What are menhirs? Vertically placed stone blocks. Age of menhirs The most famous menhirs

Bardown Man, one of the Dartmoor menhirs

What is a menhir? In the most general terms, it is a stone slab mounted on three or four pillars. The era of dolmens and menhirs was very long. They were built at the beginning of our era, usually to be used as tombs. The whole world agrees to consider them tombstones. A funeral function is also attributed to dolmens located in Karelia.

Secondly, the stone, due to its crystalline structure, has the properties of a battery. If you heat a stone, heat accumulates in it, it retains this heat and releases it slowly. But it can accumulate not only heat, but also natural magnetism and vibrations. Northern peoples had a strong belief that stones absorb energy from the environment and return it to those who worship them. In the beliefs of the Sami, for example, echoes of ancient knowledge about the vitality of stones are still preserved. The stone easily resonates. Any vibration that is in agreement with it finds a response in it - an echo. And this resonating battery is put into a form that does not dampen, but enhances the vibration, with the help of which they tried to bring a person into a state conducive to his development, the awakening of hidden mental abilities.

In many European countries, in the middle of fields and meadows, on high hills, near ancient temples, in forests, often right in the middle of roads and on lawns near houses where people live, huge long stones rise - menhirs (menhir is translated as “long stone”) "). Sometimes they stand alone, sometimes they line up in rings and semicircles, or form long rows and entire alleys. Some point straight up, others are tilted and appear to be falling. But this “fall” has been going on for five, or even six thousand years: that is exactly how long it is assumed today that the most ancient of them have existed. The Bretons call them pelvans, which means “pillar stones,” and the English call them standing stones. Science considers them the first authentically man-made structures that have survived to this day.

Menhir, translated from Low Breton, means men - stone and hir - long - “long stone” and is a roughly processed wild stone in the form of a pillar. The stones can stand alone or represent a whole group of menhirs located close to each other. Menhirs can be considered the first man-made structures of our ancestors that have survived to this day. Presumably the menhirs are five, or even six thousand years old.

Of course, there are many legends associated with them. They say that dwarfs living underground turn into pelwans when sunlight hits them. And since these people are considered the keeper of treasures, legends claim that countless riches are hidden under the standing stones. However, the stones vigilantly guard them, and not a single person has yet managed to get them. According to other legends, menhirs are, on the contrary, petrified giants. And on the day of the summer and winter solstices, on Christmas Eve and Easter, they come to life - they walk, dance, spin around their axis or run to the nearest river to drink water or swim, and then return to their place and turn into stone again.

The best studied and well known are the standing stones of Brittany and the British Isles. But there are many more of them on our planet. Today, menhirs ranging in height from one to 17 meters and weighing up to several hundred tons can be seen in Greece and Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands, in the south of France, in Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic, in Spain and Portugal, in Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany and southern Scandinavia. They are found along the entire Mediterranean coast from Libya to Morocco and further south, all the way to Senegal and Gambia. There are them in Syria, in Palestine.

There is no historical or material evidence left of the people who placed the mighty stone pillars on the ground. (By the way, the word pillars appears in the names of some rocks - the Pillars of Hercules, the Krasnoyarsk Pillars; maybe they were especially revered in the past and played the same role as menhirs?) We only have hypotheses and legends.

Menhirs are believed to be tombstones. Perhaps lighthouses. Or sights. There are known groups of menhirs that stand in such a way that from one you can see a second, from a second a third, from a third a fourth, and so on - very similar to a signaling system. True, the pelvans also stand far from the seashore, where it is strange to talk about them as lighthouses, and traces of burials are not found under all the long stones.

But although the practical function of menhirs is not clear, it is clear that they were all cult stones. What kind of cult it was is unknown, but the surviving traditions of honoring stones among ancient peoples reveal the secret of menhirs.

It is known, for example, that in India, rough, upright stones are still considered the abodes of deities. In Greece, a huge rough stone pillar once represented Artemis. At the crossroads there were tetrahedral pillars with the sculpted head of the god Hermes - herms. In ancient Rome, Terminalia was celebrated in honor of the god of borders, Terminal. On this day, boundary stones were rubbed with oils, decorated with garlands of flowers, and sacrificial gifts were brought to them: honey, wine, milk, grain. Anyone who dared to move such a boundary stone was considered forever damned - borders in Rome were sacred. And the stone, representing the god Terminus himself, was located in the Capitoline Temple and guaranteed the inviolability of the borders of the entire empire.

