of giants as builders of megaliths was taken by people of some unknown, but brilliant and powerful tribe. It would seem natural to assume that the same people placed stones on stones according to similar plans from Far East to Scotland. It is not for nothing that almost all megaliths are so clearly drawn to the sea and are so persistently located in coastal countries. (In the Caucasus, for example, dolmens were essentially lined up in a chain along the shore of the Black Sea. In some places in the Caucasus they were built further from the fertile coast, but these “more continental” dolmens get smaller as they move away from the sea, until they finally lose the right to be called megaliths - huge stones.)

However, not a single serious scientist insisted that the people of the megaliths inhabited almost the entire coastline of the Old World at the same time. It seemed more real that the builders of the megaliths - the entire people or the entire tribe - moved, leaving gigantic structures behind them, like an indelible chain of traces.

Naturally, again, opinions differed about what kind of people they were, where they came from, where they were going, why and how they disappeared. Some researchers believed that he walked from east to west. Others insisted on moving it from west to east. Still others spoke about people from Sumer who went both east and west, but since there were no megaliths in Mesopotamia, this option quickly disappeared.

Still others believed that it was Egypt who sent its scouts across the seas and lands; it was its trading agents, also missionaries, who persuaded the inhabitants of the areas under their jurisdiction to acquire grandiose tombs and themselves set an example for them. Proponents of this version recalled primarily Egyptian pyramids, also gigantic tombs. According to these scientists, the “sons of the Sun”, immigrants from Egypt, spread throughout the world and spread seeds from which dolmens sprang up. Moreover, first of all, these travelers settled in places where there were deposits of minerals valuable to their homeland: in Spain, Sardinia, Ireland - near copper mines; near tin deposits - in Western Ukraine and England; near gold mining sites - in Western France and Ireland; on the Orkney Islands near Northern Scotland, where pearls were mined; on east coast Denmark, which served as a source of amber.

Gordon Child notes that there are indeed general similarities between the distribution of Bronze Age tombs and the location of important deposits of that era, but a significant number of tombs are located where no deposits were mined. And most importantly, according to the customs of the same Egyptians, in the tombs the treasures for which these people climbed here should have been lying next to the remains of people, but in Denmark amber was extremely rarely found in dolmens, in Ireland they find little gold and copper there, and so on. And finally, everywhere in the dolmens there are few or no imported things. It’s really strange if in front of us are the graves of the owners of “trading posts” or people who were strongly influenced by them. After all, it is known that, say, in the Bronze Age, together with the dear deceased, they usually buried the objects that were dearest to him and most valued by society, or, less often, at least something that personified or represented such objects (a clay horse instead of a real one, etc.). But for the most part, there is nothing foreign at all about dolmens. In these buildings, which are so similar in appearance, in each country there are, first of all, things created by the tribes that inhabited it at that time. This sharply contradicts the idea of ​​one people who built all the megaliths, no matter where they stood.

It must be said, however, that some enthusiasts even proposed Atlanteans as megalith builders. But if you believe Plato and recognize Atlantis as a reality, then you must remember that dolmens and other structures were built thousands of years after Plato’s date of the death of Atlantis.

No less fantastic was the version about dolmens as monuments to the travel around the world of people of the “proto-Aryan race” - the ancestors of the Indo-European peoples. After all, among other things, dolmens also stand in places where the Indo-Europeans have never been - in Korea, in East Africa...

It must still be said that sometimes megaliths definitely indicate tribal movements. The megaliths of Southern Ethiopia, in their resemblance to the megaliths of Assam in India, cross the usual boundaries for megaliths. On both sides Indian Ocean There are cylindrical pillars with a rounded top, like carnations with a cap, only the height of the “nail” itself is up to four meters. It is difficult not to recognize this as evidence of the travel of the inhabitants of “one side” of the ocean across this very ocean. Of course, it can also be bypassed by land - around the Persian Gulf, through Arabia and the narrow strait separating Yemen from East Africa. But long-distance sea voyages by Vasco da Gama of the Stone or Bronze Age are not excluded.

For some time, the common name of the two tribes was considered confirmation of such a migration: the Naga tribe is in Ethiopia, and the Naga tribe is in India. Then the “namesakes” turned out to have very little in common, the version of a single origin was rejected, and at the same time the idea of ​​people who made huge stone “nails” moving from India to Africa. But they did not reject it unanimously and not forever.

