In what era did megalithic structures appear? Famous megalithic structures. When were created

Among the ruins listed, the most interesting are the ruins of three walls ("fortresses") of Saksauman, about 600 m long. The first and second walls reach a height of 10 m, the third - 5 m. The lower (first) wall consists of andesite and diorite blocks weighing from 100 to 200 tons. The largest of them measures 9 x 5 mx 4 m. The blocks of the second and third walls are slightly smaller than the blocks of the first tier.

But both those and others are so precisely fitted to each other that it is impossible to put even a knife blade between them. In addition, all blocks are polyhedra of a rather complex shape. They were cut down in a quarry located 20 km from Saxawaman. During these 20 km there areseveral gorges, steep ascents and descents!

Cuzco
In Cusco, there are the remains of the Cyclopean walls, built of huge stone blocks, also filigree fit to each other. One of these buildings is the Inca Palace.

Ollantaytambo
In Ollantaytambo, giant andesite and pink porphyry building blocks are found at the base of the Temple of the Sun, preserved fragments of the back wall and gate of the Temple of 10 Nis, the “sacred area” (scattered) and the first row of terraces. They are also found in various hard-to-reach places of the river valley. Urubamba. Locals call them "weary stones" (Spanish piedras cansadas).

The site "Living Ethics in Germany" provides a truly fantastic hypothesis that the ancient builders of South American megalithic structures softened rock matter to a jelly-like state with the help of their psychic energy. Then they cut it into huge blocks of arbitrary shape, transported them through the air to the place of construction using telekinesis, and there they laid them in the walls, adjusting one to the other using the same method of softening the rock blocks to a plastic substance, giving them the desired shape on the spot. Only in this way can one explain the strange shape that the giant buildings of Ollantaytambo, the Inca palace in Cuzco, the walls of Saxahuaman, the ruins of Tiahuanaco, the ahu pedestals on Easter Island and other similar buildings have.

Read my work "Siddhi Forces and the Causes of the Superhuman Abilities of Human Forerunners"

Giant monolithic sculptures South America and Easter Island

In addition to ruins, an important component of the megalithic culture of South America are giant monolithic sculptures in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, on about. Easter, and also the "Olmec heads" in Mexico. The height of such sculptures reaches 7-10 m, and the weight is 20 tons or more. The height of the heads ranges from 2 to 3 m and weighs up to 40 tons.

Moai and ahu - megalithic structures of Easter Island

A particularly large number of sculptures - moai - are located on the island. Easter. There are 887 of them. The largest of them stand on the slope.Rano Raraku volcano. They are buried up to their necks in sediments that have accumulated on the island over its long history. Some moai used to stand on stone pedestals - ahu. The total number of ahu exceeds 300. Their size ranges from several tens of meters to 200 m.
The largest moai "El Gigante" has a height of 21.6 m. It is located in the Rano Raraku quarry and weighs about 150 tons (according to other sources, 270 tons). The largest moai "Paro", standing on a pedestal, is located on the ahu "Te Pito Kura". Its height reaches 10 m, and its weight is about 80 tons. The height of the moai scattered along the slope of the Rano Raraku volcano is also about 10 m.

Sculptures of heads of people and animals on the Markaguasi plateau

On a par with ruins and giant sculptures, you can put huge sculptures of heads of people with features of Europeans and blacks, as well as images of monkeys, turtles, cows, horses, elephants, lions and camels on the Markaguasi plateau in Peru located at an altitude of about 4 km. At least two facts testify to the ancient age of these images. First, the animals "engraved" on the plateau have never lived at such a height. Secondly, most of them disappeared from the American continent long before the Europeans appeared there - from 10-12 to 150-200 thousand years ago.

Stone balls from granite and obsidian of Central America and Mexico

The next evidence of the existence of highly developed civilizations in pre-Columbian America are stone balls made of granite and obsidian in Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the USA (state of New Mexico). Among them there are real giants up to 3 m in diameter.The carried out determination of the absolute age of the Mexican obsidian balls showed that they were formedin the tertiary period "Even before the appearance of man" (no later than 2 million years ago). Trying to find an explanation for this, the American scientist R. Smith hypothesized that they arose naturally from volcanic ash.

