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A 'megalith' is a large stone which has been used to construct a structure or monument either alone or with other stones. '''Megalithic''' means made of such stones, but uses an interlocking system without the use of mortar or cement. The word ''megalith'' comes from the Ancient Greek '' ''megas'' meaning ''great'', and '' ''lithos'' meaning ''stone''. Many megaliths are thought to have a purpose in determining important astronomical events such as the solstice and equinox dates.

Contents

Description of megaliths

Nabta Playa

Western European megaliths

Megalithic graves

Modern megaliths

Analysis and evaluation

Types of megalithic structures

Examples of megaliths

Gallery

See also

Notes

References

Articles

Books

External links

Description of megaliths

The term "''megalith''" denotes item(s) consisting of rock(s) hewn in definite shapes for special purposes.^[1][2][3] It can be used to describe buildings built by people from many parts of the world living in many different periods. A variety of large stones are seen as megaliths, with the widely known megaliths not being sepulchral.^[4] The construction of these structures took place as late as the Neolithic Age and continued to the Bronze Age or the Iron Age.^[5]

Nabta Playa

Nabta Playa was once a large lake in the Nubian Desert, located 500 miles south of modern day Cairo.^[6] By the 5th millennium BC the peoples in Nabta Playa had fashioned the world's earliest known astronomical device, 1000 years older than, but comparable to, Stonehenge.^[7] Research shows it to be a prehistoric calendar that accurately marks the summer solstice.⁷ Findings indicate that the region was occupied only seasonally, likely only in the summer when the local lake filled with water for grazing cattle.^{[8] 7}
The presence among the population of the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts from Morroco,Portugal to Scandinavia or even Ireland (in areas beyond the phoenician,carthaginian or roman rule)of male lineages connected to the People of maediterranean North Africa,with the Y-chromosome haplotype E3b in different subclades,confirms the earlier suspictions of scholars about the spread along the navigation routes of the African origins of ideas,cults,know-how,and even members of this obscure Culture of the Prehistory of human kind.

Western European megaliths

Main articles: European Megalithic Culture

In Western Europe and the Mediterranean, megaliths are generally constructions erected during the Neolithic or late stone age and Chalcolithic or Copper Age (4500 - 1500 B.C.E).
Perhaps the most famous megalithic structure is Stonehenge in England, although many others are known throughout the world. The French Comte de Caylus was the first to describe the Carnac stones. Legrand d'Aussy introduced the terms ''menhir'' and ''dolmen'', both taken from the Breton language, into antiquarian terminology. He interpreted megaliths as gallic tombs. In Britain, the antiquarians Aubrey and Stukeley conducted early research into megaliths. In 1805, Jacques Cambry published a book called ''Monuments celtiques, ou recherches sur le culte des Pierres, précédées d'une notice sur les Celtes et sur les Druides, et suivies d'Etymologie celtiques'', where he proposed a Celtic stone cult. This completely unfounded connection between druids and megaliths has haunted the public imagination since. In Belgium there is a megalithic site at Wéris, a little town situated in the Ardennes. In the Netherlands megalithic structures can be found in the north-east of the current, mostly in the province of Drenthe. Knowth is a passage grave of the Brú na Bóinne neolithic complex in Ireland, dating from c.3500-3000BC. It contains more than a third of the total number of examples of megalithic art in all Western Europe, with over 200 decorated stones found during excavations.
Most archaeologists agree the Megaliths of Western Europe were spread by a homogenous culture that used the Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic Seaboard to spread. British Archaeologist Sir Barrington Cunliffe has written extensively and mapped the extent of this culture. Recent genetic tests confirm that a small percentage of males in each town where a megalith is located bear an extremely rare marker on Y-Chromosome Haplogroup I, subclade M26. Some have posited this marker tracks the spread of the megalithic cultural elite, as its far-flung and otherwise random distribution is otherwise inexplicable. (Gatto, et. al., 2007)

Megalithic graves

Main articles: Megalithic tomb

Many megalithic monuments were burial mounds which were often re-used by different generations. The chambered cairn is a common type of collective tomb. Some of these are passage graves generally built of drystone walling and/or megaliths often with a round burial chamber in a round mound with a straight passage leading out. Gallery graves have a long megalithic chamber with parallel sides often in a long mound with an entrance at one end.