Maybe menhirs were the same boundary stones. Only they did not share neighboring properties, but rather something else. Nowadays a very popular hypothesis is that all these stones were placed on faults in the earth’s crust, where the Earth’s energy was concentrated and came to the surface. If you believe the myths, menhirs stand on the border of two worlds - the world where people lived and the world where gods lived. Thus, the Irish sagas say that standing stones marked the entrance to the Sides, the dwellings of the wondrous magical people of the Celts. And in Brittany, the belief remained that thanks to the pelvan one can meet the dead: in ancient times, people erected stone thrones somewhere in a prominent place, lit a fire and waited for the souls of their ancestors to sit on them to warm themselves by the fire. And just like the Termina stone, some menhirs, while they stand, guarantee the existence of entire villages, pushing back the end of times...

The purpose of menhirs remained a mystery for many centuries, since virtually nothing is known about the social organization, religious beliefs, or language of their builders, although it is known that they buried their dead, engaged in agriculture, made clay utensils, stone tools and jewelry decorations. There were opinions that the Druids used menhirs in human sacrifices or as boundary posts or elements of a complex ideological system.

Menhirs could have been used for a variety of purposes that are currently unknown and may never be determined. Among the likely purposes are cultic (ritual fencing of other structures, symbolism of the center, determination of the boundaries of possessions, elements of rituals of transition or fertility, phallic symbolism), memorial, solar-astronomical (visors and systems of sights), boundary ones. It is believed that menhirs are tombstones. Perhaps lighthouses. Or sights. There are known groups of menhirs standing in such a way that from one you can see the second, from the second the third, ...

The surviving Scandinavian legend indicates that the main function of the menhir was to directly influence a person. To this day, there are still echoes of the ancient tradition of the Sami, who considered dolmens to be a unique instrument for the direct instruction of promising young men to introduce them into the “state of shamans.” Perhaps because the impact of menhirs varied depending on their location and other features, full initiation required a “initiatory journey” from one menhir to another.

Menhirs are no less mysterious. Menhirs are vertically placed stones. They also belong to ancient megalithic monuments, but, unlike dolmens, they were assigned agricultural significance.

In menhirs, like nothing else, the idea of the Earth as a living organism, a nurse-mother, to whom our ancestors treated with deep respect and with which man had the closest magical relationship, found its expression.

Clickable

To understand what meaning the ancients put into the menhir, let’s move for a moment to China. In ancient times, Chinese doctors, based on the idea that the human body is a receptacle of certain psychic currents, introduced acupuncture into the practice of treatment. In a healthy person, these currents are balanced, but if for some external or internal reason the balance is disturbed, the person becomes ill. By introducing the thinnest needles into certain points of the human body along the path of these mysterious currents, you can restore the necessary balance and cure the disease.

Just like the body of a person or animal, the earth is permeated with currents, the nature of which is still poorly understood. Menhirs were used by the ancients to correct soil defects. Using earth currents and balancing them, ancient agronomists tried to achieve a more intensive harvest. They applied the “acupuncture” technique to the living body of the planet, gaining this knowledge in ways unknown to us. Some “needles”-menhirs still stand in their places.

Menhir Shan-Dolan, fr. menhir deChamp-Dolent - the largest of menhirs in Brittany (France).

Menhirs Khakassia.

Filitosa, Corsica, menhir.

Menhir Kerloas near Plouarzel. en:Plouarzel.

Karnak menhirs.

Le Menec - 1099 stones, which are displayed in 11 rows and occupy an area 1 kilometer long and 100 meters wide.

Kermario - 1260 stones, which are displayed in 10 rows and stretch for 1.2 kilometers.

Kerleskan - 540 stones, which are displayed in 13 short rows and after 800 m end in a semicircle of 39 stones.
Small Menk - Only 100 stones that do not represent any clear lines.

Nothing is known about those who erected these stones, but they undoubtedly had some engineering knowledge, a large workforce and a clear plan according to which the work was carried out. The monuments have a certain similarity to each other: they lie from west to east, taper towards the end, in some places the stones stand in parallel arcs, and not in a row, the height ranges from 90 cm at the beginning to 7 meters at the end.

