Megalithic buildings. primitive architecture
Origins of architecture
Construction is one of the most ancient types of human activity, which means that already many millennia ago the foundations of all further development of architecture were laid.
The prehistoric period, based on the use of various materials and techniques for making tools, is usually divided into the following main stages: stone (ancient stone Age - paleolith And new stone - Neolithic), bronze And iron century. At the same time, it is very difficult to clearly define their boundaries, since the development of human society has always been uneven.
The surviving remains of human settlements indicate the existence of various ways of life of people in different areas the globe and at different stages of human history.
The discovered dwellings of the early period of the Upper Paleolithic are roughly oval dwellings with one hearth. Most often, these are dugouts, a large number of which were found in different regions of the CIS (left-bank Ukraine, the Dnieper basin, the regions of Bryansk, Voronezh, Irkutsk, etc.). Also in the Late Paleolithic era, there were more elongated and larger dwellings, made of oval dugouts, as if attached to each other, with several hearths. At the end of the Late Paleolithic, temporary hunting camps and seasonal camps arose. In addition to dugouts, semi-dugouts and ground dwellings with a frame made of bones of large animals, temporary dwellings, huts were built.
In the Neolithic, the so-called. period of the "stone axe", already built semi-dugouts, dwellings made of wood, reeds, twigs and clay. The most developed type of buildings of the Neolithic period - pile buildings- buildings based on wooden piles, which were usually erected over rivers and lakes in wetlands. The spread of this type of settlements is explained by defensive considerations, as well as the convenience of fishing in reservoirs. Piled buildings were erected in different territories, in Central Europe, on the territory of the CIS, also the so-called community houses(this type of dwelling - "pueblo" until recently existed among the American Indians). Closed dwellings of this type, inaccessible from the outside, were built in other parts of the world, where a stone polished ax was used. The main building material was wood. It is noteworthy that in the large dwellings of the centric plan, several household hearths were arranged and one large one in the center - for ritual purposes. Subsequently, detached places of worship - altars, and premises - temples. ()
IN northern Italy settlements were discovered (approximately 1800 BC) of a peculiar nature: on pillars, platforms arranged in a circle were arranged, on which huts were located. A wooden fence was erected around the village and a moat was dug, filled with water.
Ancient fortified settlements dating back to the seventh to sixth millennium BC have been discovered in Anatolia. e. (Ch'atal Huizek, Mersin, Hasilar). Only from the middle of the third millennium BC. e. Neolithic culture from the Aegean region extends to the northern and Western Europe along natural paths - the Danube with its basin and the Mediterranean Sea. ()
The beginning of architecture as an art manifested itself when not only the laws of necessity, but also the laws of beauty began to operate in construction. In the Bronze Age, in the middle of the second millennium BC. e. almost everywhere in Europe (on the territory of modern Spain, France, northern Europe, Ireland, Scotland, Greece, Belgium), and in China, Korea, India, along the Mediterranean coast, in Tunisia, Egypt and many other countries, erected monumental stone structures from huge boulders - menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs, cyclopean fortresses and settlements - the so-called megalithic architecture (Greek medas - large + lithos - stone). The purpose of these structures was mainly associated with religious rites and memorable events.
Menhirs- these are vertically placed, usually unprocessed stones of considerable height, ritual monuments or monuments, they designated places of public ceremonies. Menhirs were placed singly or in groups, in some cases in long rows ("alley" of menhirs in Brittany). Sometimes the tops of the menhirs end with the image of a head. Menhirs sometimes reached 20 m in height and 300 tons in weight. Sometimes menhirs are found in combination with dolmens.
Dolmen usually consists of two or four large vertical stones standing side by side, supporting a horizontal roughly worked stone slab (Denmark, Brittany). Dolmens were originally small in size - about 2 m long and about 1.5 m high, but later they were given big sizes and sometimes they arranged an approach to them in the form of a stone gallery. They are often arranged in such a way that they form long, corridor-like spaces. Dolmens served most often as sarcophagi, burial chambers for members of the family and, at the same time, tombstones.
Cromlech, the most complex type of megalithic structures, were built from vertically installed stone pillars or slabs arranged in a circle, they were connected to each other by stone blocks also laid on top.