Megalithic structures of the Middle East

Baalbek in Lebanon
The ruins of megalithic structures and other ancient archaeological sites are known far beyond the borders of the American continent. The most magnificent of these are the ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon. The weight of each of the three stone blocks in Trilithon, which is at the base of the Temple of Jupiter built by the ancient Romans, is 750 tons. The surfaces of the blocks are perfectly processed, and their dimensions are simply amazing: 19.1 x 4.3 x 5.6 m. Moreover, these monoliths are ... at an eight-meter height! They rest on slightly smaller blocks.

Half a kilometer south of the Temple of Jupiter from the earth at an angle of 30 hail. the largest processed stone in the world - Southern or Mother - is sticking out, weighing about 1200 tons and measuring 21.5 x 4.8 x 4.2 m
Alan Alford, author of the books "Gods of the New Millennium" and "The Path of the Phoenix," asked experts on heavy-duty cranes if it was possible to lift such a whopper. They answered in the affirmative, but at the same time added that it would be possible to move with the block only if the crane was put on a crawler track and a good road was made. Does it mean that the builders of the Baalbek foundation had a similar technique?

Megaliths, huge structures made of massive boulders, are also found in our country. There are a lot of such structures in Russia, only they are not known as well as the famous Stonehenge in Great Britain or Ollantaytambo in Peru. We will get acquainted with the ancient megalithic structures found on the territory of Russia later.

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

Mount Vottovaara.
Megalithic blocks are scattered around.

The middle block was cut at an angle of 90 degrees or a game of nature?

As if a laser was carried out :) geologists believe that cracks and faults were formed as a result of a strong earthquake about 9 thousand years ago. The flat planes of the stones are the result of the properties of the local rock - quartzite, the structure of which sets such flat planes during a split.

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

More like perfectly cut blocks that fit tightly together. It is difficult to imagine an ancient ancestor with a copper chisel who, somewhere on the mountain, grinds such even blocks.

Good foreshortening, perfectly flat wall.

Who lost the ball?)

Here, obviously, it has not done without high technologies in stone processing, or is it a game of nature? :)

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

But coming closer it becomes more like a megalithic masonry.

Looking between the blocks, where the stones were less susceptible to the influence of erosion from wind and rain, you can see the hand-made and how the smooth edges were preserved.

In the place where the joint of the blocks has parted, an even cut is visible and the technology of laying these blocks opens up in front of us.

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

Stone city.

See how flat the sides of the megaliths seem to have been cut down.

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

They say that somewhere on the Kola Peninsula there is this pool carved right into the rock.

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

Mountain Shoria.
Some of the granite blocks at the bottom were made of red granite, crowned with blocks of gray granite, and above there was a polygonal masonry of various blocks, both red granite and gray.

Granite melted in some places from the impact of extreme temperatures and flowed under the weight of the upper rows. Kungurov would say about this that these are traces of reflow from a thermonuclear explosion :)

The wall is made up of polygonal masonry of colored blocks.

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

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

Looking again inside the masonry, where the blocks were less susceptible to erosion, you can see even straight edges, see how the two blocks lie tightly, here you can see the handicraft better.

Polygonal masonry.

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

Then in the Tomsk branch of the Russian Geographical Society the photographs were studied by scientists geologists and geographers. Both those and others came to the conclusion that the presented artifacts are man-made.

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

Between blocks.

For comparison, on the left is a megalith in Baalbek, on the right is a megalith in mountain Shoria, it seems the author is one :)

Mount Shaman near the village. Nizhnetambovskoe, Khabarovsk Territory.

Ancient megalithic masonry.

Again, between the blocks, hand-made and straight lines are better visible.

Large block of megalith.

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

Megalithic masonry resembles Gornaya Shoria.

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

Descent into the cave.

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

The smooth masonry is striking and the seams fit well together.

The triangular blocks are slightly parted.

Barely noticeable block seams on the left half-moon wall and on the wall behind it.

How do you like the stitches?

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

The technologies of stone processing are amazing, and even more striking is the comment of the head of the Kabardino-Balkarian geological exploration expedition Vera Davidenko, but she is a realist and believes that nature can do everything and made the conclusion: “Tuff is an accumulation of volcanic ejection products - ash, pieces of lava , volcanic glass and, to a small extent, debris that composes the crater walls. The material of the ejection was hot during accumulation, and therefore, during solidification, cracks formed separately - that is, the entire tuff massif turned out to be, as it were, broken into blocks. The depression found in the area of ​​the village of Zayukovo is one of such cracks of gravitational separation, which is characterized by flat contact surfaces, ”but this is the head of the geological exploration expedition, she probably knows better.