Archaeologists suggest that those stones that have survived to this day are only a small part of the entire huge complex that existed initially, because, according to the most approximate estimates, they were erected between 3500 and 1500 BC. e., that is, approximately simultaneously with the pyramids and Stonehenge. Since then, many of them have crumbled under the influence of natural factors, many were stolen by farmers who did not care about historical values. And after a strong earthquake in 1722, many stones fell or collapsed, so that they became even more delicious for the local population.

It also remains largely unclear how unknown architects managed to install and deliver these stones. They themselves, of course, are often found in these parts, but Europe did not yet know wheels at that time, and dragging them was problematic. Some stones weigh almost 350 tons. To move them and drag them from the quarry would require the use of a huge amount of human resources. And if we take into account the fact that in those days the average age of a person’s life did not exceed 35 years, it is difficult to even calculate how many generations put their lives on this complex and, most importantly, why.

In the same area, mounds were discovered that served as large burial grounds, the age of which dates back to 4000 years BC, and the location of the Kermario menhirs indicates a slab that covered the entrance to a large burial of this kind. The burial itself is a mound on which a large stone slab is placed, and inside there is a stone corridor leading to the burial.

There are many versions of what Karnak is, many of them are involved in religion and beliefs, but if we turn to the purely scientific side of the matter, there is a version that those who built these structures were well versed in astronomy. Perhaps all this was done in order to study the movement of celestial bodies, or perhaps these are the remains of a huge astronomical clock, by which it was possible to calculate the time of sowing and harvest.

No matter who or whoever erected these stones, the mere presence of such grandiose structures that have survived to our times makes us think about how little we still know about our ancient history.

Menhir Ermolovka village in Arkhyz.

Menhirs as part of the Almendres cromlech

menhir stands near the village of Black Lake, Shirinsky district of Khakassia, and is a sacred place.

“First of all, there is a stone. He always remains himself, he continues to exist,” wrote Mircea Eliade. The stone has always been revered as “an instrument of spiritual influence, as a focus of energy, a special power designed to protect,” it lives for so long that by its existence it protects the world from death. Perhaps even now?

In Khakassia there are quite a few textile mounds belonging to the Tagar culture (IX-III centuries BC). The photo shows the guard stones of a mound near Lake Shira. Khakassia. Eastern Siberia.

The village of Rodnikovoe (formerly Skelya) is located in the Baydar Valley near Sevastopol. The menhirs are located immediately at the entrance to Rodnikovoe, on the left side behind the stop in front of the former village council. They date back to the 3rd-2nd millennium BC. The height of the largest is 2.8 meters. The second (squat) is located literally a few meters away. It is said that there was a third menhir here, 0.85 meters high, but in the 50s it was dug up during the construction of a water pipeline. In 1989, a fourth, fallen menhir, about 2.4 meters high, was discovered. Now he lies to the side under a tree.

Khakassia

In Tuva, in the vicinity of perhaps any populated area, you can find “open books” in which our ancestors left traces of their stay in this territory.

What is a menhir

A menhir is a tall monolithic stone structure, which is literally translated from Low Breton as “high stone”. “Elongation” is the main feature of the menhir, the length of which is usually greater than the width. Although this is not always mandatory. It does not matter whether the stone was subjected to additional processing. In descriptions of menhirs, scientists, first of all, pay attention to their single location. Although, sometimes entire complexes are formed from menhirs (for example, such as Stonehenge).

There are menhirs of various shapes, including (in some cultures) anthropomorphic or animalistic.

Circles, semicircles, spirals and other shapes made from menhirs are called cromlechs . Cromlechs are found in different countries, and they are not only concentric. For example, some ensembles of menhirs in Khakassia have rectangular outlines. Cromlechs often include both single megaliths and simple structures of several stones. A structure similar to an arch or gate made of two vertical and one horizontal stones is called a trilith , design in the shape of the letter “T” - tauloy. One large stone that rests on several others is a dolmen.