An outstanding building of this kind is stonehenge near Salisbury in southern England, created, apparently, in the middle of the second millennium BC. e., probably a primitive temple or theater. This cromlech consists of massive four- and eight-meter stones, placed vertically and forming a centric composition with a diameter of 30 m. big stones, they are surrounded stone pillars Stonehenge, forming several concentric circles: one is made of small menhirs, the other, the central one, is made of huge boulders covered in pairs with stone blocks. The center of the architectural composition is a rectangular slab. Stone blocks are carefully worked with stone tools, which testifies to the skill and significant level of development of people of that time, their sense of spatial composition. The purpose of Stonehenge is not completely clear. Perhaps the middle part was a sanctuary, and the central stone slab was an altar. Mass graves were found around the monument. There is an assumption that this cromlech was used for astronomical purposes; certain laws related to astronomy are observed in the composition, which, however, was often found in the architecture of ancient centuries (Egypt, Central America). Two concentric stone circle around the sanctuary are roads, paths that flow around the sanctuary. It is believed that they were intended for equestrian competitions. ()
special attention deserve log buildings(became widespread in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC - the beginning of the 1st millennium), in particular - barrows, - a common type of memorial structures. Their prototype was residential log houses. During the construction of the barrow, first a powerful wooden frame with a wooden floor was built in the pit, inside which a burial chamber was arranged - a log box. Sometimes the space between the two chambers was filled with stones. The chambers were covered with rolls of logs, which were covered with birch bark. Then they covered it with earth, forming a mound, often of considerable height. A stone was thrown on top of the hill.
Log dwellings were the first step towards the creation of a ground chopped wooden building; they were common among the Baltic, Finnish and Turkic tribes, as well as in the wooded regions of Central and Seven Europe. If stone and adobe houses were usually built round in plan, then from long logs laid horizontally, multifaceted buildings were obtained, which eventually transformed into one-room rectangular houses. There was a hearth in the middle, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof above it. In front of the entrance, a "front" was often arranged. IN Northern Europe during excavations, only the foundations of such houses were found. This type of building was later called "megaron", they formed the basis Greek architecture, incl. Greek temple .()
Along with memorial and ritual buildings, at the later stages of the development of primitive society, new type architectural structures - stone and wooden fortresses. The so-called cyclopean fortresses are characteristic, the walls of which are lined with huge blocks of stone. In areas poor in stone, but abundant in forests, settlements spread - "fortifications", fortified with log fences, earthen ramparts and ditches. Initially, the fortresses had one defensive wall, later a second wall could be built inside the fortress around the citadel - the seat of the leader and tribal nobility. In the Iron Age (first millennium BC), in the Scythian state, the Scythian city of Naples was surrounded by a powerful fortress wall made of torn stone on clay mortar. ()
Primitive architecture was the basis for the architecture of early class states ancient east.
A vivid example of the architecture of the oldest class societies that arose in Asia, Africa and other countries of the Ancient East, the geographical scope of which is very extensive, is the architecture of Ancient Egypt, which created grandiose monumental structures to the glory of the pharaohs.
The most famous stone historical and archaeological monuments created by man include the pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, dolmens, idols of Easter Island and stone balls of Costa Rica.
Today I want to bring to your attention a selection of not so famous, but no less interesting stone historical and archaeological structures of antiquity.
Valley of pitchers in Laos
The Valley of Pitchers is a group of unique sites that contain unusual historical and archaeological monuments - huge stone jugs. These mysterious objects are located in the province of Xiangkhouang, in Laos. Thousands of gigantic stone vessels are scattered among the dense tropical flora. The size of the jars ranges from 0.5 to 3 meters, and the weight of the largest reaches 6,000 kg. Most giant stone pots are cylindrical, but oval and rectangular jugs are also found. Round discs were found next to unusual vessels, which were supposedly used as lids for them. These pots were made from granite, sandstone, rock and calcined coral. Scientists suggest that the age of stone bowls is 1500 - 2000 years.
The territory of the valley includes more than 60 sites on which groups of gigantic vessels are located. All sites are elongated along one line, which may be evidence that there used to be an ancient trade route, which was served by platforms with jugs. The largest number of jugs is concentrated in the city of Phonsavan, this place is called the “First Site”, on which there are about 250 vessels of various sizes.
