Dolmens of the Caucasus
Megaliths (from the Greek. — large, Ai0og — rock) — prehistoric structures of large stone blocks, joined without cement or mortar. In the limiting case that one module (the menhir).
The term “megalith” was proposed by the English Explorer A. H. in 1867 and officially adopted at the Congress in Paris. The term is not exhaustive, so the definition of megaliths and megalithic structures are subject to the rather vague group of buildings. In particular, the megaliths called the hewn stones of large dimensions, including those not used for the construction of tombs and monuments.
Megalithic structures found all over the world. In Europe, for example, Stonehenge in England, Carrowmore in Ireland, Almendres in Portugal, the Barnen and Buganski necropolis Department in the Poitou — Charentes region, France, facilities of Cretan-Mycenaean culture, the famous megaliths of Egypt. In Asia Minor the most ancient of nowadays known are the temples of Göbekli Tepe and Nevali-Cho-ri. In South America — Machu Picchu, Puma Punku, Ollantaytambo, Pisac, Sexyu-Amand, of Tiwanaku. Meet the megaliths in Ireland and Denmark, on the South coast of Sweden and in Israel. And this is not Panyarachun megaliths.
Their common characteristic are blocks of stone weighing hundreds of kilograms to hundreds of tons, often delivered from the quarries located tens of kilometers, sometimes with large differences in elevation relative to the site.
Megalithic structures not serving the housing and construction period until today not got any record of the technology and of construction. The lack of reliable written sources, and the fact that all these buildings suffered greatly under the influence of time, making their exhaustive study practically impossible. And this, in turn, leaves a different riddle.
In the early twentieth century it was widely believed that all megaliths belonged to one global “megalithic culture”, but modern research and Dating methods disprove this assumption.
Gordon Childe suggested that the megalithic culture spread from Western Asia is based on the presence of megaliths in Syro-Palestine, defined by him as one of the areas where there was a “Europeanization of Europe”. However, these Dating of associated organic matter by C-14 showed that Western European megaliths are much older Asian.
Some researchers suggest that the ancestors of the megalithic culture are the Indo-Europeans, but the North European megaliths are chronologically much younger than the southern European.
The founders of panagitsa (G. Elliot-Smith and J. Perry) believed the Egyptian pyramids and mastaba prototypes of all megalithic monuments. They suggest that immigrants from Egypt spread all over the world and distributed by the Ground solar genialities culture of monotheism (culture of sun stones). Refutation of this concept are significant spatial and temporal gaps between the megalithic monuments of Europe and other parts of the world. In addition, it should be noted that a number of Egyptian solar megaliths (solar obelisks of Akhenaten), attributable in part to Panagiotis-mA to melilitites culture were alien in Egypt and brought from the Sahara (Libyan) tribes.
