The most famous menhirs in the world. Megalithic structures - erected before the Flood - Earth before the Flood: disappeared continents and civilizations

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In many countries of the world and even on the seabed there are mysterious structures made of huge stone blocks and slabs. They were called megaliths (from the Greek words “megas” - large and “lithos” - stone). It is still not known exactly who and for what purpose carried out such titanic work in very ancient times in various places on the planet, because the weight of some blocks reaches tens, or even hundreds of tons.

The most amazing stones in the world

Megaliths are divided into dolmens, menhirs and trilithons. Dolmens are the most common type of megaliths; these are peculiar stone “houses”; in Brittany (province of France) alone there are at least 4,500 of them. Menhirs are vertically mounted elongated stone blocks. If a third is placed on top of two vertically mounted blocks, then such a structure is called a trilith. If the trilithons are installed in a ring ensemble, as in the case of the famous Stonehenge, then such a structure is called a cromlech.

Until now, no one can say for sure for what purpose these impressive structures were built. There are a lot of hypotheses on this matter, but none of them can comprehensively answer all the questions posed by these silent, majestic stones.

For a long time, megaliths were associated with an ancient funeral ritual, but archaeologists did not find any burials near most of these stone structures, and those that were found were most likely made at a later time.

The most widespread hypothesis, supported by many scientists, connects the construction of megaliths with the most ancient astronomical observations. In fact, some megaliths can be used as sights, allowing one to record the rising and setting points of the Sun and Moon on the solstices and equinoxes.

However, opponents of this hypothesis have quite fair questions and criticisms. Firstly, there are a lot of megaliths that are difficult to associate with any astronomical observations. Secondly, why did the ancients at that distant time need such a labor-intensive method of understanding the movement of the heavenly bodies? After all, even if they set the timing of agricultural work in this way, it is well known that the start of sowing depends much more on the condition of the soil and weather than on a specific date, and can shift in one direction or another. Thirdly, opponents of the astronomical hypothesis rightly point out that with such an abundance of megaliths, as, for example, in Karnak, you can always pick up a dozen stones allegedly installed for astronomical purposes, but what were thousands of others intended for then?

The scale of work carried out by the ancient builders is also impressive. Let's not dwell on Stonehenge, a lot has already been written about it, let's remember the megaliths of Karnak. Perhaps this is the largest megalithic ensemble in the whole world. Scientists believe that at first it numbered up to 10 thousand menhirs! Now only about 3 thousand vertically installed stone blocks have survived, in some cases reaching a height of several meters.

It is believed that this ensemble originally stretched for 8 km from Saint-Barbe to the Crash River; now it has survived only for 3 kilometers. There are three groups of megaliths. To the north of the village of Karnak there is a cromlech in the form of a semicircle and eleven ranks, in which there are 1169 menhirs with a height of 60 cm to 4 m. The length of the row is 1170 m.

No less impressive are the other two groups, which, most likely, once, together with the first, formed a single ensemble, back at the end of the 18th century. it was more or less preserved in its original form. The largest menhir of the entire ensemble was 20 meters high! Unfortunately, now it has been toppled and split, however, even in this form, the megalith inspires involuntary respect for the creators of such a miracle. By the way, even with the help of modern technology it is very difficult to cope with even a small megalith if it needs to be restored to its original form or moved to another place.

Are dwarfs “to blame” for everything?

Megalithic structures have been discovered even at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and the oldest megaliths date back to the 8th millennium BC. Who was the author of such labor-intensive and mysterious stone structures?

Many legends in which megaliths are mentioned in one way or another often feature mysterious, powerful dwarfs who can effortlessly perform work that is beyond the capabilities of ordinary people. So, in Polynesia such dwarfs are called menehunes. According to local legends, they were ugly-looking creatures, only vaguely reminiscent of people, only 90 cm tall.

Although the menehunes had a look that made your blood run cold, the dwarves were generally kind to people and sometimes even helped them. Menehunes could not stand sunlight, so they appeared only after sunset, in the dark. Polynesians believe that these dwarfs are the authors of megalithic structures. It is curious that menehunes appeared in Oceania, arriving on the large three-tiered island of Kuaihelani.

If the Menehunes needed to be on land, their flying island would descend into the water and float to the shore. After completing the intended work, the dwarfs on their island again rose into the clouds.

The Adyghe people call the famous Caucasian dolmens houses of dwarfs, and Ossetian legends mention dwarfs who were called the Bitsenta people. The bicenta dwarf, despite his height, had remarkable strength and was capable of knocking down a huge tree with one glance. There are also references to dwarfs among the aborigines of Australia: as is known, megaliths are also found in large numbers on this continent.

In Western Europe, where there is no shortage of megaliths, there are also widespread legends about powerful dwarfs who, like the Polynesian menehunes, cannot stand daylight and are distinguished by remarkable physical strength.

Although many scientists still maintain a certain skepticism towards legends, the widespread dissemination in the folklore of peoples of information about the existence of a small powerful people must be based on some real facts. Maybe a race of dwarfs actually once existed on Earth, or were aliens from outer space mistaken for them (remember the flying island of the Menehunes)?

The mystery remains a mystery for now

Megaliths may have been created for purposes that are still unclear to us. This conclusion was reached by scientists who studied the unusual energy effects that are observed in the locations of megaliths. Thus, in some stones the instruments were able to register weak electromagnetic radiation and ultrasounds. In 1989, researchers even detected inexplicable radio signals under one of the stones.

According to scientists, such mysterious effects can be explained by the fact that megaliths were often installed in places where there are faults in the earth's crust. How did the ancients find these places? Maybe with the help of dowsers? Why were megaliths installed in energetically active places in the earth’s crust? Scientists do not yet have clear answers to these questions.

In 1992, Kyiv researchers R. S. Furduy and Yu. M. Shvaidak proposed a hypothesis that megaliths could be complex technical devices, namely generators of acoustic or electronic vibrations. Quite an unexpected assumption, isn't it?

This hypothesis was not born out of nowhere. The fact is that English scientists had already established that many megaliths emit ultrasonic pulses. As scientists at Oxford University have suggested, ultrasonic vibrations arise due to weak electrical currents induced by solar radiation. Each individual stone emits a small amount of energy, but as a whole, a megalithic stone complex can create a powerful burst of energy at times.

It is curious that for most megaliths, their creators selected rocks containing large amounts of quartz. This mineral is capable of generating a weak electric current under the influence of compression... As is known, stones either shrink or expand due to temperature changes...

They tried to unravel the mystery of the megaliths based on the fact that their creators were primitive people of the Stone Age, but this approach turned out to be unproductive. Why not assume the opposite: the creators of megaliths had a very developed intellect, allowing them to use the natural properties of natural materials to solve technical problems still unknown to us. In fact - a minimum of costs, and what a disguise! These stones have stood for thousands of years, fulfilling their tasks, and only now people have some still vague doubts about their true purpose.

No metal could have withstood so much time, it would have been stolen by our enterprising ancestors or eaten away by corrosion, but the megaliths still stand... Perhaps someday we will reveal their secret, but for now it is better not to touch these stones. Who knows, maybe these structures are neutralizers of some formidable natural forces?

Studying megalithic structures will reveal the technologies of the past. How many civilizations existed in ancient times and can we find traces of them that will complement our understanding of the history of our world?

Who built the huge megalithic structures, the age of which scientists cannot always accurately determine? What technologies were used in their construction and what secrets of stone processing have we lost? What are modern scientists hiding when they deliberately destroy many ancient artifacts? Alexander Koltypin, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, is confident that a new approach to the study of ancient monuments can provide answers to these questions.

Alexander Koltypin: A single underground-ground megalithic complex, like a foundation, the foundation of some previous world destroyed by a catastrophe. I’m not even sure that this is one world, because if we compare geological and folklore legends of catastrophes that destroy previous worlds, then there were at least 4 of them, because, for example, according to Aztec legends, Mayan legends, Indian legends there were 5 or 6 worlds , and according to Jain almost 7 religious texts, and they were destroyed by global disasters.

Therefore, this complex, which consists of underground structures, underground cities, ruins and some kind of megalithic buildings, passing smoothly through underground structures, and sometimes between them you don’t even see any joints, fastenings, as if, here are megalithic the blocks, as it were, were cut out of the rocky base themselves and continued it further. Perhaps this is one last world destroyed, the previous one preceding ours, perhaps there are different worlds in different places, that is, not only the penultimate world, but also the worlds preceding this penultimate one. This is difficult to say, because these complexes are silent, they do not contain any minerals, and to determine its absolute age, I see only one possibility so far, this is to scrape off monomineral fractions from the crusts of secondary altered rocks of underground cities and isolate there, for example, potassium minerals, If we conduct an analysis using the potassium-argon method, we will determine not the age of construction of these structures, but only the time when this crust of secondary altered rocks was formed.