The scheme of the structure.

A bit of fiction for the finale) Arakul Shihan, a strange structure in the middle of the forest. I have it all, kick it :)

Searchers for traces of aliens from outer space are looking for more and more "victims" among the ancient buildings to declare them the work of space guests. We haven't reached the megaliths yet! And it's strange after all. This is how they ask to enter modern mythology, these grandiose structures, erected at the behest of ancient mythology.

What are megaliths

Megaliths. "Giant Stones" in translation. Or rather, structures made of giant stones.

Of course, no matter how large the "pebbles" that make up the megaliths, all the same, any of them is inferior to the slabs of the famous Trilithon of the Baalbek terrace, some even to 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 of many hundreds of such "stones".

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 populated more than densely, and all the pyramids are concentrated, roughly speaking, on several "spots" in the Nile Valley, then the megaliths are scattered in a strip about hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. And the length of this strip is amazing.

Who built the megaliths

At first, of course, 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 of large stones Cyclopean, because they were clearly built by the Cyclops, one-eyed giants, one of whom was later blinded by Odysseus. According to another ancient hypothesis, these stones could move by themselves - for example, to the music of Orpheus. But the cyclops variant was much more popular.

In the 18th century, the "giant" version was resolutely rejected. And soon they decided instead that these were aliens, accustomed to burying their dead in natural caves in their homeland, artificial caves began to get along in new lands. But the trouble is - in Spain, for example, there are enough ordinary caves, but dolmens appeared literally next to them.

However, let's look at the names that are used by different groups of 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. This vertical plate can be leaned against another, inclined. Or a horizontal slab may lie on a vertical slab, so it looks like a table for some giant.

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

Much depended on local conditions, but not everything. The chalk cliffs of southern England seem to have been created to carve artificial caves in them, but there dolmens are built on the surface. And in southern Spain, in some places nearby there are megalithic tombs of various types, underground and aboveground. Why some of them were built, while others were carved, is unknown. However, when it comes to megaliths, the word "unknown" is widely used by scientists. Even regarding the fact that dolmens are burial 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 the 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 ambiguities with megaliths - things left by different eras are mixed inside the tombs.

Megalith builders - one people?

So, megaliths seem to be different. But one of the greatest English historians, Gordon Child, argued that, despite all the variety of megaliths in this kind of stone belt that connects England with Japan, we can talk about the general plan of many of them almost regardless of their geographical location.

The imagination of scientists has long been struck by this real 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 no sooner did we stop trusting the legends about the giants who built the megaliths, when new legends appeared, even brighter and more beautiful (although the legends about "aliens" were still far away - about 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 put stones on stones from the Far East to Scotland according to similar plans. It is not for nothing that almost all megaliths are so clearly drawn to the sea, so stubbornly located in coastal countries. (In the Caucasus, for example, dolmens, in essence, lined up in a chain along the coast of the Black Sea. In some places in the Caucasus they were also built farther from the fertile coast, but these "more continental" dolmens are getting smaller as they move away from the sea, until they finally lose right to be called megaliths - huge stones.)

However, not a single serious scientist insisted that the people of the megaliths inhabited almost the entire coastal area 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 - were moving, leaving gigantic structures behind them, like an indelible chain of footprints.

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

Others believed that it was Egypt who sent out its scouts across the seas and lands, these are its trading agents, they are missionaries, persuading the inhabitants of the regions under their jurisdiction to acquire grandiose tombs and themselves set an example for them. Supporters of this version remembered primarily about the Egyptian pyramids, too, after all, giant tombs. According to these scientists, the "sons of the Sun", immigrants from Egypt, spread throughout the world, spread seeds throughout the world, from which dolmens sprang up. Moreover, first of all, these travelers settled in places where there were deposits of minerals valuable for their homeland: in Spain, Sardinia, Ireland - near copper mines; near tin deposits - in Western Ukraine and England; near the places of gold mining - in Western France and Ireland; in the Orkney Islands near North Scotland, where pearls were mined; on the east coast of Denmark, which served as a source of amber.