There are a huge number of theories and assumptions regarding who and for what purposes such peculiar vessels were created. According to scientists, these jugs were used by an ancient people living in southeast Asia, whose culture and customs are still unknown. Historians and anthropologists suggest that the huge jars could have been funerary urns and were used in funeral rituals. There is a version that food was stored in them, another version says that rainwater was collected in the vessels, which was used by trade caravans. Lao legends say that these gigantic jugs were used as ordinary dishes by the giants who lived here in ancient times. Well, the version of local residents says that rice wine was made and stored in megalith jars. No matter how many versions and theories are put forward, the Valley of Pitchers undoubtedly remains an unsolved mystery.
National Historical and Archaeological Reserve "Stone Grave"
Historical and archaeological reserve "Stone Grave", which is located near the city of Melitopol on the banks of the Molochnaya River and is a world monument of ancient culture in Ukraine. These are the remains of the sandstone of the Sarmatian Sea, due to natural transformations, a unique stone monolith gradually formed on this place, in which caves and grottoes were formed for thousands of years, which ancient people used for religious purposes. Rock paintings and stone tablets with ancient inscriptions, mysterious signs and images dating back to the 22nd - 16th millennium BC have survived to this day.
The stone grave is located 2 km from the village of Mirnoye, Melitopol district, Zaporozhye region, and is a heap of stones with an area of about 30,000 square meters. meters, up to 12 meters high. The heap in shape resembles a barrow (Ukrainian grave), hence its name comes from. The stone grave at first was probably a sandstone shoal of the Sarmatian Sea, the only sandstone outcrop in the entire Azov-Black Sea basin, which makes it a unique geological formation.
Neither in the Stone Grave itself, nor in the immediate vicinity of it, human settlements have been found that can be associated with the monument. Based on this, the researchers conclude that the stone grave was used exclusively for religious purposes, as a sanctuary
Arkaim
Arkaim is a fortified settlement of the Middle Bronze Age at the turn of III-II millennium BC. e., related to the so-called. "Land of Cities". Located on an elevated cape formed by the confluence of the Bolshaya Karaganka and Utyaganka rivers, 8 km north of the village of Amursky, Bredinsky district and 2 km southeast of the village of Aleksandrovsky, Kizilsky district Chelyabinsk region. The settlement and the territory adjacent to it with a whole complex of archeological monuments of different times is a natural-landscape and historical-archaeological reserve - a branch of the Ilmensky state reserve named after V. I. Lenin Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The monument is uniquely preserved defensive structures, the presence of synchronous burial grounds and the integrity of the historical landscape.
In the summer of 1987, archaeologists from the Chelyabinsk State University carried out routine surveys of archaeological sites in the Bolshekaraganskaya Valley, in the southwest of the Chelyabinsk Region. The valley was supposed to be flooded in order to arrange an extensive reservoir there for neighboring state farms. The builders were in a hurry, and archaeologists hastily compiled a map of ancient monuments for posterity, never to return here again. But the attention of the researchers was attracted by the ramparts, which, as it turned out, surrounded the settlement of an unusual type - they had not been found before in the steppe zone. During the study, it turned out that the monument was a village created according to a pre-thought-out plan, with a clear urban planning idea, complex architecture and fortification.
Over the next few years, 20 more such settlements were discovered, which made it possible to talk about the discovery of an interesting ancient culture, which received the conditional name “Country of Cities”.
In science, this archaeological culture is called Arkaim-Sintashta. The significance of the discovery of Arkaim and other fortified settlements of this type is indisputable, as it gave completely new data on the migration routes of the Indo-Europeans and made it possible to prove that a fairly highly developed culture existed in the South Ural steppes 4 thousand years ago. Arkaim people were engaged in metallurgy and metalworking, weaving, and pottery. The basis of their economy was cattle breeding.
The fortified settlements of the Arkaim-Sintashta culture date back to the turn of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC. They are five or six centuries older than Homeric Troy, contemporaries of the first dynasty of Babylon, the pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and the Cretan-Mycenaean culture of the Mediterranean. The time of their existence corresponds to the last centuries famous civilization India - Mahenjo-Daro and Harappa.
