MEGALITHISM - Sacred and Pagan Architecture in Prehistory by Alberto Pozzi
This book takes us back in time to the 5th-2nd millennia B.C. and helps us visualise the Stone Age world and its constructions – menhirs, dolmens, rows and circles of standing stones.
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Naveta des Tudons
Menorca, Balearic Islands, Spain.
The Grand Menhir Brisé
of Locmariaquer, Morbihan, France.
The Taula of Torralba
d’en Salort, Menorca, Balearic Islands, Spain.
The Pierre des Feés
dolmen, Reignier, Haute Savoir, France
MEGALITHISM – THE BOOK
ABSTRACT
Megalithism, or the art of using huge boulders to create sacred, pagan monuments and sites, still fascinates us today.
How on earth did Prehistoric man cut, transport and place such enormous stones, some weighing up to 200 metric tons, without bulldozers, drills and cranes? And yet primitive man, without the written word or wheel, created structures which still stupefy us in the 21st century.
This book takes us back in time to the 5th-2nd millennia B.C. and helps us visualise the Stone-Age world and its constructions – menhirs, dolmens, rows and circles of standing stones.
Undoubtedly they were sacred places, used for pagan rituals and funerary purposes but the author also gives us details of their astronomic and physical alignment, which clearly demonstrates the knowledge of the heavens these ancestors had and how they applied it without slide-rules, set squares and theodolites.
The high priests of ancient times could calculate when the solstices and equinoxes would occur and thus regulate the seasons for sowing and reaping.
The author’s careful and updated identification of all such structures leads us through ‘Ancient European Megalithism‘ complete with the religious and social aspects of it and its pagan legacies.
The myths and legends arising from the megalithic structures are extremely interesting and are recounted here in detail; the author also describes ‘megalithic art’ in the form of statue-stele and menhir statues as well as the often intricate decoration carved on single stones and in construction such as dolmens, funerary mounds, astronomic observatories and temples.
Amply illustrated with photographs and drawings, the book takes us through every part of the megalithic world in comfortable easy stages and smooth-flowing text so that this journey can be enjoyed by all readers – specialists and interested general public alike.
Stonehenge,
detail
The great Champ Dolent
menhir, Dol-de-Bretagna, Ille-et-Vilaine, France.
The Proleek Portal dolmen,
Dundalk, Ireland.
Lower slopes of Ranu Raraku
volcano with many almost completed moai never taken to destination, Easter Island.
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MEGALITHISM – THE BOOK
INDEX
Section one – Megalithism
1. Background and general description
Cupmarks
The Megalithic Yard
Mehalithic Structures and the Natural Enviroment
Megalithism and climate
Table: Chronological Framework of Cultural Phases in History
Map: Spread of Atlantic or Ancient-European Megalithism
2. Prehistoric worship and the cult of stones
Megalithism, the Bible and the Cult of Stones
The Sanctuary on Mount Ebal
The Cult of Stones and the Bible
Is har karkom the real mt. Sinai of the Bible?
Was the holy mountain of Har Karkom known to the Sumerians and the Akkadians?
3. Megalithism in popular legend
A Pre-Christian, Matrimonial rite celebrated in dolmens
Local Legends of the Druidic Origins of Megaliths
4. Methods of construction and social organisation
Transporting obelisks in historical times
5. Megalithic art
Statue-Stele, an anthropomorphic stele and historiated boulders
The kurgan, a nomadic, proto-indo-european people
Map: Distribution of Statue-Stele, Statue-Menhirs and Historiated Boulders
6. Cyclopean structures and corbelled roofs.
Section two – Megalithism in different geographic areas
7. Western Europe: the iberian peninsula
Portugal
Villages coeval to megalithic structures
Spain
8. Central-western Europe
France
Iron age stele
9. North-western Europe – The british archipelago
The British Isles
Stonehenge in legend and ancient history
Ireland
10. Central-northern Europe
The great ring structures
11. Central-southern Europe
The megalithic face of borzone (liguria, italy)
The sowing of teeth
12. South-eastern Europe and Asia Minor
The kurgans
13. The Canary Islands and islands of the mediterranean sea
Collecting water by condensation
14. The near east
Baalbek
15. Northern Africa
The tomb of antaeus
Libya
The stone statues of the Nyonyosi
The lighthouse of Alexandria
16. Tropical Africa
The enigma of the intercontinental correlations
17. An outline of the megalithism of Asia, Oceania and the Americas
The equadorian tolas and the other truncated pyramids of the world
Geoglyphs
Conclusions
Appendix: the ‘mysteries’ of archaeology
Alberto Pozzi
THE AUTHOR
ALBERTO POZZI
Alberto Pozzi was born on the shores of Lake Como in Lombardy, Italy, where he still resides with his wife, Anna; they have two daughters and a son as well as four grandchildren.
His classical studies paved the way for more than fifty years dedicated to various branches of archaeology – prehistoric worship, rupestrian or rock art and, above all, megalithism; this has taken him on many trips to the four corners of the earth to visit megalithic sites, photograph them, and to try to uncover their secrets.
He is active in several associations for the Study of Prehistory and has taken part in excavation missions both in Lombardy and in Western Thebes, Luxor, Egypt.
