Megaliths of Europe | Early European History And Religion

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TYPES OF MEGALITHS

megaliths in Portugal

Megaliths are large stone structures (“mega” means "large" and "lithos" means “ stone”). There are different words to describe how the stones are arranged. A “ dolmen” is a stone table that is used to identify a group burial chambers, or "houses of the dead." It consists of upright stones capped with a slab of stone for a roof. Two walls side by side, with a cap stone are known as cromleches. There are several of these at Stonehenge. A “ tumulus” is a large earthen burial mound. A “ cairn” is a pile of rocks. And the huge standing stones themselves are called “ menhirs”. The word "Menhir" is possibly derived from a Celtic word for "stone". When the stones are arranged into a large circle this is called a “ cromlech” .

There are many places in Europe with megaliths. Megalithic structures have been found from Morocco in the south to Sweden in the north, Stonehenge in England is probably the best known. Sweden and Germany have their own "Stonehenges. Larger "megalithic" structures are found elsewhere — such as at Carnac in France's Brittany region, where there are more than 10,000 menhirs aligned in rows. There are so many of many megaliths in Carnac that many of the English words used to describe them come from Breton, the language of Britanny.

Megaliths built in Spain, France, the Baltic , Iceland and Britain were independently erected by ancient farming people. Scattered around the large Italian island of Sardinia are about 7000 ancient standing stones and cone towers including the "The Tomb of the Giants" and the "Houses of the Witches." The tombs are carved into the rock and some of the cone towers — originally 13 meters (40 feet) in diameter and up to 20 meters (65 feet) high — were used as dwellings.

The people who built megaliths seem to have had similar beliefs about the sun and astronomy. Many megaliths seem to be aligned with certain astronomical events such as the midwinter or midsummer sunrise. This is the case with Stonehenge. "There are differences as well, but one common element is the sun," Leonardo García Sanjuán, an archaeologist at the University of Seville, told Live Science. "The sun was at the center of the worldview of these people." [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, May 15, 2023]

According to Live Science: Archaeologists suspect that the practice of building megalithic monuments spread over Europe during the Neolithic with successive waves of settlers, perhaps farmers from the Near East, who seem to have assimilated the indigenous hunter-gather peoples, according to a 2003 study in the journal Annual Review of Anthropology. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, August 31, 2022]

Good Websites Archaeology News Report archaeologynewsreport.blogspot.com ; Anthropology.net anthropology.net : archaeologica.org archaeologica.org ; Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com ; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org ; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com; Livescience livescience.com/

World's First Monuments in Malta?

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Ggantija
Among the world's oldest freestanding stone monuments are the megalith temples of Mgarr, Skorba, Hagar Qim and Ggantija on Malta. The oldest ones date back to 4000 B.C. There are 30 or so raised stone monuments in Malta built between 6,000 and 3,000 years ago. The largest stones in these monuments weighs up to 20 tons. They are thought to be dedicated to the Great Earth Mother goddess and, legend says, constructed by giants. [Sources: Colin Renfew Sc.D., National Geographic, November 1977; Robert Wernick, Smithsonian magazine; Malta National Tourism Office]

At one time it was believed that culture began in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt and spread outward. But this no longer seems to the case. Monuments were being built in Malta around 4000 B.C., a thousand years before writing was invented in Mesopotamia and 1,500 years before the Pyramids were built in Egypt.

No one knows why the monuments were raised or why Malta of all places was the chosen site. The monuments are believed to be temples. Even this is conjecture because the monument builders left behind no written word. Many have features that are similar to chapels, altars and screens found in churches. Various carved figurines of fat ladies found in the area suggest goddesses may have been worshiped at the monuments.

It is believed that teams of 50 to 100 men quarried the stones with stone tools, pulled them out with leather ropes and moved them with tree trunk rollers to where the monuments were built. One of the most unusual sites in Malta is the mysterious double tracks near Naxxar Gap that archeologist believe was created by ancient people dragging dirt to form terraces on the hillside.