Stone monuments in the Ulytau mountains
Archaeologists have discovered groups of stone sculptures and rock paintings with images of sabers, daggers, dishes and much more.
Particularly unique are stone statues - balbals, which were placed in front of stone statues batyrs, commanders put a string of balbals. Sometimes their number reaches 200.
Along with male statues, female ones were also installed. Depending on the age of the person, they are called “stone girl”, “stone woman”, “stone old woman”. That is why there is another, Slavic name for the Balbals - stone women.
Archaeological site of Gunung Padang
The sacred mountain of Gunung Padang is located in the Bandung region, West Java. The “Mountain of Light” (or “Mountain of Enlightenment”) is a mountain on the top and slope of which a main pyramid on the top.
The Dutch were the first to notice it in 1914. In their report, the Colonial Archaeological Survey referred to it as Mount Gunung Padang (Mountain of Enlightenment), to the top of which the locals climb for meditation. For the second time, she flashed in 1949, after which she disappeared for exactly 30 years. Only in 1979 scientists - geographers and geologists - climbed to its top.
At the top of the mountain, they found hundreds of blocks of stone of the correct form, arranged in a certain order.
In addition to the obvious division of Mount Padang into five levels, megaliths scattered over the entire height of the mountain, over an area of 900 square meters, andesite columns, etc., studies have shown the presence of a hollow chamber. The size of the chamber is 10 m in width, height and length.
It is widely believed that it is located in the "heart of the Mountain".
The distance to the cavity is 25 meters from the turn. Soil samples taken by drilling indicate the age of the structure in the range from 20,000 to 22,000 BC.
Ancient stones of Great Britain
Men-En-Tol, Cornwall is a mysterious stone that, it would seem, has been standing forever in the marshes of Penwit.
Callanish, located on the Isle of Lewis in the Greater Hebrides, is this moment the largest monument of megalithic culture british isles. The reconstructed form of the "Callanish stones" was established presumably during the Neolithic period, approximately between 2.9 and 2.6 thousand years BC. Experts note that earlier (until 3000 a sanctuary was located here).
Callanish is formed by thirteen vertically standing monuments or groups of stones, which form circles up to thirteen meters in diameter. Average Height stones is 4 meters, but can vary between 1-5 meters. The stones are cut from local gneiss. In terms of popularity, Callanish stones can compete with Stonehenge.
Avebury, Wittshire. Local farmers habitually herd sheep among the peers of Stonehenge, which date back to 2500 BC.
Brodgar Circle, Stromness, Orkney - British response to the pyramids of Egypt. The stone period dates back to 3000 BC. Only 27 out of 60 statues remain.
Rollite Stones, Oxfordshire.
Bryn Selley, Anglesey, Wales. Wales is rich in ancient placers of stones, but the most famous pagan building is, of course, Bryn Seli (“The Mound of the Dark Room”). On the island of Anglesey, he appeared in the Neolithic period (4000 years ago).
Arbor Low, Middleton upon Yolgreave, Derbyshire. 50 stones stand silently on Arbor Low, a short drive from Bakewell.
Castlerigg, Keswick, Lake District
Nine Stones, Dartmoor.
Megaliths of the Urals
Vera Island on Lake Turgoyak.
Megaliths of Vera Island - a complex of archaeological monuments (megaliths - a chamber tomb, dolmens and menhirs) on the island of Lake Turgoyak (near Miass) in the Chelyabinsk region. The island is located near West Bank lakes and, at low water levels, is connected to the shore by an isthmus, turning into a peninsula.
The megaliths were presumably built about 6,000 years ago, in the 4th millennium BC. uh
Cult site Vera Island.
by the most big building the island is megalith No. 1 - a stone structure measuring 19 × 6 m, cut into the rocky ground and covered with massive stone slabs. The walls of the structure are made by dry laying of massive stone blocks. The megalith consists of three chambers and corridors connecting them. Rectangular pits carved into the rock were found in two chambers of the megalith. The connection of the building with the main astronomical directions was fixed. The building is preliminarily interpreted as a temple complex.
Architectural complex at the bottom Chinese lake Fuxian
The pyramid was found at the bottom of the Chinese lake Fuxian (southwestern province of Yunnan).