Gordon Child notes that there is indeed a general similarity between the distribution of Bronze Age tombs and the location of important deposits of that era, but a considerable number of tombs are located where no deposits were mined. And most importantly, according to the customs of the same Egyptians, in the tombs there should have been treasures next to the remains of people for which these people climbed here, but in Denmark amber rarely got into dolmens, in Ireland there is not enough gold and copper, and so on. And finally, everywhere in the dolmens there are few or no imported things. It is quite strange if we have before us the graves of the owners of "trading posts" or people who were under their strong influence. After all, it is known that, say, in the Bronze Age, together with a dear deceased, they usually buried the objects most dear to him and most valued by society, or, less often, at least something that personified, represented such objects (a clay horse instead of a real one, etc.). But in dolmens for the most part there is nothing foreign at all. In these structures, which are so similar in appearance, in each country lie primarily things created by the tribes inhabiting it at that time. This is in stark contrast to the idea of ​​one people who built all the megaliths, wherever they stand.

It must be said, however, that some enthusiasts suggested even Atlanteans as builders of megaliths. But if we really believe Plato and recognize Atlantis as a reality, then we must remember that dolmens and other structures were built millennia after the Platonic date of the death of Atlantis.

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

It must still be said that sometimes the megaliths definitely testify to the movements of the tribes. The megaliths of South Ethiopia, in their resemblance to the megaliths of Assam in India, cross the usual boundaries for megaliths. On both sides of the Indian Ocean there are cylindrical pillars with a rounded top, like a carnation with a cap, only the height of the "nail" itself is up to four meters. It is difficult not to recognize this as proof of the travel of the inhabitants of "one of the sides" 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 that separates Yemen from East Africa. But long-distance sea voyages of 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 resettlement: the Naga tribe is in Ethiopia, and the Naga tribe is in India. Then there was extremely little in common between the "namesakes", the version of a single origin was rejected, and at the same time the idea of ​​resettlement from India to Africa of people who made huge stone "nails". But it was not rejected unanimously and not forever.

One way or another, but to the question: "What people built the dolmens" - today the most correct answer is not accurate, but short: "Different".

Megaliths - a derivative of 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 methods of economy, customs, ideological ideas, in countries located on different levels of historical development. People of the Neolithic, people of the Copper Age and people of the Bronze Age then lived on earth at the same time (as today the Stone Age is adjacent to our Iron Age somewhere in New Guinea). And those, and others, and still others, albeit in varying degrees and far from all, were involved in megaliths, hewn monstrous slabs, piled them on top of each other, arranged in the order common for places separated by many thousands of kilometers.

Obviously, we should speak here not about the mass movement of this or that people, but about the movement on earth of the aggregate of ideas about the world. Representations related to the veneration of the dead. And the economy that had developed by this time was already able to feed many workers that do not reap or sow, but drag huge stones.

This means that in all countries where dolmens appeared, class stratification was already in full swing - otherwise who would have erected these tombs, after all, not mere mortals? Already there were nobles, exploiters and slave owners. Leaders became kings, tribal elders became aristocrats. All of them needed to emphasize their power, in a symbolic confirmation of its eternity and inviolability. As the Egyptian pharaohs with their priests, commanders and officials needed the same. And similar reasons have caused the appearance of 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 Maya or Aztecs lagged behind in development from Egypt for several thousand years. And they apparently had no ties with Egypt, at least not permanent. 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, as soon as they are cut and folded "more beautifully", turns into a pyramid. Since ancient times, the class state itself has been compared with the pyramid, because in each new layer of stones, if you go from the bottom up, there are fewer stones - like people in different strata of class society, and above there is one stone: the symbol of the ruler. However, this comparison, despite all its antiquity, nevertheless appeared after the very first pyramid was built. Well, the ancient Egyptians - those, apparently, materialized in the pyramid a sheaf of sun rays, the top of which is 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 conversion of people in different lands to this particular form, basically complement each other and fit into such a neat pyramid themselves, then the hypotheses about megaliths mutually repel. The arrangement of megaliths is too complicated for coincidences in his plan at different parts of the world could be obtained by chance.

Journey of the megaliths - a journey of worldviews

For most historians, it is the wandering of megaliths around the world that seems certain, and not their appearance in every country or at least part of the world on their own, without any influence from close 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, the sum of ideas associated with megaliths was transmitted - not a simple idea of ​​the courage of a huge burial structure, but precisely the sum of ideas associated with this idea.