Megaliths in France

There are so many megaliths around Carnac in Brittany that many of the English words used to describe them — such as dolmen, — come from the Breton language of Brittany. But Brittany isn't the only place in France with megaliths.

According to archaeology magazine: Roadwork at Veyre-Monton in central France has revealed the first known megalithic site in the region. There, archaeologists from France’s National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) have uncovered evidence of cult activity spanning thousands of years, from the Neolithic period through the Bronze Age. They identified 30 menhirs, or monoliths, arranged from largest to smallest in a 500-foot-long line oriented precisely north to south. Most of the menhirs are made of local basalt and undecorated, but a single limestone example was sculpted to resemble a person, with two small breasts and an engraved chevron that might depict forearms. [Source: Benjamin L eonard, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2019]

“At some point all the menhirs were intentionally buried, as was an adjacent four-sided stone cairn, measuring 46 feet long and 21 feet wide, that surrounded the tomb of a tall man. Despite the site’s long use, the motivations behind the monuments’ removal from the landscape are unknown. “It’s very tempting to interpret this as the result of a change in beliefs,” says INRAP archaeologist Ivy Thomson, “but it may also be linked to the disgrace of the community in control of the site, or even something more trivial.”

Megaliths of Carnac in Brittany, France

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Carnac Kermario Dolmen
The oldest stone structures in Europe are the Megaliths of Carnac on the southwest coast of Brittany. Here approximately 10,000 megaliths (Stonehedge-like "great stones") have been raised among what are now maritime fields, farms, cottages, and heath more or less in single parallel rows. The British writer and archeologist Evan Hadingham described them as "one of archeology's greatest mysteries...it poses as many tantalizing unanswered questions as the pyramids." [Source: William Devenport, National Geographic, June 1978, Robert Wernick, Smithsonian magazine; New York Times travel article; French Government Tourism Office]

Covering an area of roughly five square miles, Carnac contains the world's largest assemblage of prehistoric stone monuments. About 3,000 stones (out of a possible 10,000 original stones) are grouped in three alignments concentrated in a small area north of the town of Carnac. The largest megaliths (now broken) are 65 feet high and weigh almost 400 tons. Among the items unearthed by archaeologists at the site are beads, tools, and jadite axes. There are so many of these stones around Carnac that the English words used to describe them all come from the Breton language. (See Above)

Most of the stones are arranged into three major groupings know as alignments that consists of huge stones fanning out in rows from a cromlech. Similar groupings of stone have been found in northern Scotland and the Exmoor and Dartmoor areas of southwestern England. The U-shaped cromlechs in Carnac and Caithness, Scotland have the same astronomical sight lines even though they are 750 miles a part.

The alignments of standing stones in Carnac is roughly northeast to southwest. Many of the stones are relatively small, only a few feet high. The largest complete ones are about 15 feet high. The most impressive stones are fenced off; they have to be observed from a road or a pathway.

Stone Monuments in Britain and Ireland

Numerous prehistoric sites between 4000 B.C. and 1500 B.C. have been discovered around Britain and Scotland. The most famous site is Stonehedge, which dates back to 2500 B.C. . In 1997, scientists found a site twice as large as Stonehedge, with stone circles remains of timber temples, at Stanton Drew in Somerset.

On the Orkney Islands of Scotland, near Skara Brae are the standing stones of Stenness and the 5,000-year-old Maes Howe burial mound, described as the best preserved chambered tomb in Western Europe.

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Neolithic axe factory in Scotland
Carrowmore, Ireland is the home of the world's oldest megalithic cemetery. The cremated bodies in the cemetery were buried between 4800 and 3200 B.C. About a mile away a cemetery dating back to 4000 B.C. was found with uncremated bodies and chert arrowhead unlike those found at Carrowmore. Archaeologist Göran Burenbult told National Geographic, "This opens up a much more complex picture than we could have imagined. It's as if two separate people with different social and religious traditions lived very close together at the same time."