At least, determine its age by the coals of rock found in them, as they do now, by scraps of clothing, there, the remains of some baskets, skeletal remains that could get there, say, after 50, after 10 million years, so , this is completely wrong. It turns out that these megalithic structures, although they form, in my opinion, one complex throughout the world, which is globally distributed throughout the world, covering the entire globe, it is also developed at the bottom of the oceans. It is represented in the master plan by 3 different entities. These are underground structures, and some underground structures, they are simply amazing with the clarity of execution, clearly neither chisels nor some kind of handicraft tools were working here, absolutely perfectly carved dome-shaped caves, with completely smooth walls, that these are clearly some kind of machines, machine processing . In the Gavrin region of Israel, in the bell caves, 30 meters high and about a hundred meters in diameter, traces of drilling are visible, and some kind of drill with an expanding diameter was coming from above, they are clearly visible. What civilization did all this? On many structures, for example, the same structures in Mareshi and in Israel, pyramidal or trapezoidal holes are cut out that run along the perimeter. For what purpose? For what? The acoustics in these rooms are usually stunning, and operas are held there. Or, for example, as we saw this year in Bulgaria, on the outside of such structures, on the contrary, trapezoidal holes are often visible, which are also located according to a certain system, but there are no acoustics at all, there is simply no echo, they are called “deaf stones” , due to this.

That is, this is also probably not some kind of coincidence, in one case there is such an echo that it is simply difficult to withstand it, in another there is no echo at all, that is, ancient civilizations built these structures, taking into account the obvious use of them for some reason. then acoustic properties. This second complex is simply megalithic, the ruins of some kind of megalithic buildings, castles, buildings, most often they are often made of basalts, indesites, limestones, completely different stones, moreover, different blocks are also square in shape, some are also complexly carved, here as, for example, in Hattusash, and some kind of stairs, there, ledges were cut out. Sometimes there are rectangular blocks, there are 500, 600, 1000 even a ton, like in Levan there is such a colossus that is leaning against. And the third type is on the tops of the mountains that we saw, I call them Perpheus fortresses, on the periphery there are megalithic blocks, sometimes they are several tons, sometimes there are dozens of tons, and many tens of tons. As a rule, there are round wells on the site, some arches that go down, which, in our opinion, were completely deliberately filled up by someone so that they would not be studied.

As a rule, there are no excursions there; reference materials, for example, tourist guides, say nothing about them at all. For example, when I started talking about Hattusas, I forgot to say that when describing Hattusas, not a single word was said about the fact that there are megalithic structures there in any tourist guide, not in any description on the Internet, not in any archaeological material about this that I read, not a word was said either. We only went there, assuming that we could find such blocks, because there was Sklyarov’s expedition there before us, which described that there was megalithic masonry there, moreover, in a neighboring place in Alaki-Khayu, and we saw such an abundance. Either there is a silencing going on, or they don’t know, or the archaeologists who are working really understand that this complex does not fit into the dating they are doing, and they are just trying to keep quiet about its presence. This also applies to stone statues, for example, in the museums of Ankara, in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara there are stone sphinxes and stone lions, they are also in a place that also dates back to the Hittite era. When we compare these destroyed sphinxes, which have torn off ears, heads, eaten by erosion, a powerful crust of secondary changes, when we compare them with a perfectly preserved ceramic vase, well, that they are the same age, a very big, to put it mildly, doubt arises. These structures were built by completely different people or creatures, that is, these are the structures that are folded in blocks that weigh about a hundred, tens and hundreds of tons, loaded onto a mountain, or somewhere we see in such, well, not quite on a mountain, in mountainous areas, but which large territory occupied before. It seems that they were really built by some giants, and there are many legends about giants who, with the help of their psychic energy, with the help of levitation, moved these stones, without even expending effort on this themselves, but possessing some kind of superhuman abilities .

Secondly, this is, undoubtedly, in Turkey, in the Phrygian Valley, we saw this when we traveled to a number of objects, many structures were built by people or creatures of similar physique to humans, and underground structures. Because, for example, the rooms that have been preserved, the windows have been preserved, the doors to these rooms have been preserved, you walk through them completely normally, you feel completely comfortable in them, these are all carved in stone. So, that is, the creatures were building, but the fact that they pulled these blocks up the mountain, and these are not only blocks, these are the rooms in which we are sitting comfortably, about the same size, carved entirely out of stone. Here was a stone, there was such a block, and a hole was cut out, then windows were cut out, and so on, all this was dragged up the mountain. That is, these, again, are creatures who possessed some unimaginable superhuman ability. Also exactly many underground structures, because, for example, in Taklarin I saw a preserved toilet underground, which was clearly for creatures of an ordinary, normal human physique, approximately, it was built according to a similar principle. And at the same time, some buildings, such as in Cappadocia, were apparently built by some kind of dwarfs. I can’t give a better comparison than this Chud, which is in the Urals, and, by the way, that there were people there Chud, we were told about this back in the first year of the institute so unofficially that all copper deposits were found in the footsteps of this mysterious dwarf people, Chud. In fairy tales this is called gnomes, that is, some kind of dwarf shelter, because you literally have to crawl through many underground structures almost on all fours. This is especially evident in Cappadacia, in Israel, in underground cities, that their construction often took place in several stages.

That is, at first some machines worked, mechanisms made halls, magnificent vaulted arches, columns carved in stone, sculptures, apparently, stood. I even found some kind of handwritten writing in one such room, and showed it to the specialists, the stamped writing was clearly from the time when it was built. Their interpretation was different, one specialist from Serbia said that this is approximately an ancient Slavic date, which approximately corresponds to the third millennium BC. Now, given that this building, since there are many bas-relief crosses carved into it, officially dates back to the Byzantine era. Well, you understand, this is our Christian era. Other experts generally said that this is not a date, but is written, like, I don’t remember verbatim now, “legacy from past to future civilizations.” Here, that is, as it were, this is what we will die, or we will perish, but this will survive centuries and remain forever, that is, this is the translation of this structure, but this is quite interesting. And, apparently, there were some kind of statues, and, for example, in the Valley of Love in Cappadocia I saw a place where the bas-reliefs of these statues were preserved. They are eaten away by severe erosion, smoothed out, in the Greater Yazilikaya plateau in Turkey in the Phrygian Valley, between Athinyonkarahisar city and Şehir, about 200 kilometers west of Ankara. On the Great Yazilikaya plateau, where erosion is also smoothed out, stone monuments of lions, elephants, some birds and other mythical animals have been preserved and are quite clearly visible in photographs; their contours are difficult to recognize, but they are recognizable from different angles, because, apparently , millions of years have passed since they were made. Stone thrones, wells, and so on have been preserved there, that is, all this is the heritage of ancient civilizations.

Civilizations, as I said, most likely were different, that is, giants, civilization, some of these were built, some were built by creatures close to us in physique, at least those cities that I call elven. Perhaps these are mythical elves who had superpowers. Dwarves, it’s just that ordinary people came next, who... Every civilization that occurred made changes to underground cities, completed building them. For example, if at first the machines worked, then they began to work with the help of ordinary stone chisels, and this is often misleading. In addition, for example, in Turkey, again in the Çavuşin region, we observed how some modern forces were driving around and using chisels, spoiling these perfectly carved stone structures. Apparently, in order to also create the illusion among tourists, perhaps among specialists, that this is not an ancient building of some primitive savages, but of some kind of high civilization.

* Additional Information:
On the website "" you will find detailed story about artifacts and evidence of the ancient history of mankind. -

The origins of architecture date back to the late Neolithic. It was then that stone was already used for the construction of monumental buildings. But the purpose of most of the monuments that have come down to us from that period is not known.

Megaliths(from Greek - large stone) - structures made of huge blocks of stone, characteristic of the late Neolithic. All megaliths can be divided into two categories. The first includes the most ancient architectural structures of prehistoric (preliterate) societies: menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens, temples of the island of Malta,). For them, stones were either not processed at all or with minimal processing. The cultures that left these monuments are called megalithic. Megalithic culture also includes labyrinths (structures made of small stones), and individual stones with petroglyphs (traces). Constructions of more advanced societies (tombs of Japanese emperors and dolmens of Korean nobility) are also considered megalithic architecture.