Modern megaliths

There are even some modern megalithic structures. The Coral Castle is an unusual stone structure created in the 1920s in Homestead, Florida by Edward Leedskalnin.Or the famous midwestern U.S. Carhenge.

Analysis and evaluation

Megaliths were used for a variety of purposes. The purpose of megaliths range from serving as boundary markers of territory to being a society's reminder of past events to being part of the society's religion.^[9] Amongst the indigenous peoples of India, Malaysia, Polynesia, North Africa, North America, and South America, the worship of these stones are a possibility.^[10] In the early 20th century, some scholars believed that all megaliths belonged to one global "Megalithic culture"^[11] (hyperdiffusionism, e. g. 'the Manchester school'^[12] by Grafton Elliot Smith and William James Perry), but this has long been disproved by modern dating methods.

Types of megalithic structures

The types of megalithic structures can be divided into two categories, the "''Polylithic type''" and the "''Monolithic type''".^[13] Different megalithic structures include:

;Polylithic type ★ Dolmen: a free standing chamber, consisting of standing stones covered by a capstone as a lid. Dolmens were used for burial and were covered by mounds. ★ Taula: a straight standing stone, topped with another forming a 'T' shape. ★ Cistvaens ★ Tumuli or barrows ★ Cairns or Galgals ★ Cromlech (ed., a Welsh term) ★ Kurgans ★ Nuraghi ★ Talayots ★ Sessi or Stazzone ★ Round Towers ★ Marae (Polynesia) ★ Ahus with Moai and Pukau (Easter Island)

;Monolithic type ★ Menhir: a large, single upright standing stone. ★ Alignements[14] (or Stone row avenues [eg., Linear arrangement of upright, parallel standing stones]) ★ Cycoliths (or stone circles) ★ Stantare ★ Trilithon: Two parallel upright stones with a horizontal stone (called a lintel) placed on top, e.g. Stonehenge. ★ Orthostat: an upright slab forming part of a larger structure. ★ Stone ship ★ Statues such as most moai ★ Gateways

Examples of megaliths

Other megaliths include:


★ Almendres Cromlech, Alentejo, Portugal.

★ Ale's Stones, Scania, Sweden.

★ Bryn Celli Ddu, Anglesey.

★ Carrowmore, Ireland.

★ Carnac, Brittany, France.

★ Callanish stone circle, on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

★ Cueva de Menga, Antequera, Spain.

★ Easter Island.

★ Filitosa, Corsica, France.

★ Ġgantija, Gozo, Malta, one of the oldest known free-standing structure.

★ Jeju-do

★ Knowth, Ireland

★ Ħaġar Qim, Malta.

★ Khakassia, Russia (southern Siberia)

★ Mnajdra, Malta.

★ Newgrange, Ireland.

★ Skara Brae, Orkney, Scotland.

★ Stanton Drew, Somerset, UK.

★ The Longstone, Mottistone, Isle of Wight, UK

★ Tarxien Temples, Malta.

★ Cloghanmore court tomb, Donegal, Ireland.

★ Talayots, Balearic Islands.

★ Nartiang, Meghalaya, Northeast India, India.

★ Igeum-dong site, South Korea

Gallery

See also

★ Pre-historic art

★ Megalithic art

★ Megalithic architectural elements

★ Monolith

★ Dolmen

★ Petroglyph

★ Petrosomatoglyph

★ Nuraghe

★ Archaeoastronomy

★ Ley lines

Notes

1. Glossary. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
2. Glossary. labyrinth.net.au.
3. Glossary. wordnet.princeton.edu.
4. Rochester's history ~ an illustrated timeline. glossary of cemetery terms
5. Johnson, W. (1908). Page 67.
6. Neolithic Skywatchers
7.
8. Nabta J. Clendenon
9. Goblet d'Alviella,, et. al. (1892). Page 22-23.
10. Goblet d'Alviella,, et. al. (1892). Page 23.
11. Gérald Gaillard,, ''The Routledge Dictionary of Anthropologists''. Routledge, 2004. 394 pages. Page 48. ISBN 0415228255
12. Lancaster Brown, P. (1976). Page 267.
13. Keane, A. H. (1896). Page 124.
14. Lancaster (1976). Page 6. (cf., ''French word alignement is used to describe standing stones arranged in rows to form long ‘processional' avenues'')

References

Articles

★ A Fleming, ''Megaliths and post-modernism. The case of Wales''. Antiquity, 2005.