Newgrange Mound (north of Dublin) is a 5300-year-old, 275-foot-wide burial mound and passage grave, rimmed with a narrow lip that makes it look like a giant green mushroom cap. Believed to have been built by small, stocky Mediterranean type people as opposed to tall fair haired Celts the mound is one of the oldest pieces of evidence of a complex social society in Ireland.

A megalithic tomb at Newgrange was designed to funnel light from the rising midsummer sun. On top of the mound is a Stonehenge-like structure with sophisticated construction and astrological orientation. A 62-foot-long, narrow passageway inside the mound leads to a central chamber which is formed by boulders the size of living room couches for walls and sheets of corbeled slate — placed 20 feet above the floor — for a roof. The cremated remains of individuals had been placed here under the water-tight roof.

At the entrance is a great stone covered with engraved spirals and wavy lines. Huge slabs on the inside of the grave have similar geometric markings as the Aran sweaters made to the west. The highlight of the tour to the tomb is when the guide turns off the light in the central chamber and sunrise on the summer solstice is artificially re-created and the light penetrates through the lintel box above the door and passes through the 62-foot passageway to the end of the burial chamber. The real light from the summer solstice shows up a little to the side of where it once was due to a shift of the earth’s axis.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge (16 kilometers north of Salisbury, 137 kilometers west of London) is the famous group of 3500 year old standing stones. Believed to have been a calendar, or possibly a religious center, it consists of rocks organized into two main circles and two horseshoes, that were in turn are surrounded by a circular mound of earth 300 feet in diameter. A henge refers to a particular type of earthwork of the Neolithic period, typically consisting of a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area of more than 20 meters in diameter. Henges of various types are found throughout Britain and include the Standing Stones o' Stenness on the northern island of Orkney and the Maumbury Rings in southern England county of Dorset.

The Stonehenge that is visible today is thought to have been completed about 3,500 years ago, although the first earthwork henge is thought to date back to 3050 B.C. — long before Greek temples, or even the Pyramids of Giza, were built — and was constructed by people with neither metal or writing. The builders affixed the stones with mortise and tenon (hole and peg) fasteners and used digging tools made from sharped bones and antlers taken from slaughtered animals. Dating cremated bone fragments of men, women and children found at site puts origin of first circle to around 3,000 B.C., 500 years earlier than originally thought.

In its day Stonehenge was at the center of the largest ceremonial center in Europe. The belief that the structure was a calendar or some kind of astronomical observatory is based on the fact that one stone is aligned with summer solstice and others appear to predict solar and lunar eclipses and line up with the sun's position on other important solar days. Yet other stones are oriented toward cycles of the moon, the four station stones seemed to be lined up with the extremes of the midsummer moonrise.

Megaliths in Spain

The area, in the countryside near the city of Antequera is renowned for natural rock formations like La Peña de los Enamorados, (the Rock of the Lovers) as well megalithic monuments, which may be there because of the natural formations. The most famous is the Dolmen of Menga — one of the largest and oldest megalithic structures in Europe, dating to between 3800 B.C. and 3600 B.C. The passage in Menga is not aligned to a solstice sunrise or sunset, as might be expected. Instead it is oriented toward La Peña about 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) to the northeast. The other two megaliths in the region were built later and seem to point elsewhere. La Peña de los Enamorados is named after a legend that says two star-crossed lovers once killed themselves by jumping off it. The mountain is also famous because it looks like the profile of the head of a sleeping giant, especially at times of low light such as sunrise and sunset. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, May 15, 2023]

The alignment suggests La Peña was an important focus for local prehistoric people and solves a mystery of where Menga was pointing: to the location of both the rock art and the newly found tomb at La Peña, while the tomb at La Peña (See Below) itself pointed to the solstice sunrise, Leonardo García Sanjuán, an archaeologist at the University of Seville, told Live Science. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, May 15, 2023]

According to Archaeology magazine: One of the largest and oldest megalithic complexes in Europe was identified across 1,500 acres in southern Spain. The site of La Torre — La Janera, in Huelva Province, consists of more than 500 standing stones, called menhirs, that were erected as much as 7,000 years ago. Other megalithic structures in the complex include dolmens, cists, burial mounds, and stone enclosures. Over a period of 3,000 years, the complex was likely used for important ceremonial and religious activities, as well as for social gatherings. [Source: Archaeology magazine, November 2022]