The second category consists of structures of more developed architecture. These are mainly structures made of very large stones, which are given a geometrically correct shape. Such megalithic architecture is typical of early states, but was also built in later times. These are monuments of the Mediterranean - Egyptian pyramids, structures Mycenaean civilization, Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In South America - some buildings in Tiwanaku, Ollantaytambo, Sacsayhuaman. Tiwanaku, Sacsayhuamane, Ollantaytambo.

Menhir– it is usually a free-standing stone with traces of working, sometimes oriented in some way or marking a particular direction.

Cromlech – This is a circle of standing stones, in varying degrees of preservation and with different orientations. The term henge has the same meaning. This term is usually used in relation to structures of this type in the UK. However, similar structures existed in prehistoric times also in Germany (Goloring, Goseck Circle) and in other countries.

Dolmen is something like a stone house.

All of them are united by the name “ megaliths”, which simply translates to “big stones”. For the most part, according to some scientists, they served for burials or were associated with the funeral cult. There are other opinions. Apparently, megaliths are communal buildings with a socializing function. Their construction was a very difficult task for primitive technology and required the unification of large masses of people.

Gobekli Tepe, Türkiye Complex on the Armenian Highlands It is considered the oldest of the largest megalithic structures (approximately X-IX millennium BC). At that time, people were still hunting and gathering, but someone was able to erect circles of huge steles with images of animals. The shape of the temple resembles concentric circles, of which there are about twenty. According to experts, the complex was deliberately covered with sand in the seventh millennium BC, so for more than nine thousand years the temple was hidden by the Gobekli Tepe hill, whose height was almost fifteen meters and its diameter was about three hundred meters.

Some megalithic structures were important ceremonial centers associated with the cult of the dead. For example, a complex of more than 3,000 stones in Carnac (Brittany), France. Megaliths up to four meters high are arranged in slender alleys, the rows run parallel to each other or fan out, and in some places form circles. The complex dates back to the 5th–4th millennium BC. There were legends in Brittany that the great Merlin turned the ranks of Roman legionnaires to stone.

Megaliths at Carnac (Brittany) France

Other megalith complexes have been used to determine the timing of astronomical events such as solstices and equinoxes. In the Nabta Playa area in the Nubian desert b A megalithic structure was found that served for astronomical purposes. This archaeoastronomical monument is 1000 years older than Stonehenge. The location of the megaliths makes it possible to determine the day of the summer solstice. Archaeologists believe that people lived here seasonally, when there was water in the lake, and therefore needed a calendar.

Nabta Observatory, Nubia, Sahara

Stonehenge is a structure of 82 five-ton megaliths, 30 stone blocks weighing 25 tons and 5 huge so-called trilithons, stones weighing up to 50 tons. Folded stone blocks form arches that once served as a perfect indicator of the cardinal directions. Scientists suggest that this monument was built in 3100 BC by tribes living in the British Isles to observe the Sun and Moon. The ancient monolith is not only a solar and lunar calendar, as previously thought, but also represents an accurate cross-sectional model of the solar system.

Stonehenge, UK, Salisbury.

A mathematical comparison of the parameters of various geometric figures of the cromlech made it possible to establish that they are all a reflection of the parameters of various planets of our system, and model the orbits of their rotation around the Sun. But the most amazing thing is that Stonehenge depicts the orbits of 12 planets of the solar system, although today it is believed that there are only 9 of them. Astronomers have long hypothesized that beyond the outer orbit of Pluto there are two more planets unknown to us, and the asteroid belt, which is located between the orbits Mars and Jupiter are the remains of the once existing twelfth planet of the solar system. How could the ancient builders know about this?

There is another interesting version about the purpose of Stonehenge. Excavations of a path along which ritual processions walked in ancient times confirm the hypothesis that Stonehenge was built along the Ice Age relief, which ended up on the solstice axis. The place was special: an amazing natural landscape was located on the very axis of the solstice, as if connecting earth and sky.

Cromlech Brougar or Temple of the Sun , Orkney Islands. Initially it had 60 elements, but now it consists of 27 rocks. Archaeologists date the Cromlech of Brodgar or the ring of Brodgar to 2500 - 2000 BC. The area where the Brodgar monument is located is ritual, sacred, and communicative. It is literally stuffed with burial mounds, group and individual burials, even a “cathedral,” as well as the dwellings and villages of Neolithic people. All these monuments are united into a single complex, protected by UNESCO. Archaeological research is currently being carried out on the Orkney Islands.

Cromlech Broughgar or Sun Temple, Orkney

Dolmens. Scientists believe that the approximate age dolmens are 3–10 thousand years old. The most famous dolmens are located in Scandinavia, on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe and Africa, on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, in the Kuban region, and in India. However, most of them are in the Caucasus - about 2.5 thousand! Here along the Black Sea coast (megaliths generally gravitate towards the seas) you can find “classical” tiled dolmens, monolithic dolmens, entirely hollowed out in the rock, dolmen structures made from a combination of stone slabs and blocks laid in two or more rows. They also talk about the spiritual filling of these amazing structures, their energy charges.

Dolmen in the valley of the Zhane River

Maltese temples were built long before the Egyptian pyramids - in the Bronze Age. Their age is more than 5000 years. It is curious that all these structures were built without the use of iron tools. The scale of all megaliths is so grandiose that local residents believed that they were built by giant giants. The question still remains open of how ancient people managed to build such tall buildings from huge stones up to 7 meters in size and weighing up to 20 tons, without using a binding solution, if we remember that temples were built even before the invention of the wheel. Scientists have established that the cultures of prehistoric Malta are largely related to Sicily, so it is possible that Malta was the cult center of the Sicilian Neolithic peoples.

There is not a single temple that has survived in its original form to this day. It is believed that only four of them have survived relatively intact - the temples of Ggantija, Hadjar Kvim, Mnajdra and Tarshin. Although they too suffered the sad fate of a not entirely reliable reconstruction.

Temples of Ggantija in Šara(Xaghra - “giant”) are located in the center of the island of Gozo and are one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. Today, the Ggantija temples are believed to have been built around 3600 BC.

The structure consists of two separate temples with different entrances, but a common back wall. Each of the temples has a slightly concave facade, in front of which there is a platform of large stone blocks. The oldest temple in the complex consists of three semicircular rooms arranged in the shape of a trefoil.

Modern scientists believe that such a trinity symbolizes the past, present and future or birth, life and death. According to a common version, the temple complex was a sanctuary for the worship of the goddess of fertility. Findings discovered during archaeological work help to draw this conclusion. But there is another version, according to which Ggantija is nothing more than a tomb. People of the megalithic era really devoted too much time and effort to observing traditions. Honoring their ancestors, they built grandiose tombs, and later, these places were used as sanctuaries where they worshiped the gods.

Among the listed ruins, the ruins of the three walls (“fortress”) of Saxauman, about 600 m long, are of greatest interest. 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 m x 4 m. The blocks of the second and third walls are slightly smaller than the blocks of the first tier.

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

Cusco
In Cusco there are remains of cyclopean walls made of huge stone blocks, also filigreely fitted to each other. One of these buildings is the Inca Palace.

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

The website “Living Ethics in Germany” presents a truly fantastic hypothesis that the ancient builders of South American megalithic structures softened rocky 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 building site using telekinesis, and there they laid them in the walls, fitting one to another through the same method of softening rock blocks into a plastic substance, giving them the desired shape on the spot. Only in this way can one explain the strange shape of the giant buildings of Ollantaytambo, the Inca Palace in Cusco, the walls of Sacsahuaman, the ruins of Tiahuanaco, the ahu pedestals on Easter Island and other similar buildings.