The very possibility of such a grandiose journey of entire systems of views - and it has been evidenced, as you can see, very weighty - says a lot about the really existing ties between peoples of the distant past. To draw far-reaching conclusions from this fact, many historians are hindered by the fact that we still know too little about megaliths and their builders. But even what has become known about both of them makes us see the tribes of our ancestors not at all as dark and cut off from each other as they seemed.

Gordon Child, having listed and defeated the most popular assumptions about the common builders of all megaliths, goes with obvious relief and pleasure to people who also often buried their dead in dolmens, but themselves, apparently, lived centuries after the dolmens were built. It was here that one could, it seemed, find traces of some convenient people, whose groups of people wandered in a large part of Europe. The groups are small - the burials of the "wanderers" do not form vast cemeteries. And almost always and almost everywhere (with the exception of ventral Spain), such burials are found among the burials of people of other peoples.

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

Child sees in the "wanderers" wandering around Europe a handful of armed merchants selling gold and copper, amber and yamsha. Men-metallurgists and women engaged in pottery traveled with them. Travelers also made cups. Child speaks of the owners of the cups as guides in the establishment of trade and other relations between the peoples of Europe. They also spread new methods of metal processing, in a word, they played, according to Child, the role of such "peddlers of culture" in prehistoric Europe! However, their possible progressive role is strongly compromised by one circumstance ...

Grains of millet are sometimes found in the famous bell-shaped cups, and then hop beer was brewed from millet. The power of the people of bell-shaped cups, if it existed, relied to the greatest extent on its "monopoly" on this invigorating drink. "Cup people" soldered the ancestors of those Europeans who, millennia later, came to North America not only with guns, but also with vodka.

The people of bell-shaped goblets lived a little over thirty centuries ago - not such a long time. After all, writing in Egypt and Sumer had already existed for two thousand years by that time. We know quite a lot about individual cultures and peoples of that time, but the "goblet people" did not have a letter, and the tribes among which they lived too, and with this people are still associated with much more mysteries than answers to them.

The people of bell-shaped cups were supposed to have a significant impact on the culture of Europe. There are scientists who believe that the names of silver and lead in both Indo-European and Basque languages ​​go back to the unknown language of the "goblet" people. " It is possible that traces of their activities remained in Africa. The center from which the carriers of this culture came was the Iberian Peninsula. In Central Europe, they probably met with the Indo-European tribes who moved west around this time.

In this interaction, perhaps, the culture of Europeans on the threshold of antiquity was forged.

Well, in fact, the builders of the megaliths, at least some of them, still maintained links with powerful Mediterranean civilizations. One of them in the giant cromlech of Stonehenge stores two outfits: a bronze ax and a bronze dagger, a local ax, there are a lot of these in England, but the dagger is probably imported, and the point from where it was exported is definitely known: it is precisely such daggers about a multitude that are found on Crete. From Crete to England, from the eastern Mediterranean to the northwestern edge of Europe, it is far enough. And it is possible, and even most likely, that at the beginning and middle of the II millennium BC, no Cretans had yet reached England, and the British themselves did not even dream of serious sea voyages. Too many seas and lands lay along the way. Too many peoples marched on it - peoples who did not know the principles of international law. From people to people, through intermediaries, bronze daggers moved to England. However, not only daggers and not only to England. Treasures of axes and daggers, treasures with 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. The Central European traveler was then exposed to far greater dangers than the Central African traveler in the 19th century. Still, amber beads come from the Baltic to Italy, Greece, gold from Ireland arrives in Crete, Egyptian beads are found by archaeologists in Hungary, Holland and England. All this already in the first half of the II millennium BC. At the time when the last European megaliths were being built. Once things traveled, they could travel and rituals. Could travel and the idea that the dead could build tombs from huge stones.

Well, the similarity of the plans of megaliths in different countries! It is great, but some general details can be explained without the idea that the people are handing over to the people meticulously worked out plans for the tombs.

Or maybe, with such a small number of basic details, you won't create too much variety, if you don't specifically try. And in general, the stone box repeats in an enlarged form the main features of the dwelling. And this wave is natural - everywhere people tried to give the burial structures the signs of ordinary houses, and it is not for nothing that the “coffin” in Ukrainian is called “domina”.

Is it any wonder that stone boxes girdled Eurasia, walking across North Africa? And yet it is tricky. Some megaliths distant from each other have certain similarities that cannot be explained in this simple way.