It was long believed that culture spread westward from Crete to Iberia because spiral shaped symbols on tombs found in on Crete resembled those at Los Millares in Spain. Recent changes in carbon dating based on correcting the carbon data with tree rings from 4000 year old bristlecone pines have shown that the site in Iberia is older than the one in Crete. Scattered around the Spanish island are clusters of prehistoric Stonehedge-like megaliths (stone monuments). Among the different Bronze-Age formations found on Menorca are “taulas, T-shaped formations that have one rock balancing on another; “talayots”, igloo-shaped mounds; and “navetas” which look like overturned boats. The most impressive megaliths are found at Torre d'en Gammes, with a perfectly preserved taula, three taayayots and a stone pillared hall. Naveta d'els Tudons contain a burial chamber that some argue is the oldest building in Iberia.

5,400-Year-Old Tomb in Spain Aligns Perfectly with Summer Solstice

In May 2023, archaeologists announced they had found 5,400 year-old stone tomb in “neck” area of the mountain as La Peña de los Enamorados (the Rock of the Lovers) oriented towards the sun. Tom Metcalfe wrote in Live Science: The tomb was designed to funnel light from the rising midsummer sun into a chamber deep within — much like the contemporary megalithic tomb built more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away at Newgrange in Ireland, suggesting both places shared similar beliefs about the afterlife more than 5,000 years ago. "Newgrange is much bigger and more complex than the tomb we have discovered [in Spain], but they have something in common — the interest of the builders to use sunlight at a specific time of the year, to produce a symbolic — possibly magic — effect,"Leonardo García Sanjuán, an archaeologist at the University of Seville, told Live Science. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, May 15, 2023]

The bedrock at the site is tilted away from the position of the sunrise on the solstice at midsummer, so the builders deliberately constructed a cavity to admit its light, according to a study by García Sanjuán and his colleagues published April 14, 2023 in the journal Antiquity. "They worked very cleverly to make an arrangement of stones, which were engraved and possibly painted," he said. "These were sacred things placed so that the sunrise on the [summer] solstice would go straight into the back of the chamber."

megaliths in Portugal

García Sanjuán and his colleagues excavated the tomb in late 2020 in the "neck" region of the mountain, near the Matacabras rock shelter, which is adorned with pictographs thought to be painted about 5,800 years ago. They think the tomb was first built a few hundred years after the rock paintings were made, and that it was used for burials for more than 1,000 years. The inner chamber of the newfound tomb is decorated with a distinctive stone with ripple marks on its surface, which was taken from a region that had once been a beach or part of the seabed.

The stone was placed so that the light from the rising midsummer sun fell upon it; and the part of the burial chamber in front of it seems to have been kept clear of human remains, García Sanjuán said. "These people chose this stone precisely because it created these waving, undulating shapes," he said. "This was very theatrical… they were very clever in producing these special visual effects." The archaeologists also found stone tools and pieces of pottery in the tomb. They are particularly interested in any residues on the pottery, which could show what they held as grave goods.

7,500-Year-Old Spanish 'Stonehenge' Discovered on Planned Avocado Farm

In 2018, archaeologists discovered one of Europe's largest Neolithic standing stone complexes near the city of Huelva in southwestern Spain. The oldest upright stones ("menhirs") could be up to 7,500 years old, and the entire complex consists of thousands of individual stones spread out over 600 hectares (1,500 acres) of the sides and top of a small hill. Some of the largest stones stand alone, but others were positioned to form tombs, mounds, stone circles, enclosures and linear rows. The diversity of the structures is part of the puzzle of the site. "This pattern is not common in the Iberian Peninsula and is truly unique," said José Antonio Linares, a geoarchaeologist at Huelva University and the lead author of a new study published in the June issue of Trabajos de Historia. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, August 31, 2022]