Read my work"Siddhi powers and reasons for the superhuman abilities of human predecessors"

Giant monolithic sculptures South America and Easter Island

In addition to the ruins, an important part of the megalithic culture of South America are giant monolithic sculptures in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, on the island. Easter, as well as "Olmec heads" in Mexico. The height of such sculptures reaches 7-10 m, and their 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 are located on a slopeRano Raraku volcano. They are neck-deep 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 human and animal heads on the Marcaguasi plateau

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

Stone balls made of granite and obsidian from Central America and Mexico

Further 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 (New Mexico). Among them there are real giants with a diameter of up to 3 m.The determination of the absolute age of the Mexican obsidian balls showed that they were formedin the tertiary period "even before man appeared" (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 them are the ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon. The weight of each of the three stone blocks in Trilithon, located 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 located... 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 sticks out the world's largest processed stone - Southern or Mother - weighing about 1200 tons and measuring 21.5 x 4.8 x 4.2 m
The author of the books “Gods of the New Millennium” and “The Way of the Phoenix,” Alan Alford, asked heavy-duty crane specialists whether it was possible to lift such a huge thing. They answered in the affirmative, but added that it would be possible to move with the block only if you put the crane on a crawler track and make good road. This means that the builders of the foundation of Baalbek had a similar technique?

1) Menhirs (from the Celtic word menhir) - one of the types of megalithic monuments in the form of individual vertically placed stones, sometimes forming parallel rows several kilometers long; found in Brittany (France), England and Scandinavia; on the territory of the USSR - in the Caucasus and Siberia.

2) Dolmens (from the Breton words tol - table, and men - stone) - structures of the Neolithic, Bronze and Early Iron Ages * in the form of huge stones, placed on edge and covered with a massive slab on top; found in Europe, India and other countries; in the USSR - in the Caucasus and Crimea; they had not only funeral, but also religious and magical significance.

*) Neolithic era - the last era of the Stone Age: 6-5 millennium BC. - 2nd millennium BC Characterized by a settled population, the emergence of cattle breeding and agriculture, and the invention of ceramics; stone tools are well polished; a variety of products made of bone and wood; spinning and weaving appear. Ancient bronze is an alloy of copper and tin; deposits of these metals are rare in nature, therefore bronze was highly valued and was accessible to few - along with bronze products, people continued to use stone tools, until the 7th century BC, when they began to mine iron from bog and other ores widely distributed in nature. Iron turned out to be an inexpensive and widely available metal High Quality, soon replaced bronze products and firmly entered the life of the peoples of the Old World. The Iron Age began.

3) Cromlechs (from the Breton words crom circle and lech - stone) are structures of the Neolithic era and mainly of the Bronze Age in the form of round fences made of huge stone blocks and pillars (up to 6-7 meters in height); found in Europe, Asia and America; most of them are in Western France (Brittany) and England; they certainly had religious and magical significance.

In the southern Russian steppes, until recently, cromlechs were preserved, encircling many mounds of the Yamsk culture of the 3rd millennium BC. This is a belt of large stone blocks or slabs placed on edge, with a diameter of up to 20 meters. According to academician A.A. Formozov, slabs of such a cromlech near the village of Verbovka in the Dnieper region, dragged 60 kilometers from near Chigirin, were covered with various geometric patterns. Once upon a time, a wooden tent rested on this stone ornamental frieze, and the earthen and turf base of the entire structure was hidden in the depths."

Cromlechs are structures of great antiquity, from various countries and peoples. H. P. Blavatsky in her "Secret Doctrine" mentions "a mysterious people who built circles of stones in Galilee and covered Neolithic flints in the Jordan Valley."

Both Western European and Russian researchers worked thoroughly on the study of megaliths, all of them have long been registered and described in detail in the scientific literature; a map of dolmens around the world has even been compiled. But little is still known about the occult significance of megaliths, and this information is often contradictory. It is impossible to use all the existing literature for a short article, so we must give preference to just a few serious fundamental works that deserve the greatest confidence. Such a work for us, esotericists, is, first of all, the “Secret Doctrine” of H. P. Blavatsky, in the second volume of which a thorough description is given of the most outstanding megalithic structures in many countries ancient world and their occult significance is explained. Therefore, we will use the material collected by H. P. Blavatsky and supplement it with information from other also reliable and trustworthy sources. Here is what H. P. Blavatsky writes about megalithic structures:

"The modern archaeologist, although he will speculate ad infinitum about dolmens and their builders, actually knows nothing about them or their origin. Nevertheless, these strange and often colossal monuments of rough stones, usually consisting of four or seven gigantic blocks, placed side by side, scattered in groups or rows throughout Asia, Europe, America and Africa. Stones of enormous size are placed horizontally and variously on two, three or four blocks, and in Poitou on six or seven. the devil", druidic stones and the tombs of giants. The stones of Carnac at Morbigan, Brittany (France), stretching for almost a mile and numbering up to 11,000 stones distributed in rows, are twin brothers of the stones at Stonehenge (England). The conical menhir at Loch Mariaker at Morbihan it measures 20 yards in length and about two yards across. The menhir at Champ Dolen (near Saint-Malo) rises thirty feet above the ground and goes fifteen feet underground. Similar dolmens and prehistoric monuments are found at almost every latitude. They are found in the Mediterranean reservoir; in Denmark among the local mounds from twenty to thirty-five feet in height; in Scotland, in Sweden, where they are called Ganggriften (or graves with corridors); in Germany, where they are known as the graves of giants (Günen-greb); in Spain, where the Antiguera dolmen is located near Malaga; in Africa; in Palestine and Algeria; in Sardinia, together with Nuraghi and Sepolture dei Giganta or tombs of giants; in Malabar, in India, where they are called the graves of Daityas and Rakshasas, demon people from Lanka... in Peru and Bolivia, where they are called Chul-pa or burial places, and so on. There is no country in which they are absent."

In this passage from The Secret Doctrine, let us pay attention to the fact that people call megaliths thrones of the devil and Druid stones. Of course, megaliths have never had and have nothing to do with evil, dark forces, and if people call them “thrones of the devil,” this only indicates that in ancient times they were associated with religious and magical actions and ceremonies, because under under the influence of the Christian church, all pre-Christian beliefs and rituals began to be considered pagan, devilish. As for the “Druid stones,” of course, not all megaliths are called such, but only those erected on the territory of ancient Gaul, spiritually nourished by the Druids. All megalithic structures that have survived to this day in France were once erected by the hands of the ancient Gauls, and in England by the hands of the ancient Britons, under the instructions and guidance of the Druids.

It has been established that most of the surviving megalithic structures such as dolmens, both in Europe and on other continents, are related to the funeral cult: during excavations in or near the dolmens, human bones or urns with ashes are found. But E.P. Blavatsky also drew attention to the fact that not all megalithic (or in her terminology, Cyclopean) structures were intended for tombs. According to her, “it is certain that the two famous mounds, one in the Mississippi Valley and the other in Ohio, respectively known as “Alligator Mound” and the other as “Great Serpent Mound” were never intended for graves. The following is a description from one scientific work: “The first of these animals (the alligator) is drawn with considerable skill, and it is no less than 260 feet in length... The interior is a pile of stones, over which a form has been sculpted from thin, hard clay. The Great Serpent is depicted with his mouth open as he swallows an egg, the diameter of which was 100 feet at its widest part, the body of the animal bending in grandiose twists and the tail curled into a spiral. The entire length of the animal is 1100 feet. This is a masterful creation, one of a kind... and there is nothing on the Old Continent that would represent any analogy to it,” however, with the exception of its symbol of the Serpent (Cycle of Time) swallowing an egg (Cosmos).

H.P. Blavatsky is certainly right: in ancient times, megalithic structures were erected not only as tombs of ancestors, but also had a higher purpose, for example, religious and religious-magical, as occult centers, a kind of “radio station” (for international communication initiates, for performing cosmic mysteries, etc.). We must not forget that in ancient times, not only in the Paleolithic, but also in the Neolithic era, man was closer to nature than now, he was in a living, indissoluble connection with it, then the mineral kingdom stood closer to the human world, between man and stones there was contact and even a kind of mutual understanding.

H.P. Blavatsky in the second volume of her “Secret Doctrine” refers to the extensive work of De Mirville: “Memoires adressees aux Academies”, which contains historical evidence that in ancient times, in the days of miracles, both pagan and biblical stones they moved, spoke, pronounced prophecies and even sang... In “Achaica” we see how Pausanias admits that at the beginning of his work he considered the Greeks very stupid for their “worship of stones.” But when he reached Arcadia, he adds: "I changed my mind." Therefore, without any worship of stones or stone idols and statues, which is one and the same thing - a crime for which the Catholics of the Roman Church foolishly reproach the pagans - one can be allowed to believe in what so many great philosophers and holy men believed in, without deserving the nickname "idiot" from modern Pausanias.

The reader is invited to contact the Academie des Inscriptions if he wishes to study the various properties of flints and stones from the point of view of magical and psychic powers. In the poem about the Stones, attributed to Orpheus, these stones are divided into ophites and siderites, into the “Snake Stone” and the “Star Stone”.