Historians and archaeologists try on megaliths from different sides; tens of theories and hundreds of hypotheses have already been broken on these giant stones. Burial mounds adjoin dolmens in a peculiar way. The same idea of ​​fighting 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 are outwardly unlike megaliths, as well as pyramids. But many historians nevertheless believe that the creators of the mounds imitated the builders of the pyramids.

Megalith it is a cult structure made of huge rough or semi-finished boulders. The term "megalith" in translation from Greek means "big stone". Megaliths include dolmens, menhirs, cromlechs, covered avenues, tauls, triliths, stone mounds, etc. Dolmens are structures made of several stones covered with a stone slab on top. Menhir is one stone standing upright. Cromlech has several menhirs that form a circle. Taula is a construction of stones in the shape of the letter "T". Triliths are two vertically standing stones, covered with a stone block.

Megaliths are best known in Western Europe, North Africa, and the Caucasus. These structures date back to different eras. The oldest ones were built about ten thousand years ago.

Megaliths are subdivided into menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs and the so-called covered avenues, depending on their architecture. Menhirs (Breton tall stones) are lonely standing stones up to 20 m high, which resemble pillars or steles. Dolmen (Breton stone-table) looks like a gate made of huge stone slabs. Cromlech (Breton boulder circle) is a circle of separate vertically placed stones. Sometimes cromlechs have a more complex structure - their constituent stones can be in pairs or three at a time covered from above with horizontal slabs, like a roof. A dolmen or menhir can be set in the middle of the circle.

Many megaliths are also found in Australia. Their construction is attributed either to mysterious vongins who came from the sea and are depicted as creatures without mouths, with halos around their heads, or dwarfs. Adyghe people call the Caucasian dolmens sirp-un, which means houses of dwarfs. The Ossetians have a legend about the dwarf people - bicenta, who are endowed with supernatural features. So, for example, a dwarf bicent is able to knock down a huge tree at a glance. According to legend, dwarfs live in the sea. In addition, the Ossetians claim that the ancestors of the Caucasian peoples, the mythical sledges, also came out of the sea and gave people culture. The megaliths of Britain are surrounded by amazing romantic legends. At night, the legends say, at a certain time of the year, the hills open up and the strange unearthly light pouring from them beckons random companions to the land of dwarf seeders who went underground in ancient times. Seeds also live somewhere far in the ocean on the islands of the Promised Land. They possess wisdom and untold treasures.

Today it is difficult to say for what purpose these structures were built. According to scientists, they are mainly associated with the cult of burial. Some megaliths may have been used as astronomical observatories. For example, most likely, such a structure is the megalith in the Nubian desert in the Nabla Playa region.

In Russia, the most famous megaliths are located in the Northwestern Caucasus, Karachay-Cherkessia, Karelia and the Kola Peninsula. Recently, scientists have discovered megalithic structures not only on land, but in water several tens of kilometers from the Bahamas at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

There are many legends associated with the megaliths. In Britain, they say that the construction of stone structures is the work of mysterious dwarf species who own countless treasures. In Polynesia, it is said that the megaliths built gods with red beards who came out of the ocean.

There is also a version that many of the megaliths are traces of the existence of the first settlers on Earth - the Atlanteans. The ancient people could not move some of the stones to a distance of about 380 km, from where they were taken. In our opinion, the last phrase should be considered the key one: "In Polynesia, they claim that the megaliths were built by the gods with red beards who came out of the ocean." In our opinion, this proves that Atlanteans were involved in their construction, who, according to our information, were fair-haired people of very tall stature - from 2 to 3 meters or more, and had tremendous physical strength.

Megaliths stone structures from giant blocks, created without the use of binding mortars. These structures represent one of the greatest mysteries of antiquity, which has not yet been solved.

There are several types of megaliths: dolmens (a box of blocks covered with a slab), menhirs (blocks that stand separately) and cromlechs (circular fences). The antiquity of these structures, as well as their scale, involuntarily make one wonder who and why created these structures, what kind of civilization was it? The problem is that the age of the oldest megaliths is more than 7000 years, and this is the layer of history that is covered with fog for science. Ignoring the ancient legends about the Flood led the scientific world into bewilderment, turned a blind eye to the obvious facts and led to numerous contradictions in historical science. However, many scientists are aware of this and speak publicly about the need to revise the history of mankind.