The site is known as La Torre-La Janera. A total of 526 standing stones had been unearthed as of 2022 at the site which is near Huelva in southwestern Spain. Neolithic people constructed the complex on a prominent hill not far from the mouth of the Guadiana River and the Atlantic Ocean, with good visibility over the surrounding territory. Archaeologists learned about its full extent several years after it was discovered, Antonio Linares Catela told Live Science. Archaeologists think the site was in use for more than 3,000 years and the structures include standing stones, tombs and stone circles, whose functions were as varied as their construction. "Territorial, ritual, astronomical, funerary… the whole constituting a mega-site of the recent prehistory of southern Iberia," he said. This was a "megalithic sanctuary of tribute, worship, and memory to the ancestors of long ago."

7000-year-old megaliths revealed by drought

Live Science reported: The landowner, a farmer, had wanted to establish an avocado plantation at the site, near the border of Portugal about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Huelva, Linares said. But there were local rumors that menhirs had once stood on the hill, so it wasn't a complete surprise when an initial archaeological survey in 2018 confirmed there were several standing stones there. A full study in 2020 and 2021 revealed the site's importance, and the universities of Huelva and Alcalá are now funding an archaeological investigation until at least 2026, he said.

Several of the standing stones created prominent roofed tombs known as "dolmens," while others formed coffin-shaped structures known as "cists," which the archaeologists expect were used to bury the remains of the dead. But no human remains have yet been verified at the site. "We have not carried out extensive excavations of the tombs," Linares said; and while such structures must have contained skeletal remains at some point, bones may not have been preserved in the acidic soil.

Many megalithic sites have also been found in Spain, including in the region near La Torre-La Janera. The precise dates of such megalithic structures can be hard to ascertain because rock itself cannot be reliably dated. But the indirect evidence of other materials buried at the same sites suggest that most of them date to the Neolithic period from about 6,500 years ago, according to Smithsonian magazine — which would make the oldest standing stones at La Torre-La Janera more ancient than most.

Many megaliths seem to be aligned with certain astronomical events, such as the midwinter sunrise, and it seems many of those at the La Torre-La Janera complex may be, too. The roofed tombs, or dolmens, "are generally oriented to the solstices and equinoxes, but there are also solar orientations in the alignments [rows of stones] and the cromlechs [circles of stones]," project leader Primitiva Bueno Ramírez, a professor of prehistory at Alcalá University near Madrid and a co-author of the new research, told Live Science.

She stressed that only the surface of the La Torre-La Janera site had been investigated so far, and archaeologists expect to find much more there. One clue that more stones are yet to be found is the "magnificent preservation" of the structures, which may help the scientists recover information about the "occupations, chronologies, uses, and symbolism of these monuments," she told Live Science.

Another Spanish Stonehenge Emerges From a Lake During a Drought

In 2022, during a historic heatwave and drought, a “Spanis Stonehenge” emerged from the parched lake bed of the Valdecañas reservoir in western Spain. Formally known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, the 7,000-year-old circular monument was likely enclosed and was comprised of a large domed boulder supported by hundreds of vertically-placed rocks, known as menhir., historian Primitiva Bueno Ramirez told Atlas Obscura. The rock structure created a narrow entry corridor leading to a central chamber. Carvings and decorations might have lined the walls, illuminated by visitors passing by with torches, Ramirez said. [Source: Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, August 19, 2022]

Stonehenge

The monument might have been a tomb, a ritual site, or even a trading post. Archaeologists aren’t sure, the BBC reported. The monument was submerged in 1963 after the construction of a nearby dam, creating the Valdecañas reservoir. The site resurfaced in 2019, during another drought, before disappearing under water again after some rain.

Dolmen of Guadalperal is a collection of about 100 brown, dusty-looking rocks arranged in concentric circles. There are a few engravings. One shows a person and a wiggly snake-like shape. Other historic sites — like the Elbe River’s “Hunger Stones” — have reemerged in shrinking waterways across Europe as the region during the drought. The Valdecañas reservoir is about 2000 kilometers (115 miles) southwest of Madrid.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2024