Its height is 19 m, the length of the side of the base is 90 m. The structure is built of stone slabs and has a stepped structure. At the bottom of the lake there are about a dozen more similar objects and about 30 structures of other types. Total area architectural complex is about 2.5 sq. km. Archaeologists raised an earthenware vessel from the bottom of the lake, which, according to experts, was made during the Eastern Han Dynasty, which ruled in 25-220 AD, Xinhua reports.
The first rudiments of art, in principle, can be seen in the work of even primitive man. In those days, people were already trying to find ways to reflect their idea of the world and the beautiful. According to archaeologists, the first monuments related to fine arts- graphics, sculpture, painting - originated in the Paleolithic era.
Of course, the first drawings were very primitive: prints of a human hand, "macaroni" - wavy lines squeezed out by fingers, contours of the heads of animals. Showing himself in the sculpture of later periods, man also depicted animals, displaying their character and habits.
Middle Stone Age - Mesolithic
During this period of time, images become more colorful, compositions consisting of several figures begin to be created. As a rule, they display life, battles or hunting. A person begins to realize his place in the world, trying to reveal the patterns of life.
Neolithic - new stone age
Primitive people began to master the sculptural skill. An example of ancient sculptures is the "stone women" found on the territory of the northern Black Sea region. Architecture in this period of time is still underdeveloped, but artistic crafts appear, which have become the prototype of the future decorative art.
Bronze Age and architecture
Approximately 3000 years before our era, a person begins to pay special attention to the architectural features of buildings. The so-called architecture of large stones, or megalithic architecture appears: dolmens, menhirs, cromlechs. The reason for the construction of such buildings is the development of religious ideas of ancient man.
Dolmens, menhirs, cromlechs
Menhirs were called stone pillars, the height of which reached 20 meters. An example is Zorats-Karer, found in Armenia, or the Karnak stones excavated on the territory of French Brittany.
Most of all, architectural art was manifested in dolmens - cult, often burial, structures, consisting of 2-4 vertically arranged slabs, covered with a horizontal slab. This is how the main components appeared architectural structure- ceilings and supports.
The Cromlech is a more complex structure, most famously located in Wilshire, England. This is Stonehenge, the construction of which dates back to around 2000 BC. It is assumed that this is a cult building dedicated to the sun.
Cromlech Stonehenge in the UK
As for the lectures, I want to note the following: I don’t just post them here, they are directly related to the topic of this community and can be of some benefit to everyone. It is often believed that after school and institutes, education should be completed, but this is a huge misconception, because the older a person becomes, the more he is able to accommodate and understand if he works in this direction. Now it may seem that this information will never be useful, but everything we read is stored in our minds and is always ready to help when it becomes necessary. I also want to note that people from all over came to our institute to listen to such lectures, what can we say about the fact that new knowledge, especially in the field of art, sets a person up for a good thought, and these moments, in turn, contribute to the nutrition of both body and spirit . Here I do not have the opportunity to give all the information in full, due to the fact that it will be quite difficult to perceive it and all this will take too much time, but I tried to invest in each lecture as much as possible Furthermore what I managed to write down myself and what the books gave me. May it benefit everyone who wants to receive it...
"Of all the unknowns, the most unknown is time." Aristotle
The first dwellings of those mentioned are available modern man, Neanderthals began to create about 35 thousand years BC. / this is the official theory, although the true chronology goes much deeper /. These dwellings were parking lots and sheds.
Primitive people preferred to use natural shelters - caves. The device of artificial caves in the rocks became possible only with the advent of metal tools. To prevent collapse of the ceiling during the excavation of weak and layered rocks, the caves were given a lancet shape. Such a shape, more or less correct, is given to a large number of artificial caves. With the transition to a settled way of life, the first buildings appear.
In the Paleolithic era, people have new skills, and dwellings have improved accordingly. The reason for the improvement was also climate change, which required more sustainable housing and tools.
In the first half of 3 thousand BC. matriarchy sets in, in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. patriarchy comes and with it monumental architecture appears, megalithic architecture / menhir- 1 stone; dolmen- 2, covered by a third; cromlech- education, a number of stones. For example, Stonehenge, 17th century BC/.
Nuraghi- tower-like structures of 2-3 thousand BC /about.Sardinia/
According to officially accepted data, it is believed that Homo sapiens / reasonable man / appeared on Earth 40,000 years ago.