Megalithic temples

It is believed that most of the megaliths are megalithic temples of worship. The most famous megaliths are, of course, associated with Stonehenge (England) and Karnak (France). Some structures look primitive, while others are quite sophisticated. However, it should be borne in mind that these structures can be called temples conditionally, since it has not been proven that they were really intended for cult purposes. But there is evidence of unusual properties, at least some of the mysterious structures. So, the well-known Stonehenge contains stones that at a certain time emit a powerful electrical impulse. No one yet knows where the energy for the impulses comes from, but one thing is clear that this is not a simple pile of stones, they are located in a given, exact order. In these megaliths, researchers have established striking patterns described by rows of stones: from the radii of the orbits of the bodies of the solar system, and ending with mathematical functions.

Temples of Malta

There is a place not as famous as Stonehenge, but with much more ancient megaliths of Malta. Malta is known for its resorts, but few have heard of the ancient temples of Malta. The megalithic temples of Malta, even according to official scientific estimates, were built 5.5-7 thousand years ago.

Giant people

The biggest challenge for science is explaining how megalithic structures are built. After all, the construction of stone blocks, the weight of which is tens of tons, and the length of 8 m, even with modern technology, is problematic (especially in hard-to-reach areas). In the case of Malta, we are dealing with complexes of structures. It is obvious that the builders did not experience serious difficulties from the technological side. They had the means of delivering these blocks and the necessary processing tools and the necessary skills. Their knowledge, apparently, was qualitatively different from modern ones, since they used energies that modern science only guesses about. And it is no coincidence that serious scientists, even before the finds in the Borjomi Gorge, came to the conclusion that people are giants. about which numerous legends speak are not fiction. It is the giants who are the builders of these mysterious buildings, the purpose of which may not be fully understood by us.

Most of the megaliths date back to 5-2 thousand BC. but in a number of regions they were built almost to the present day [Caroline Islands, XIX century; Easter Island. XVIII century].

Mostly, megaliths are presented in two types.

1. The first is ground-based structures, mostly for cult purposes; these include cairns ( cores), menhirs and alleys of menhirs,
2. cromlechs... certain types henge. bowl stones... The second type is underground and above ground stone tombs.

Cyclopean buildings of the Ancient Aegeis (including among the peoples of the sea), ancient Egyptian can also be attributed to megalithic structures. Sumerian. Mesoamerican and similar Canary pyramids (on the island of Tenerife).

Some believe that the age of the most ancient megaliths is more than ten thousand years. V.I.Markovin attributes the most ancient dolmens to 2700 BC. In other words, many tombs are about 5,000 years old. The first dolmens appeared on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains before they began to build pyramids in Egypt. Moreover, the ancient powerful center of megalithic construction that existed in the Caucasus is comparable to the world of European megaliths of the "Atlantic belt" from Spain to Sweden. Dolmens are found in the Crimea, the Far East, and Central Asia. However, most of them are in the Caucasus - about 2.5 thousand!

The purpose of the megaliths is not always possible to establish. For the most part, according to some scholars, they served for burials or were associated with a funeral cult. There are other opinions as well. Apparently, megaliths are communal structures (the function is socializing). Their construction was a very difficult task for primitive technology and required the unification of large masses of people. Some megalithic structures, such as the complex of more than 3000 stones in Carnac (Brittany) France, were important ceremonial centers associated with the cult of the dead. Other megalithic complexes have been used to determine the timing of astronomical events such as the solstice and equinox. In the area of ​​Nabta Playa in the Nubian desert, a megalithic structure was found that served for astronomical purposes. This structure is 1000 years older than Stonehenge, which is also considered a kind of prehistoric observatory.

Types of megalithic structures:

• menhir single upright stone
• cromlech group of menhirs forming a circle or semicircle
• dolmen construction of a huge stone, set on several other stones
• taula T-shaped stone structure
• a trilith structure of a block of stone, mounted on two vertically standing stones
• seid including a structure made of stone
• cairn stone mound with one or more rooms
• covered gallery
• boat-shaped grave

Today people look at giant skyscrapers and consider them the pinnacle of human engineering. At the same time, many do not even know about the technological wonders of ancient history - buildings and temples, which, it would seem, could not be built at that distant time. This review contains little-known examples of amazing ancient buildings.

1. Pueblo Bonito

2. Chatal

3. Lokmarake

4. Colossi of Memnon

5. Pillar of Pompey

6. Dolmen Menga

7. Quirigua

8. Dur Sharrukin

9. Hajar-Kim

10. Tiwanaku