“The Ophite is rough, hard, heavy, black and has the gift of speech: when thrown, it makes a sound like the cry of a child. It was through this stone that Helenius predicted the death of Troy, his homeland.”

Sanchuniathon and Philo of Byblos, speaking of these “betyles,” call them “animate stones.” Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidore and the physician Eusebius asserted before him. In particular, Eusebius never parted with his ophite, which he wore on his chest and received prophecies from it, transmitted to him “in a quiet voice, reminiscent of a light whistle.” Of course, this is the same as the “still small voice” heard by Elijah after the earthquake at the entrance to the cave.

Arnobius, a holy man who “from a pagan became one of the lights of the church,” as Christians tell their readers, confesses that when he encountered one of these stones, he could never resist asking him a question, “to which he sometimes received answer in a clear and distinct voice." Where, then, is the difference between a Christian and a pagan ophite, we ask?

The famous stone at Westminster was called Liafail, the "speaking stone," and it raised its voice only to name the king to be chosen. Cambree, in his work "Celtic Monuments," says that he saw it when it still had the inscription:

Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem. Rocking stones or "logan" have various names: such as clacha-brath among the Celts, "stone of fate or judgment"; the prophecy stone or "test stone", and the stone oracle; the moving or animate stone of the Phoenicians; grumbling stone of the Irish. The Bretons have their "swinging stones" in Huelgoat "e. They are found in the Old and New Worlds; in the British Isles, France, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc., as well as in North America. (See " Letters from North America" ​​by Hodson, vol. II, p. 440). Pliny mentions several of these in Asia. ("Natural History", vol. I, p. 96). And Apollonius of Rhodes expands on rocking stones and says that they are "stones placed on top of the Mound, and they are so sensitive that thought can set them in motion" (Ackerman, "Art. Index", p. 34), no doubt referring to the ancient priests who moved such stones by will on distance.

Finally, Svid speaks of a certain Herescus, who could, at one glance, distinguish motionless stones from those that were endowed with movement. And Pliny mentions stones that “ran away when a hand touched them” (See Abbot Bertrand’s “Dictionary of Religions”).

H. P. Blavatsky draws attention to the ruins of Stonehenge, where, according to her, there are real forests of rocks - huge monoliths, some of them weigh about 500,000 kilograms. There is an assumption that these "hanging" stones in the Salisbury valley represent the remains of a Druid temple. They are distributed in such a symmetrical order that they represent a planisphere. They are set on such a remarkable point of balance that they seem to scarcely touch the ground, and although they can be set in motion by the slightest touch of a finger, yet they would not yield to the efforts of twenty men if they attempted to move them.

H. P. Blavatsky considers most of these monoliths to be relics of the last Atlanteans and disputes the opinion of geologists who claim their natural origin: as if the rocks were weathered, i.e. under atmospheric influences they lose layer after layer of their substance and take on this form; these are the "mountain peaks" in Western England. All scientists believe that all these "swaying stones owe their origin to natural causes, wind, rain, etc., causing the destruction of rocky layers" and strongly reject the statement of H. P. Blavatsky, especially for the reason that according to their observation, “This process of changing rocks continues around us to this day.” Therefore, this issue needs to be thoroughly studied.

Geologists admit that often these gigantic blocks of stone are completely alien to the places where they are now located and belong to rocks that are found only far beyond the seas and are completely unknown in the places where they are now found.

"William Tooke, speaking of the huge blocks of granite scattered in southern Russia and Siberia, says that where they are now there are no rocks or mountains, and that they must have been brought "from afar with the help of fabulous efforts." Charton speaks of a sample of such rock from Ireland, which was analyzed by a famous English geologist, who determined its origin was foreign, perhaps even African.

This is a strange coincidence, for Irish tradition attributes the origin of its round stones to a sorcerer who brought them from Africa. De Mirville sees in this sorcerer the “damned Hamite.” We see in him only an Atlantean, or perhaps even one of the early Lemurians who survived before the birth of the British Isles.

"Dr. John Watson, speaking of the moving rocks or "swinging stones" placed on the slope of Golkar ("Sorcerer"), says: "The amazing movement of these blocks, set in balance, caused the Celts to equate them with the gods." Flinders Petrie's work "Stonehenge" states that: "Stonehenge is built of stone located in the area of ​​​​red sandstone or sarsen stone, locally called "gray rams." But some of the stones, especially those said to be of astronomical significance, were brought from afar, probably from Northern Ireland."

In conclusion, it is worth quoting the thoughts on this issue of one scientist in an article published in 1850 in the Archaeological Review: “Each stone is a block, the weight of which would test the most powerful machines. In a word, there are blocks scattered throughout the globe, blocks, at the sight of which the imagination is confused and the designation of which by the word materials seems meaningless; they should be called by names corresponding to these bulks. In addition, these huge, swinging stones, sometimes called Pouters, placed with one end on the point of such a perfect. balance, that the slightest touch is enough to set them in motion... reveal the most positive knowledge of statics, surface and plane, convex and concave in turn - all this connects them with cyclopean structures, which can be said with sufficient reason, repeating the words of De la Vega that "apparently the demons worked more on them than the people."

And further H. P. Blavatsky writes: “We do not intend to touch upon the various traditions associated with swinging stones. However, it may not be a bad idea to remind the reader of Giraldus Cambrenzis, who mentions the same stone on the island of Mona, which returned to its place, despite to all efforts to keep it in another. During the conquest of Ireland by Henry II., Count Hugo Sestrenzis, wanting to personally verify the truth of this fact, tied the stone of Mona to a much larger stone and ordered them to be thrown into the sea. The next morning the stone was found in its usual place. place. The scientist William Salisbury confirms this fact, testifying to the presence of this stone in the church, where he saw it in 1554. This reminds us of what Pliny says about the stone left by the Argonauts in Sizicum and which the inhabitants of Sizicum placed in the Prytheneum. , “from which he escaped several times, so that they must have weighed him down with lead.” But here we are dealing with huge stones, attested by all antiquity as “living, moving, speaking and self-moving.” They also apparently could put people to flight, for they were called "routers", from the word "rout" or "to put to flight." De Musso points out that they were all prophecy stones and were sometimes called "mad stones."

The rocking stone is recognized by science. But why does it swing? One would have to be blind not to see that this movement was another means of divination and that for this reason they were called “stones of truth.” (De Mirville, ibid., p. 291).

Richardson and Barth are said to have been amazed to find in the Sahara Desert the same trilithons and raised stones that they had encountered in Asia, the Caucasus, Circassia, Etruria and throughout Northern Europe. Rivett-Carnac of Allahabad, a renowned archaeologist, expresses the same astonishment on reading the descriptions given by Sir J. Simpson of the cup-shaped marks on the stones and rocks of England, Scotland and other Western countries, "showing an extraordinary resemblance to the marks on the boulders which surrounded .mounds near Nagpur - the City of Snakes. The outstanding scientist saw in this “another and very unusual addition to the whole mass of evidence that a branch of nomadic tribes, which in an ancient era passed through Europe, also penetrated into India.” Lemuria, Atlantis and its Giants and the earliest races of the Fifth Root Race all had a hand in the construction of these betils, litas and generally “magic stones”. The bowl-shaped marks noted by Sir J. Simpson, and the "recesses cut into the surface" of rocks and monuments found by Rivett-Carnac, "of various sizes from six inches to one and a half inches in diameter and from one to one and a half inches in depth, usually placed along perpendicular lines, showing numerous variations in the number and size and distribution of cups" - are simply the recorded records of the most ancient races. Whoever carefully examines the drawings made from the same signs in the "Archaeological Notes on Ancient Inscriptions on Rocks in Kumaon, India", etc., will find in them the most primitive style of notes or recordings. Something similar was adopted by the American inventors of the Morse telegraph code, which reminds us of the Ogham letter, a combination of long and short lines, as Rivette-Carnac describes it, “carved into sandstone.” Sweden, Norway and Scandinavia are full of similar recorded records, for Runic letters resemble signs, in the form of a bowl and long and short lines. In the Tome of Johannes Magnus one can see the image of a demigod, the giant Starhaterus (Starkad, a student of Hrosaharsgrani, a magician), who holds under each hand a huge stone with runic inscriptions on it. This Starkad, according to Scandinavian legends, went to Ireland and performed wonderful feats in the North and South, East and West. (See "Azgard and the Gods", pp. 218-221).

