Megalith

As Megalith (from Greek μέγας ( mégas ) " large" and λίθος ( líthos ) "stone" ) refers to a large, often rough-hewn block of stone that was used as a building block for grave and cult installations or erected as a monolith and positioned in stone settings. The northern and western European megalithic monuments have been erected in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age.

The various Megalithbauwerke Europe do not indicate a common culture close (see megalithic culture ). The features of these tombs belong to any single culture, which is defined by ceramics or other artifacts, and even the subclasses of the megaliths, such as dolmens, passage graves ( dolmens à gallery ) or stone boxes, do not indicate such.

Definition

As megalithic were in northern and western Europe originally megalithic ( Dolmen ) and standing stones called, which could be either individually or as a menhir monolith or stone circles ( cromlechs), were formed.

Already in 1867, agreement was reached on the 2nd Congrès International d'Anthropologie et d' Archéologie Préhistoriques on describing only monuments from almost uncut stones as megaliths, so for example, not the Egyptian obelisk, the Maltese temples, or the Parisian " Halle aux blés ". The walls of Tyrins were not called cyclopean megalithic. This definition, however, would for instance exclude the Trilithons of Stonehenge, which are edited. Glyn Daniel Following is referred to now only Neolithic constructions of large stones as megaliths, otherwise would be, as Daniel noted, to describe some Welsh pigsties as megalithic.

Gordon Childe suggested before 1946, other buildings include:

• Tombs, which are built of smaller stones and have a roof made of corbelled
• Rock tombs
• Collective stone boxes, like the stone chests of Attica and Antiparos
• Closed stone boxes for single burials are, however, not included, even if they consist of large stones like some dolmens in North Africa and Palestine.
• Input stones with soul hole ( Porthole slabs ) are admissible evidence of megalithic architecture.
• Megaxyle architecture is not classified as megalithic ( "Timber architecture which translated into stone - in England, Etruria, India -. Translation and such need not Imply a megalithic complex" )
• Stone circles can be part of a megalithic burial or exist independently.

For Childe only collective burials are to be classified as megalithic.

Megalithbauweisen

Research has distinguished several types at the megaliths, which one then assigned according to criteria differentiating various types. Monuments with similar structures are known worldwide. You can come before the Christian era from all eras of the last millennia, and are not related to each other. In Europe exist between long-lived and often converted megalithic and related sites (wood circles, etc.) a variety of relationships within which one usually in vain looking for a diagram of the dependencies of the chronology and geographical distribution; this is only possible at the regional level. The question of whether the different regional types have independent origins or a common root, is still open. In Europe, various construction methods are known in which ( at least partially ) megaliths were used:

• In Scandinavia and northern Central Europe, for example: dolmen ( Breton: toal - Table, mean - stone ), gallery grave, passage grave, Großdolmen, Hunebeds without chamber, passage grave, stone box, Polygonaldolmen and Urdolmen.
• In the British Isles: Boulder tomb, Cairn, Clava Cairns, Clyde tomb, Cotswold -Severn tomb, tomb Court, passage tomb, portal tomb ( grave mound with portal stones) and Wedge tomb
• In France: Cairn, gallery grave, dolmens with side chambers
• On the Iberian peninsula: Anta, Mamoa, Pedra Formosa
• In the Western Mediterranean Islands: giant grave, naveta, talaiot, Taula, Maltese temples, Torre,
• Otherwise: Tholos mainly in Greece and western Anatolia usually in the vicinity of the Mycenaean civilization

In Europe ( monoliths or menhirs then called ) in some regions also megaliths individually or placed with other megaliths in stone circles, was therefore not processed in structures:

• Single stones: Menhir, Baityloi, Statuenmenhir,
• Stone rows
• Stone circles ( cromlechs ). In South-East Scotland, there are stone circles with horizontal menhirs ( recumbent stone circles ).

The cup-marked stones in the Alpine region, which are also called " devil stones" are not among the megaliths, as they were transported by man nor erect. Some of them, however, were also used ritually.

Origin of the construction material

The stones of the North European megaliths come from the deposits of the Ice Age ( erratics ), ( granites, gneisses and other rocks ). Many of the other megaliths were broken from relatively soft sedimentary rocks.

Deposits in Central Europe

The construction of megalithic took place in Europe between about 4500 (Brittany ) and 800 BC, when the last ones were built in Sardinia.

Over 900 dolmens are located in Germany in the three major coastal countries, as well as in North Rhine -Westphalia, Brandenburg and Saxony- Anhalt, a few in southern Baden- Württemberg. 53 plants have survived in the Netherlands and three of only five megaliths at Wéris. The figures for Poland are not reliable or included in the German pre-war figures. Denmark has about 2067 of yore about 5000 plants of which more than a quarter in the former offices westseeländischen Holbæk (317 ) and Soro (245). Sweden more than 450 (out of about 650 once ). Larger Megalithenanlagen in Switzerland can be found in Bonvillars, Clendy, Falera, Lutry and Sion. The menhirs are found primarily in southern and western Europe; in Germany between Saarland and Thuringia.

Many megalithic sites have been destroyed since industrialization. Megaliths were land consolidation, landscape projects, or the churches and harbor prey. In northern Germany they became the seawall - crushed - used as pavement.

Occurrence outside Europe

Megaliths can be found in Turkey, southern Russia, Georgia, North Africa, Madagascar, India, Korea, Palestine, Syria, Indonesia and Indochina without a genetic link between the sites is.

In order to spread, see also: Megalithic.

Interpretation

Often you do not know exactly for what purposes were megalithic and why they were built. With the Christianization of legend grew around the emergence of megaliths by Devil's hand. Some wear the devil in the name ( the Devil's Stone, Devil's Arrows, Circles Devils etc.).

In the 18th and 19th centuries it was interested in again for the megalithic sites. At the time, many believed the buildings were due to the Celtic druids, such as the English antiquarian William Stukeley.

Etymology of the name " menhir ": The size of the stones misled people used to believe in giant ( giants), which had to have transported the stones. By understanding the error came from " Hünenstein " to " chicken rock ", and there in the southwest of Germany instead of the word chicken is the dialect word " Hinkel " is used, it came so to the word " menhir ".

Nichtmegalithische traditions in Europe

Megalithic could arise only where stones had to be handled with the means of the time. In the area of the Funnel Beaker Culture ( TBK ) that were essentially were the erratic blocks of the ice age, the only transport or possibly to split. Where boulders were not available in sufficient quantity and size, the burial huts and the chamber were constructed in other buildings, such as in the southern TBK in the central mountainous region ( south of the Mittelland Canal ) in Germany, mainly between the Weser and the Saale.