This type of tomb consisted of a tumulus made of soil or stone, inside which a long narrow passageway led to a funerary chamber.
It was on Europe’s Atlantic coast that another distinctive structure appeared: the passage grave. The stones for the top were then hauled up a temporary earthen ramp. There, each could be eased upright as wooden levers pushed from behind and teams of men pulled from the front with ropes. Then they laid the orthostats on rollers (as seen in this French illustration from 1865, the year the term "Neolithic" was coined) and moved them to the hole’s edge. Next they dug a deep hole for each standing stone. One possibility is that builders first marked the outline of the monument on the ground. There are several theories on how they were put into place. A typical structure was built of standing stones, known as orthostats, with large slabs laid across the top. How heavy were they? Just one of the many slabs of the Dolmen of Menga in Spain weighs 65 U.S. Sometimes several tombs of this type were grouped around a larger focal point to form megalithic cemeteries.Įurope’s megaliths have one big thing in common: heavy rocks. These spaces were often hidden inside a mound of earth, a cairn of stones, or a tumulus formed of both earth and stones. More complex tombs were also built, some of which included passages and multiple rooms. The most common was the dolmen, a simple structure consisting of upright stones supporting a flat slab of rock, creating a single chamber underneath. The third category includes tombs, which appeared in France, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Iberian Peninsula around 4000 B.C. Located in Salisbury Plain, England, Stonehenge was built in several phases, beginning in 3000 B.C. Stonehenge, perhaps the world’s most famous megalith, is a circular grouping. Spread across several sites in northern France, the Carnac Stones are alignment menhirs with more than 3,000 stone monuments dating as far back as 3300 B.C. The second type of megalithic structure is a grouping of several menhirs, which were arranged in lines (alignments) or in circles. in areas all over western Europe and ranged in height from three to 20 feet. The term “menhir” derives from words in Welsh and Breton used for stone ( maen) and long ( hir). First came the solitary standing stone or menhir. MASSIMO RIPANI/FOTOTECA 9X12 Rock OnĮuropean megaliths usually fall into three main categories. Shortly after 10,000 B.C., Neolithic culture began spreading through Europe over the next 7,000 years megaliths, like the Poulnabrone Dolmen in County Clare, Ireland, sprang up around the continent. (See also: When Is the First Day of Winter? December Solstice 2017 Explained.) Their function was both earthly and celestial: a focus for rites concerning the movement of the heavenly bodies across the skies, a memorial to the community’s ancestors, and an awe-inspiring site to cement local loyalty and solidarity. In the 20th century, as archaeology and scientific techniques developed, it was possible to shed light on at least some of the mysteries surrounding these silent stone titans.Įxperts now believe that megaliths stood at the very heart of ritual practice for the networks of communities scattered across western Europe later in the new Stone Age, or Neolithic period, that had begun around 10,000 B.C. It was a British antiquarian, Algernon Herbert, who in 1849 used the term megalith for the first time, derived from the Greek words megas, large, and lithos, stone.
The antiquarians of the 18th and 19th centuries assumed they had been erected by invading forces of Romans, Goths, or Huns. In the Middle Ages they were seen as the work of Greek giants. These massive stone structures, dating back more than 6,000 years, have never failed to capture the imagination of those who encounter them-from the Neolithic farmers who first conceived them to modern archaeologists now shedding light on the origins and purposes of these formidable monuments.Įvery age interprets megaliths in its own way. Megaliths are the most visible remnants of a European past that otherwise seems unimaginably remote.
0 kommentar(er)