This is history, for the past of prehistoric times testifies to the same fact in later centuries. Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the most ancient “rocks of fate” of the oldest peoples; and their movement or swing was a completely clear code for the initiated priests, who alone possessed the keys to this ancient method of reading. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that it was by order of the oracle, whose voice spoke through “those huge blocks of stone, raised by the colossal power of the (ancient) giants,” that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Thus, Pliny says:

“In India and Persia, it was from her (the Persian Otisoe) that the magicians had to seek advice when electing their rulers.” (Pliny - “Natural History”, 37, 54). And further Pliny describes a block of stone over Kharpasa in Asia, and installed in such a way that “the touch of one finger can set it in motion, while it cannot be moved from its place by the entire weight of the body.” (Ibid., 2, 38). Why, then, could not the rocking stones of Ireland, or at Brimham, in Yorkshire, serve for the same methods of divination and prophetic messages? The largest among them are obviously relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller ones, like the rocks of Bringham, with rotating stones on their tops, are copies of older stones. If in the Middle Ages the bishops had not destroyed all the plans of Dracontia that only they could lay their hands on, science would have known more about these stones. But nevertheless we know that they were in general use throughout many prehistoric centuries, and they all served the same purpose, for divination and magical purposes. E. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published an article in the "Antiquites de France" (Vol. IX) proving the identity in the location of Chatamperamba ("Field of Death" or ancient burial places in Malabar) with the ancient tombs at Karnak; that is, that they have "an elevation into the central grave."

Esotericists know that in ancient times initiates of all nations, including the Slavic Magi, traveled a lot and visited occult and religious centers of other, often very distant countries. H. P. Blavatsky writes about such travels of Egyptian priests - initiates; According to her, there are records that they “traveled northwards overland, along a path that later became the Strait of Gibraltar, then turned north and passed through the future settlements of the Phoenicians in southern Gaul; then further north until they reached Karnaca (Morbihan), and then they turned west again and arrived, continuing to go overland to the northwestern cape of the New Continent,” to that land “that is now the British Isles, which were then not yet separated from the main continent of the Ancients. the inhabitants of Picardy could cross to Great Britain without crossing the canal. The British Isles were connected to Gaul by an isthmus, which has since been covered by waters."

H. P. Blavatsky poses the question: what was the purpose of the long journey of the Egyptian priests? And how far back should the time of such visits be taken? According to her, “archaic records indicate that initiates of the second sub-race of the Aryan family moved from one country to another for the purpose of overseeing the construction of menhirs and dolmens, colossal Zodiacs made of stones, as well as tomb sites that were to serve as receptacles for the ashes of future generations. When did this happen? The fact of their passage from France to Great Britain by land can give an idea of ​​the time when such a journey could have been made by land."

This was when "the level of the Baltic and North Seas was 400 feet higher than at present. The Somne Valley did not yet exist to the depth that it has now reached; Sicily was connected to Africa, the Barbary possessions to Spain, Carthage, the pyramids of Egypt, the palaces of Uxamala and Palenque did not yet exist, and the brave sailors of Tire and Sidon, who in later times were destined to make their dangerous journeys along the coast of Africa, have not yet been born. We only know with certainty that European man was a contemporary of the extinct species of the Quaternary era.

"The above-mentioned journeys of the Egyptian initiates, namely, had to do with the so-called Druidic remains, like Karnak in Brittany and Stonehenge in Great Britain. And all these gigantic monuments are symbolic records of world history. They are not Druidical, but universal. Also, it was not the Druids who built them, for they were only the heirs of the legends about the Cyclops, bequeathed to them by generations of powerful builders and “magicians, both good and bad.”

This is what H. P. Blavatsky writes. It also recalls the striking similarities between the ancient colossal buildings in Peru (for example, at Kuenlap) with the architecture of the archaic European peoples. According to her, the similarity between the ruins of the Inca civilization and the Cyclopean remains of the Pelasgians in Italy and Greece is not a mere coincidence - there is a certain connection between them, which can be explained simply by the origin of the groups of peoples who erected these structures from one common center on the Atlantic continent.

The above information about ancient megalithic structures from the “Secret Doctrine” of H. P. Blavatsky is very interesting and significant, but not complete. Therefore, let us supplement them with some data on megaliths that have survived to this day in eastern and southern Asia and on the territory of the USSR.

In eastern Indochina, in Upper Laos on the Channing Plateau, megalithic structures are still preserved - concentric rows of monolithic stones. According to M. Kolani, the Puok people living on this plateau claim that these megaliths served as a meeting place for the Kha Tuongs, and the central stone was occupied by the supreme leader. About who the Kha-Thuongs were, Kolani cites a legend widespread in Upper Laos:

"The Kxia-tuongs were the ancestors of the kings of the country. Having been defeated by the Thais, descending from Tibet, they went south and ended up in the region between Bandon and Annam. Their descendants became the kings of water and fire. The first lives in Patao-Ya, the second in Patao -Lum.* All Kha consider these kings to be the descendants of the ancient Jarai kings and revere them.

This legend tells about events of ancient times. It is significant that the myths about the kings of water and fire are supplemented by the peoples of eastern Indochina with a whole series of legends about migrations from the distant North, during which the people were led by sorcerers armed with magic swords and who brought with them the foundations of the megalithic cult and ideas about power. Similar legends about the arrival from the distant North were preserved among other Indonesian peoples of eastern Indochina: the Rada, the Jarai and others. Unfortunately, the legends do not contain precise instructions about the route of these migrations; only the arrival from the north along the Mekong is mentioned.

*) The etymology of the Jarayan term “patao” is significant. According to the scientist S. Meyer, this word means not only “king”, but also “stone”. Therefore, the Jarai kings are primarily the guardians of the sacred stone in which the spirit of Yang Patao resides. The word "Yang" actually means "spirit".

In her work on the megaliths of Laos, M. Kolani did not resolve the issue of the ethnicity of the builders of the megaliths, but this is not of significant importance for us; the main thing is that she rightly considers the megaliths of Laos to be one of the stages of megalithic migration and, based on the finds of iron objects accompanying them, dates them to the first centuries of our era, i.e. a time somewhat preceding Indian influence in Indochina.

Ancient megaliths, and all the main types of these structures known to modern scientists, have been preserved to this day in Tibet, a country that has been relatively little explored and is fraught with many surprises. In 1928, the Central Asian expedition of Nicholas Roerich discovered typical menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs in the Trans-Himalayan region. N.K. Roerich writes:

"You can imagine how wonderful it is to see these long rows of stones, these stone circles, which vividly transport you to Carnac, to Brittany, to the ocean shore. After a long journey, the prehistoric Druids remembered their distant homeland... In any case, this discovery completed our quest for the movement of peoples."

Thus, according to the highly authoritative opinion of N.K. Roerich, the ancient Celts, the builders of the megaliths of Karnak, came to Europe from Tibet (or one of the countries adjacent to it) and on the new lands they developed, on the territory of modern France and Belgium, began to build according to tradition , under the leadership of their spiritual leaders the Druids, the same megalithic structures as in their distant Asian ancestral home.

Very unique megalithic structures were discovered in Tibet by Yuri Nikolaevich Roerich (the eldest son of Nicholas Konstantinovich). Northeast of Lhasa, he discovered a whole group of megaliths, of which the outermost stone has the shape of an arrow and, in his opinion, should be considered as a symbol of lightning, and in general this entire area with megaliths is a reflection of the cult of nature and, as it were, represents a stage for cosmic rituals.

Other researchers hold a similar opinion: Z. Hummel, G. Tucci and A. Franke; they believe that Tibetan megalithic structures are labyrinthine sites for cosmic mysteries.

A similar interpretation is given by the English astronomer J. Hawkins to the famous megalithic structure of Great Britain - Stonehenge. He compared his observations with the stories of the descendants of the Celtic priests (Druids) and then processed all the data obtained using an electronic computer. As a result, he came to the conclusion that the seemingly strange arrangement of the Stonehenge stones accurately reflects the position of the rising and setting sun on certain days of the year and that with the help of this structure it is even possible to predict eclipses.