★ A Fleming, ''Phenomenology and the Megaliths of Wales: a Dreaming Too Far?''. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 1999

★ A Sherratt, ''The Genesis of Megaliths''. World Archaeology. 1990. (JSTOR)

★ A Thom, ''Megaliths and Mathematics''. Antiquity, 1966.

★ D Turnbull, ''Performance and Narrative, Bodies and Movement in the Construction of Places and Objects, Spaces and Knowledges : The Case of the Maltese Megaliths''. Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 19, No. 5-6, 125-143 (2002) DOI 10.1177/026327602761899183

★ G Kubler, ''Period, Style and Meaning in Ancient American Art''. New Literary History, Vol. 1, No. 2, A Symposium on Periods (Winter, 1970), pp. 127-144. doi:10.2307/468624

★ HJ Fleure, HJE Peake, ''Megaliths and Beakers''. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 60, Jan. - Jun., 1930 (Jan. - Jun., 1930), pp. 47-71. doi:10.2307/2843859

★ J Ivimy, ''The Sphinx and the Megaliths''. 1974.

★ J McKim Malville, F Wendorf, AA Mazar, R Schild, ''Megaliths and Neolithic astronomy in southern Egypt''. Nature, 1998.

★ KL Feder, ''Irrationality and Popular Archaeology''. American Antiquity, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Jul., 1984), pp. 525-541. doi:10.2307/280358

★ Hiscock, P. 1996. The New Age of alternative archaeology of Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 31(3):152-164

★ MW Ovenden, DA Rodger, ''Megaliths and Medicine Wheels''. Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 1978

Books

★ Goblet d'Alviella, E., & Wicksteed, P. H. (1892). ''Lectures on the origin and growth of the conception of God as illustrated by anthropology and history''. London: Williams and Norgate.

★ Keane, A. H. (1896). ''Ethnology''. Cambridge: University Press.

★ Johnson, W. (1908). ''Folk-memory''. Oxford: Clarendon press.

★ Tyler, J. M. (1921). ''The new stone age in northern Europe''. New York: C. Scribner's Sons.

★ Daniel, G. E. (1963). ''The megalith builders of Western Europe''. Baltimore: Penguin Books.

★ Deo, S. B. (1973). ''Problem of South Indian megaliths''. Dharwar: Kannada Research Institute, Karnatak University.

★ Asthana, S. (1976). ''History and archaeology of India's contacts with other countries, from earliest times to 300 B.C.''. Delhi: B.R. Pub. Corp.

★ Lancaster Brown, P. (1976). ''Megaliths, myths, and men: an introduction to astro-archaeology''. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co.

★ Subbayya, K. K. (1978). ''Archaeology of Coorg with special reference to megaliths''. Mysore: Geetha Book House.

★ O'Kelly, M. J., et. al. (1989). ''Early Ireland: An Introduction to Irish Prehistory''. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521336872

★ Patton, Mark (1993). ''Statements in Stone: monuments and society in Neolithic Brittany''. Routledge. 209 pages. ISBN 0415067294

★ Goudsward, D., & Stone, R. E. (2003). ''America's Stonehenge: the ''. Boston: Branden Books.

★ Moffett, M., Fazio, M. W., & Wodehouse, L. (2004). ''A world history of architecture''. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

★ Stukeley, W., Burl, A., & Mortimer, N. (2005). ''Stukeley's 'Stonehenge': an unpublished manuscript, 1721-1724''. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press.

External links

★ Dolmens, Menhirs & Stones-Circles in the South of France

★ Megaliths in Charente-Maritime, France

★ Dolmen Path - Russian Megaliths

★ The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map

★ Index of Megalithic monuments in Ireland

★ The Modern Antiquarian

★ Pretanic World - Megaliths and Monuments

★ Modern Megalith-Building

★ Image Collection

★ dolmen.es.iespana.es/ Dolmens, Menhirs & Stones-Circles in the South of Spain (Listed as spam. Opens www.vueling.com in another window.)