5000 - 4000 years - the oldest stone age and the first architectural structure;
4000 - 3000 years - Bronze Age;
2000 years - Iron Age.
Frequently used symbols of that time are circle, vertical, horizontal, right angle.
The main types of megalithic structures.
Menhir is a single, vertical stone. Standing stones are the main element of the monuments of the Neolithic era. Sometimes there is only one stone, resembling a spindle or a rough obelisk in its shape - such a structure is called a menhir. Menhirs appeared at a late stage in the development of primitive society /for example - at the carnac in Brittany/.
Dolmen- two menhirs with a crossbar. Dolmen - tomb, entrance to the village. It consists of stones placed upright and covered from above with one or two stone slabs. May be inside burial mounds. The area of the dolmen varies between 4 and 70 sq.m., and its height is between 1 and 3.5 m. The entrance to it is usually closed with a stone slab, usually movable, sometimes drilled! round hole. Sometimes there are accessory crypts. The room is often preceded by a vestibule or corridor, more or less long and wide, usually straight, but sometimes angulated.
Megaliths. Mega - big, cast - stone. They were divided according to the "gender" sign - a rhomboid meant "feminine", a rectangular pillar - "masculine".
Cromlech - several menhirs forming a circle. Sometimes menhirs stretch in rows, forming alleys called strings. Sometimes two adjacent stones are connected horizontally by a movable monolith. It happens that the entrance to the cromlechs is preceded by short corridors. A structure in the form of two stones placed vertically with a crossbar in the form of a third stone is called a trilith.
Stonehenge /2 thousand BC, England/ - the most famous megalithic structure. Consists of dolmens placed in a circle.
Stonehenge is a structure used for religious and magical purposes.
Only one thing can be said - everything shows and understands that such structures, the true meaning of which is still unknown to scientists, could not be built by rude, stupid people, and it is quite clear that in their development and in their abilities, people of that era were not below us. It is enough that these buildings are still standing, but what will remain of our era? Will the skyscrapers and our beloved P-series anthills stand the test of time? I highly doubt it. But not only is history not being revised and rewritten, although everyone already agrees that there are too many inconsistencies in it, but the meaning of history is being pushed into the background by offering our children only a few free items to choose from. Of course, why do we need such "nonsense" as history, and even more so archeology. And we don't live without it.
Well, a few more examples:
Megalithic buildings are called Stone Age buildings, built of large boulders or slabs of dry masonry. This name combines menhirs, dolmens, alinmans or alleys of stones, covered alleys or dolmen galleries, cromlechs. The most ancient megalithic monuments belong to the Neolithic period. Buildings of this type are found in all areas of the globe, with the exception of Australia.
Menhirs. Menhirs are single large elongated stone blocks dug vertically into the ground in the form of a pillar or obelisk (Plate 7, fig. 1). Their height is very diverse (from 1-2 m to 20 m), the weight of the largest reaches 200-300 tons. Usually these are natural blocks of stone, sometimes they are roughly hewn and have relief images. Menhirs are widespread in France, where more than six thousand of them are registered, in England and Ireland, in Syria, North Africa, South America and on the territory of the USSR, in the Caucasus and Siberia (Table 7, fig. 4). Sometimes under the menhirs or next to them there are burials that connect them with the cult of the dead. According to the images on them, one can assume a connection with the cult representations of primitive man. Of particular interest are menhir-like stones with relief images of fish, and sometimes the stones themselves have a rough shape of a fish; these are the so-called stones-in and hats, often found in Transcaucasia. A number of menhirs so clearly reflect the cult of ancestral totems (for example, a bull) that they can be put in direct connection with the totem poles of the American Indians and other peoples.
Dolmens. Dolmens are a chamber (usually rectangular) of several vertically placed flat boulders, horizontally covered by one or two or three boulders or huge flat boulders (Plate 7, figs. 2 and 3). The size and weight of the overlapping stone slabs are sometimes very large; so, for example, the overlapping slab of one of the dolmens in La Perotte in Charente (France) weighed 40 tons. A covered gallery arranged in the same way was sometimes attached to the main chamber of the dolmen, sometimes the dolmen itself turned into such a gallery, closed on both sides by large slabs. Drawings were often applied to the walls of the dolmen, usually of an ornamental nature.