Most of the megalithic structures scattered throughout the face of the earth are a reflection of the idea that found its most vivid embodiment in ancient Gaul, in the Druid megaliths. However, not all megaliths are related in spirit to the Druid ones and are related to the telluric and cosmic mysteries. For example, in eastern India, in the densely forested valley of the Dhansira River, amazing stone monoliths have been preserved to this day, which are 16 huge blocks of sandstone arranged in four rows. Images of peacocks, parrots, buffaloes, and various plants are carved on them. Judging by their shape (these monoliths are shaped like male and female fertility symbols), they belong to the phallic cult. Führer-Haimendorff calls this group of monoliths "a stone orgy of fertility symbols."

In the valley of the Dhansira River in the 16th century there was Dimapur - the ancient capital of the Kachari state, which in the 14th-17th centuries. extended its power to a significant part of modern Assam. But the possibility cannot be ruled out that the monoliths were created not by the Kachars, but by the vanished civilization that preceded them, as some researchers are inclined to think (this issue has not yet been finally resolved).

Finally, it should be noted that in Southeast Asia, on the Malay Peninsula, there existed in ancient times its own special civilization, the development of which was stimulated by constant ties with India, China and the countries of the Arab East. One of the foundations of this peculiar civilization was “an ancient cult of stones, now hardly accessible to direct observation, but once the most important component of natural, in particular cosmological Cults, as can be judged by Skeet’s remark: “... some Malays imagined that the firmament is something like a stone or rock, which they call “batu hampar”, i.e. flat stone, and the appearance of stars is explained (as they thought) by the fact that light penetrates through holes made in this stone."

Let us now consider the megaliths of the Caucasus, based on the work of academician A.A. Formozov: “Monuments of primitive art on the territory of the USSR”, Moscow, 1966, p. 128; The fourth chapter of this study (pp. 76-87) is devoted to Caucasian dolmens.

On the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, significant groups of dolmens have survived to this day near Gelendzhik, Dzhubga, Lazarevsky, Esheri and some other places. These tombs of the primitive era are strange stone houses, built from five huge hewn slabs. The earliest of them were built more than four thousand years ago, and the latest date back to the middle of the first millennium BC. It was then (about five hundred years BC) that real dolmens stopped being built in the Caucasus, but crypts similar in shape, built not from monoliths, but from small stones, were erected until the 11th-12th centuries. new era.)

Once upon a time, before the conquest of the Caucasus by Russia, there were thousands of dolmens there, standing untouched for 3-4 thousand years. But after the annexation of the Caucasus to Russia, their number began to quickly decrease, because the incoming Russian population did not spare these alien and “orphan” ancient monuments.*

The dolmens of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus are, indeed, cyclopean structures, although they were erected not by giants, but by ordinary people. For example, one of the dolmens on Esheri is made of slabs 3.7 meters long and up to half a meter thick. Its roof alone weighs 22.5 tons. It is not easy to lift such a weight to the level of the walls, and this is by no means the only problem. Stones were often delivered many kilometers away. Far from the mountains in the steppe Kuban region, a dolmen was found covered with a slab, which ten people with difficulty threw down. Undoubtedly, it would be necessary to try many variants of funeral structures in order to arrive at the classic design: four slabs placed on an edge, carrying a fifth slab - a flat ceiling... The whole complexity of this matter can only be comprehended through personal experience.

*) Academician A.A. Formozov writes: “The most dolmens were in the Kuban region - in the upper reaches of the Belaya River and along the valleys of Pshekha, Fars, Gubs and Khodzi. At the “heroic glade” near the village of Novosvobodnaya at one time there were 360 ​​dolmens. in rows, they resembled the streets in a small village. It was not for nothing that the Adyghe people called the dolmens “syrpun” - the houses of dwarfs, and the Kuban Cossacks - “heroic huts”. Then, over the course of three to four decades, the Cossacks destroyed the ancient tombs, sometimes to obtain stone for paving roads and roads. foundations of dwellings, or even just for fun. Now in Bogatyrskaya Meadow only the teeth of broken slabs stick out from the ground; they were destroyed before archaeologists had time to take them seriously. Even where the roofs and walls were preserved, everything inside was dug up by treasure hunters. the bones of the buried and the clay vessels were broken and thrown out. Therefore, our information about the dolmens is very incomplete.”

However, archaeologists did not find traces of such architectural experiments on the Caucasian coast; dolmens of the classical type immediately began to be built here. According to A.A. Formozov, dolmens, very similar to those in the Caucasus, were built in the same era in Syria, Palestine in North Africa, Spain, France and England, Denmark and the southern regions of Scandinavia, Iran, India and south-east Asia. At the same time, they were built by “different tribes and not always in the same era, but the idea of ​​such a construction undoubtedly must have had a common origin... There is no doubt that dolmens are drawn to coastal areas, indicating the role of maritime relations in the spread of these unique tombs.”

Where did the idea of ​​building dolmens come to the Caucasus? Archaeologists do not give an accurate and substantiated answer to this question, but based on logical conclusions, we believe that this idea came to the Caucasus from ancient Gaul - from the Druids, with whom the builders of the Caucasian dolmens were in spiritual communication.

Caucasian dolmens were undoubtedly erected as funeral structures. But it is also certain that during the construction of these tombs and funerals, special rites were performed, and then periodically repeated sacrifices were made. Researchers noticed that there is usually a flat area in front of dolmens standing on a mountain slope. Near the village of Kamennomostskaya, large pillar-shaped stones - menhirs - are dug around the site. There are similar sites or “courtyards” in other countries - in Spain, England and France.* There is no doubt that some religious and religious-magical ceremonies were performed on these sites. It is also possible that, like the Druid megaliths, these Caucasian structures were erected at places where telluric currents crossed, where there was particularly strong electromagnetic voltage. According to Paul Boucher, the Druids used these structures as a kind of wireless telegraph stations, thus maintaining regular communication with very distant countries. In this way contact was established between initiates of different tribes and peoples. It is possible that the initiates of the Caucasus were also included in this chain.

*) A.A. Formozov notes that on the top slab of dolmens or on special stones in front of them, in some places there are cup recesses for sacrifices and libations. The Adyghe tribe of Shapsugs brought sacrificial food to the dolmens back in the 19th century. This ritual has been preserved since ancient times, when relatives of the buried came to the cemetery with food.

Similar sacrifices also existed among the steppe people of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages. So near Simferopol in the village. A large rectangular slab was found in Bakhchi-Eli; on its upper end there are two rows of round recesses. The same bowl-like depressions were hollowed out on stones in various eras for both cultic and practical purposes. Stones with pits were found even at the Mousterian site of La Ferrassie. In the 19th century, ethnographers unexpectedly discovered similar indentations on recent peasant tombstones in Brittany, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland and began asking questions about their purpose. The Bretons poured water into these motionless vessels “to cool the souls of the dead.” Often water was replaced with milk. In the Scandinavian countries, offerings were placed there “for children” and for “dwarfs,” in other words, food for the little soul of the deceased. From century to century these rituals were performed in old cemeteries, and they were transferred to new burials.

In Azerbaijan, where there are many ancient cup stones, in villages to this day cups are knocked out on gravestones. Similar monuments existed in the Northern Black Sea region. There is information about a stone covered with pits that stood among the mounds near the village of Rozmaritsina in the Kherson region.

Some archaeologists think that the dolmen reproduces the shape of an Egyptian tomb - a mastaba. And according to A.A. Formozov, “solidity and indestructibility make the Caucasian tombs similar to the Egyptian pyramids. The similarity is natural. Both were supposed to serve as eternal dwellings for people who considered this life only a temporary refuge and embodied the belief in another life in monumental stone tombs."

Which tribes built the Caucasian dolmens? According to A.A. Formozov, settlements of tribes who buried their dead in dolmens were discovered both on the Black Sea coast and in the Kuban region. Traces of dwellings revealed during excavations are absolutely not similar to burial houses. Dwellings have adobe floors, walls made of wattle fence coated with clay, and in rare cases, foundations made of small pieces of torn stone. The builders of the dolmens, the giants of Adyghe legends, who mowed quadrangular blocks on their shoulders, actually lived in miserable shacks. Moreover. On the Belaya River and in the vicinity of Adler, in several caves, sites with the same pottery as in the mounds near the station were studied. Newly free. People huddled there in caves, like Neanderthals.

In the 2nd millennium BC. e. Very rich leaders have already emerged among the population of the Caucasus. The grave with a canopy and other treasures in the Maikop mound is even older than the dolmens. Yet, until the Iron Age, the foundations of the primitive community in the Caucasus were not shaken. Probably the entire family worked on each stone crypt. Fifteen hundred people spent their energy and time to adequately arrange the transition of their fellow man to another world, and none of them thought that it would be better to use this energy and time on cultivating the fields, improving tools or artistic creativity.