One way or another, to the question: “Which people built dolmens” - today the most correct answer is not precise, but short: “Different.”

Megaliths are a derivative of ideas about the world

And yet, the similarity of dolmens all over the world is striking, and even more striking is the fact that on the scale of history they appear everywhere almost simultaneously, moreover, in countries inhabited by peoples with very different ways of farming, customs, ideological ideas, in countries located on different levels of historical development. Neolithic people, Copper Age people and Bronze Age people lived on the earth at the same time (just as today the Stone Age is adjacent to our Iron Age somewhere in New Guinea). Both of them, and others, and still others, although to varying degrees and not all of them, turned out to be involved in the megaliths, they cut monstrous slabs, piled them on top of each other, and arranged them in an order common to places separated by many thousands of kilometers.

Obviously, we should talk here not about the mass movement of this or that people, but about the movement across the earth of a set of ideas about the world. Representations associated with the veneration of the dead. And the economy that had developed by this time was already capable of feeding many workers who did not reap or sow, but carried huge stones.

This means that in all the countries where dolmens appeared, class stratification was already in full swing - otherwise, who would these tombs be erected for, after all, not mere mortals? Nobility, exploiters and slave owners have already appeared. Leaders became kings, tribal elders turned into aristocrats. They all needed to emphasize their power, to symbolically affirm its eternity and inviolability. How they needed the same thing egyptian pharaohs with its priests, generals and officials. And similar causes gave rise to similar consequences. It happens. The Mexicans, for example, began building their pyramids a thousand years after the Egyptians had already stopped building theirs. The time gap here is perceived quite naturally - after all, the Mayans or Aztecs were several thousand years behind Egypt in development. And they apparently had no ties with Egypt, at least not permanent ones. And there were pyramids.

But here it is necessary to emphasize the difference between a pyramid and a megalith such as a dolmen or cromlech.

Pyramid and megalith

The shape of the pyramid is such that it is ideal for a symbol of eternity. An ordinary pile of uneven stones, once they are trimmed and put together “more beautifully,” turns into a pyramid. Since ancient times, the class state itself has been compared to a pyramid, because in each new layer of stones, if you go from bottom to top, there are fewer and fewer stones - like people in different layers of class society, and at the top there is one stone: the symbol of the ruler. However, it is likely that this comparison, despite all its antiquity, nevertheless appeared after the very first pyramid was built. Well, the ancient Egyptians, apparently, materialized in the pyramid a sheaf of solar rays, the top of which was the sun. Since the sun was often identified with the pharaoh, the pyramid was also a symbol of power. There are many other explanations...

But if the theories invented to explain the shape of the pyramids and the appeal of people in different lands to this particular form, basically complement each other and themselves fit into a sort of neat pyramid, then the hypotheses about megaliths repel each other. The structure of megaliths is too complex for coincidences in its design at different ends of the world to occur by chance.

Journey of Megaliths - Journey of Worldviews

To most historians, it seems certain that megaliths traveled around the world, and not their appearance in every country or at least part of the world independently, without any influence from near or distant neighbors. At the same time, it is certainly true that the megaliths were not built by the same people. There seems to be only one way out of this external contradiction: from people to people across Europe, Asia and Africa, a sum of ideas associated with megaliths was transmitted - not the simple thought of the courage of a huge funeral structure, but precisely the sum of ideas associated with this thought.

The very possibility of such a grandiose journey of entire systems of views - and it is attested, as you can see, very significantly - says a lot about the really existing connections between the peoples of the distant past. Many historians are prevented from drawing sufficiently far-reaching conclusions from this fact by the fact that we still know too little about the megaliths and their builders. But even what has become known about both of them makes us see the tribes of our ancestors as not at all as dark and isolated from each other as they seemed.

Gordon Childe, having listed and demolished the most popular assumptions about the common builders of all megaliths, with obvious relief and pleasure moves on to people who also often buried their dead in dolmens, but who themselves apparently lived centuries after the dolmens were built. It was here that it seemed possible to find traces of some convenient people, groups of people of which wandered throughout a large part of Europe. The groups are small - the burials of “wanderers” do not form extensive cemeteries. And almost always and almost everywhere (with the exception of ventral Spain) such burials are found among the burials of people of other nations.