In addition to France, where there are about four and a half thousand dolmens, they are found in England, Ireland, southern Scandinavia, Denmark, Holland, northern Germany, Spain, the Mediterranean islands, Italy, North Africa, Syria, Northern Iran, India, Korea, America and the USSR - in the Crimea, the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. Dolmens are usually considered to be the tombs of the dead, which is proved both by the frequent presence of burials in them, and by the fact that many dolmens are enclosed in a grave mound poured over them.
Dolmens-dwellings. Recent excavations allow, however, to establish that some dolmens served as housing. Dolmen, (excavated in 1938 in Bowlinemon in Ireland, is an ordinary two-chamber building made of monolithic stone slabs placed vertically on a rectangular base (Table 7, fig. b). Previously, it was covered with flat stone slabs, the remains of which were found near the walls of the dolmen. This dolmen was a residential stone house with a well-lined floor, with an entrance formed by two vertically placed stones and a threshold slab between them. The hearth, located on the site in front of the entrance to the dwelling, preserved a layer of coal; apparently, only much later this a dolmen was used for burial.Another similar example is one of the dolmens in Zeeland, in relation to which it was found that its inlet could only be closed from the inside.
Big dolmen in Bagno. One of the largest French Neolithic dolmens at Bagno, near Saumur, is a rectangular structure about 20 m long and 7 m wide, formed by fourteen huge sandstone slabs, three of which form its flat roof (Table 8). The height of vertically placed slabs reaches 3 m. From the narrow front side, where the remains of a stone alley adjoin the dolmen, a wide entrance is arranged between two vertical slabs. This dolmen in size, height and entrance can be considered as a large residential building of the tribal commune.
Dolmens North Caucasus . Among the numerous dolmens of the North Caucasus, most are small single-chamber buildings, often closed on all sides, built from whole slabs, or with walls formed from several rows of hewn stone. On one side, a round hole is usually made in the wall. Some dolmens, which stand out both in size and in the arrangement of the entrance and floor, obviously served as dwellings earlier. Such, for example, is a large dolmen in the gorge of the Dzhubga River, built of huge flat slabs and having a wide door opening on the front side of the entire height of the dolmen (a semicircular extension of smaller slabs was made later).
Cromlechs. stonehenge. Cromlechs are ring-shaped fences of one or more rows of vertically placed stones such as menhirs, sometimes occupying a very large area (up to 90 m and even 150 m in diameter (Kerlaskan and Menes cromlechs in Brittany). Large cromlechs usually lead to alleys of stones formed by parallel rows vertically placed boulders from 1 to 4 and even up to 7 m. bronze age cromlech Stonehenge in England (Table 7, fig. 5), the original appearance of which can be reconstructed. Outside, it was surrounded by a large annular rampart with a moat about 90 m in diameter. At a distance of 30 m from the rampart, there was the first circle of thirty vertically placed massive stone blocks, having the shape of parallelepipeds and covered from above by a continuous ring of thick horizontal slabs. Behind this outer steep, at a distance of 3 m, there was a second circle of 45-50 small stones pointed upwards; the third, open circle consisted of five triliths (two vertical blocks covered by a horizontal slab). Inside the third circle there was another horseshoe-shaped row of small pointed stones, and finally, slightly shifted from the center of the circle, lay a flat stone slab 5 m long and 1 m wide.
In large cromlechs, one can assume open sanctuaries, and in the central slabs - altars on which sacrifices were made.
Mounds of North America. The “mounds” of North America are a completely peculiar type of primitive structures. Mounds are earthen structures depicting mostly totem animals: a bear, an elk, a bison, a fox, snakes, turtles, birds, etc. Such mounds are especially common in Wisconsin. The images were probably made in the following way: the outline of the animal was drawn on the surface of the hill, then the rock lying behind the outline was chipped off and thrown back. The sizes of such mounds often reach a length of 60, 75 and even 150 m. southern regions such images were made from large fragments of rocks placed or laid along the contour of the figure. By the nature of the images and the presence in some cases of an elevation in the form of an altar, and sometimes burials, it can be assumed that the mounds were dedicated to the cult of ancestors - totems.