"The people who built the dolmens sculpted the dishes by hand, although the potter's wheel spread in the southern regions of Transcaucasia from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. The inhabitants of the northwestern Caucasus hoeed the land, not thinking about the plow, long known in Mesopotamia, they used many bone and stone tools of purely Neolithic forms and hunted with such primitive weapons as slings (balls for slings were found more than once during excavations of dolmens. And with all this technical poverty, the same people moved twenty-two-ton monoliths, which were not approached by later tribes familiar with the plow). and the potter's wheel, who mastered iron and rode a horse. A most characteristic example of the one-sided development of society - a phenomenon that amazes us in history from antiquity to the present day. In the 20th century, it seems absurd to us to devote our lives to the creation of monumental tombs, but you never know. less strange ideas took hold of humanity for centuries, or even millennia. And these false premises were not always fruitless for culture, for art. So here too - excessive, hypertrophied concern for the afterlife and the eternal homes of our ancestors led primitive man to architecture."

The construction of dolmens was extremely difficult and complex, taking into account the primitive technology of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. This is clearly proven by a case cited by A.A. Formozov. In 1960, it was decided to transport (I emphasize: not to build a new dolmen, but only to transport the old one a relatively short distance by truck along a good highway) to Sukhum, to the courtyard of the Abkhazian Museum, one dolmen from Esheri. We chose the smallest one and brought a crane to it. No matter how they fastened the loops of the lifting steel cable to the cover plate, it did not budge. The second tap was called. Two cranes removed the multi-ton monolith, but they were unable to lift it onto a truck. For exactly a year the roof lay in Esheri, waiting for a more powerful mechanism to arrive in Sukhum. In 1961, using this mechanism, all the stones were loaded onto vehicles. But the main thing was ahead: to reassemble the house. Before this was achieved, a fair amount of time passed, the trees of the museum garden were stripped, and one wall of the dolmen was broken. Still, the reconstruction was only partially completed. The roof was lowered onto four walls, but they could not rotate it so that their edges fit into the grooves on the inner surface of the roof. In ancient times, the plates were fitted so close to each other that a knife blade could not fit between them. Now there is a big gap left here.

How were dolmens built in ancient times with extremely limited technical means? Reconstructing mentally the successive stages of their construction, A.A. Formozov writes that “the material was dragged from the quarry on oxen. Obviously, they used the simplest rollers, levers, adding earth, temporary supports that supported the slabs in a vertical position until the ceiling pressed on them. But in the foreground was the muscular labor of many, many dozens of people. According to B.A. Kuftin’s calculations, the upper slab of the Esher dolmen was lifted by at least 150 people.

Now about the size of the Caucasian dolmens. If we look at the table with this data, we will notice that the further from the sea, the smaller and smaller their dimensions. In Asheri, the height of the front slab is about 2.5 meters, and the length of the side walls is 3-3.5 m. Equally massive stones were used in the ancient cemeteries of Gelendzhik, Dzhubga, Lazarevsky. The walls of the Pshad dolmen reach a length of even 4 m. The Kuban “heroic huts” of Bagovskaya, Novosvobodnaya, and Dakhovskaya villages are much smaller: their façade is no higher than a meter, and the total length is on average 1.8 m. In the more eastern regions there are no real dolmens , but here on Kafar and Teberda medieval crypts imitating them in shape were found. They are rectangular in plan, with a round entrance hole, but are already composed of many small stones.

So A.A. Formozov comes to the conclusion that “from archaeological monuments one can judge the very process of spreading the idea of ​​​​a dolmen from the coast to the more remote corners of the Caucasus. We see that another process was going on in parallel: people gradually made their task easier: first they reduced the size of the tombs , and then they began to build them from the same material as the huts, abandoning the stones of the monoliths."

By placing massive slabs with precise construction calculations, the creators of dolmens proved themselves to be “skillful architects. Almost everywhere, the side slabs and roof protrude somewhat above the front wall. The result is a U-shaped portal. The back wall is usually lower than the front, and the roof lies inclined. All this allows highlight the structural elements in the building - the supports supporting the arch and express the feeling of strength and inviolability of the dolmen. It was the desire for strength that required the construction of dolmens from five large slabs, and not from paving stones or torn stone. Monolithicity and indestructibility make the Caucasian tombs similar to the Egyptian pyramids." These are the Caucasian megaliths. We can only talk about their sad fate. Here is what A.A. Formozov writes:

“Caucasian tribes of the Iron Age took care of ancient cemeteries. A hundred years ago, Russian Cossacks who settled in the Kuban region came across completely intact dolmens. Most of them were plugged with (stone) plugs. Local population still vaguely remembered the worship at ancient graves, and in some places continued to perform these rituals. The Adyghe people were sure that damage to the dolmens would lead to pestilence and misfortune. The feeling of respect for distant ancestors and the fear of disturbing their peace for forty centuries was passed on from grandfathers to fathers, from fathers to children, and even to peoples alien by origin.

This phenomenon is observed wherever there are megalithic monuments. In Brittany, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, sick people were brought to them in the hope of healing, and girls who dreamed of getting married went to pray. French ethnographers described round dances around menhirs. There are known church messages from the Middle Ages that prohibited pilgrimages to these pagan buildings. But in the fight against millennia-old beliefs, the church was powerless. Then the “Christianization” of megaliths began. Crosses were installed on them, and churches were erected above some dolmens.

The same thing happened in Transcaucasia. Here the menhirs had sanctuaries, they sacrificed roosters and rams, and stone pillars on their knees slid down a certain number of times. Christianity legalized these rituals. And here we find chapels above the menhirs.

Protected by popular worship, the megaliths of Brittany and Transcaucasia have safely survived to this day. The dolmens were out of luck. In 1897, the founder of the Ekaterinodar Museum E.D. Felitsyn complained: “The highlanders, our predecessors in the Trans-Kuban region, generally treat ancient monuments with great respect, no matter what they are. Unfortunately, the Kuban Cossacks, having inherited their places, do not imitate this commendable trait of the mountaineers." (E.D. Felitsyn. - Kuban antiquities. Ekaterinodar, 1879, p. 13). Even before the revolution, hundreds of dolmens were destroyed. Often they were broken without a purpose, just to “test their strength.” Even intelligent engineers contributed to the destruction of monuments by ordering their slabs to be used as crushed stone for the Black Sea Highway. As sad as it may be, our tractor drivers also like to try on dolmens “who will take whom” - whether the tractor will break the stone house or break down. And here are the results. In 1885, there were 360 ​​dolmens on the Bogatyrskaya glade, and in 1928 - 20, and now there are none at all.

So, the dark, illiterate Adyghe people did not damage the dolmens in any way, and the people with a higher culture wiped them off the face of the earth. The solution to the paradox is that for the Adyghe people “syrpun” was something sacred, but for the Russians it was alien, unusual and unnecessary.

Now the fate of the silent witnesses of the past worries not only archaeologists and art historians. The losses from the destruction of monuments became too obvious. Let us draw a lesson from the history of dolmens. In our opinion, it is formulated as follows: monuments can be preserved by those who love them, who value them, but not by those who wonder “why is all this necessary.” In the old days, religion protected them, now culture protects them. During a period when religion has lost its former role, and there is still no understanding of the value of cultural heritage, archaeological objects and works of ancient art usually perish. It was under such circumstances that the dolmens of the Kuban region perished.

Their fate is dramatic and surprising. Four thousand years ago, carried away by the doctrine of life and death borrowed from somewhere from outside, the tribes of the northwestern Caucasus began to build megalithic tombs designed to last for centuries. The oldest and largest dolmens appeared on the shores of the Black Sea. The creators of these tombs were not mythical giants. These were people who lived in caves or villages made of adobe and wattle, "turluch" houses, who became acquainted with metal relatively recently. Each tomb required many days of hard work, and yet one generation after another gave up their daily activities for its sake.

Gradually, the idea of ​​dolmens spread from the coast to the mountains and crossed the Caucasus ridge... Century after century flashed by, the world was transformed beyond recognition, and the old Shapsugs still carried food for the spirits to the dolmens. Then a foreign people came and destroyed the “heroic huts.” This is the history of dolmens. Really, standing in front of the last of them, there is something to think about." This is what academician A.A. Formozov writes.

Dr. A.M. Aseev
Asuncion, November 1972