During excavations, the traces of these wanderers are recognized primarily by bell-shaped clay cups. Archaeologists therefore assigned this tribe the name of the people of bell-shaped cups.

Child sees the “wanderers” wandering around Europe as groups of armed merchants trading in gold and copper, amber and yam. Traveling with them were male metallurgists and women engaged in pottery. Travelers also made cups. Child speaks of the cup owners as guides in establishing trade and other relations between the peoples of Europe. They spread new methods of metal processing, in a word, according to Child, they played the role of sort of “carriers of culture” throughout prehistoric Europe! However, their possible progressive role is greatly compromised by one circumstance...

Millet grains are sometimes found in the famous bell-shaped cups, and intoxicating beer was then brewed from millet. The power of the Bell Beaker People, if they existed, rested most heavily on their “monopoly” of this invigorating drink. “Cup people” soldered the ancestors of those Europeans who, thousands of years later, came to North America not only with guns, but also with vodka.

The Bell Beaker people lived a little over thirty centuries ago - not such a long time. After all, writing had already existed in Egypt and Sumer for two thousand years. We know quite a lot about individual cultures and peoples of that time, but the “cup people” did not have writing, and neither did the tribes among whom they lived, and there are still many more mysteries associated with these people than answers to them.

The Bell Beaker people were to have a considerable influence on the culture of Europe. There are scientists who believe that the names of silver and lead in both the Indo-European languages ​​and the Basque language go back to the unknown language of the “cup” people.” It is possible that traces of their activity remained in Africa. The center from which the bearers of this culture came was the Iberian Peninsula. In Central Europe, they probably met with Indo-European tribes moving west around this time.

In this interaction, the culture of Europeans on the threshold of antiquity may have been forged.

Well, the actual builders of the megaliths, at least some of them, still maintained connections with powerful Mediterranean civilizations. One of them, in the giant cromlech of Stonehenge, keeps two pieces of equipment: a bronze ax and a bronze dagger, the ax is local, many of these have been found in England, but the dagger is probably imported, and the point from which it was exported is precisely known: there are many such daggers found in Crete. From Crete to England, from the eastern Mediterranean to the northwestern edge of Europe is quite a distance. And it is possible, and even most likely, that at the beginning and middle of the 2nd millennium BC, no Cretans had yet reached England, and the English themselves had serious sea ​​travel never even dreamed of it. Too many seas and lands lay on this path. Too many peoples walked on it - peoples who did not know the principles international law. Bronze daggers moved from people to people, through intermediaries, to England. However, not only daggers and not only to England. Hoards of axes and daggers, treasures of Baltic amber beads and Mediterranean opaque glass beads mark trade routes during the time of the creators of the megaliths and the heirs of these creators.

The profession of a merchant was dangerous at that time. The wanderers had a bad time. A traveler in Central Europe was then exposed to much greater dangers than a traveler in Central Africa in the 19th century. And yet, amber beads come from the Baltic to Italy and Greece, gold from Ireland arrives in Crete, and Egyptian beads are found by archaeologists in Hungary, Holland, and England. All this already in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. At the time when the last European megaliths were built. Once things traveled, rituals could travel too. The idea that tombs could be built for the dead from huge stones could also travel.

Well, the similarity of the plans of megaliths in different countries! It is large, but some general details can be explained without the idea that people pass on meticulously designed tomb plans to people.

Or maybe you won’t be able to create too much variety with such a small number of basic details unless you try hard. In general, the stone box repeats the main features of the dwelling in an enlarged form. And this is natural for the wave - everywhere people tried to give funeral structures the signs of ordinary houses, and it’s not for nothing that “coffin” is called “domovina” in Ukrainian.

Is it any wonder that stone boxes surrounded Eurasia, passing through North Africa? And yet it’s tricky. Some megaliths that are far from each other have certain similarities that cannot be explained in this simple way.

Historians and archaeologists are approaching megaliths from different angles; dozens of theories and hundreds of hypotheses have already been broken on these giant stones. The mounds adjoin the dolmens in a peculiar way. The same idea of ​​​​the fight against death and oblivion inspired the ancient Egyptians and European, Asian and African builders of megaliths, and inspired the Sarmatians to build artificial hills from stones and earth. The mounds do not look like megaliths, nor do they look like pyramids. But many historians nevertheless believe that the creators of the mounds imitated the builders of the pyramids.