Legends of Menhirs

Not only in surviving traditional cultures, but also in modern times, the idea that menhirs, dolmens and cromlechs have mystical properties is alive. Many eyewitnesses talk about unusual conditions that arise in their vicinity of ancient stone structures. Some people experience special excitement and excitement from contact with the menhir, which is accompanied by rapid breathing and increased heart rate. Others, on the contrary, note previously uncharacteristic asthenic states: tranquility, drowsiness, dizziness, weakness.

Some scientists consider the influence on humans of geomagnetic anomalies or simply an unusual geological environment near menhirs to be quite possible. But there are also those who “blame” the “placebo” effect for its miraculous properties. Self-hypnosis is fueled by stories from previous eyewitnesses and “horror stories” from guides and residents of local villages. There are also many beautiful mystical legends about menhirs.

For example, the Czech menhir “Enchanted Monk” in Dragomysl is a supposedly petrified clergyman who attempted to escape with his beloved. For his offense, he was cursed by the abbot of the monastery and turned into stone. And the moving “Horse-Stone” near one of the Tula rivers, according to the tales of local residents, arose when a huge horseman came down from the sky and froze on the shore. The mystical aura around menhirs is natural, considering that these stone structures have existed for many thousands of years and were created for funeral rites, sacrifices, cult and, possibly, astronomical purposes.

Where are the oldest menhirs located?

The oldest megalithic complex known to scientists is located in southeast Turkey. This is the mysterious man-made hill of Göbekli Tepe, whose name literally translates as “bellied mountain”. Archaeologists began exploring it back in the sixties of the last century. And the first unusual discovery for them was the excavation of several T-shaped taulas perfectly hewn shape. Such tauls, as well as single menhirs, were decorated with figurines of animals, quite advanced from an artistic and technological point of view. It was then discovered that the hill itself was an artificial embankment. And soon scientists learned that the age of the chronologically earliest layers of the complex was almost 12,000 years, which was several thousand years ahead of all the oldest structures known at that time.

It is interesting that representatives of many later cultures would envy the architectural skills of the builders of Göbekli Tepe. The smoothly hewn monolithic columns of this temple reached a height of up to three meters. Nearby there were unbuilt but processed columns up to nine meters long. But even this “miracle” at the site of the mountain was not the only one. Geodetic studies have shown that Gobekli Tepe hides more than a dozen similar structures, which for some reason were deliberately artificially covered with a layer of 300-500 meters of sand back in the 8th millennium BC. Later, a new religious building appeared on the site of the mound, which existed until 6000 BC.

Representatives of this culture did not leave any written artifacts, but judging by the inscriptions on the walls, they had a system of sacred pictograms. From the paintings on the menhirs of Gobekli Tepe, scientists found out that the guardians of this place had widespread animalistic beliefs and the custom of beheading the dead. The bodies of the dead were left to be eaten by vultures. At the same time, there are no traces of settlements near the temple itself, which additionally testified to scientists about the cult, and not the economic purpose of the complex.

Later, menhirs appeared in many other places - in the North Caucasus and the Middle East, in the south of the Urals in Russia, in the territory of modern Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, France in Europe. But almost all of them date back to the 3rd-2nd millennium BC. However, even these relatively “young” dolmens are mysteries for historians leave no less than a difference of several thousand years between Göbeklitepe and Stonehenge. And in order to solve them, scientists will apparently have to explore more than one megalithic structure.

Ksenia Zharchinskaya

As the book of Genesis narrates, Jacob, fleeing the wrath of his brother Esau, who had been deceived by him, fled, hoping to find shelter with his uncle Laban. Having spent the night along the way in a desert area, resting his head on a stone, he woke up in great fear: God appeared to him in a dream... As a sign of memory of this event, Jacob stood up the stone that served as his headboard, and poured oil on its top. He called the whole place Bethel (Russian transcription of the word bet-el, “house of God”); later a city with this name was founded here.

From this episode we can judge that vertically placed oblong stones, bearing traces of rough processing, were revered in ancient Palestine as the dwellings of gods or spirits. The ancestors of the Semitic peoples (and most likely, much more ancient peoples) tried to appease them by making sacrifices in the form of aromatic oils. Indeed, bet-el are widespread in the south of Palestine, in Syria and date back to the local Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, i.e. to the 7th - 3rd millennia BC. The tribes that succeeded those who erected these primitive obelisks remained respectful of them and tried not to anger the spirits of their predecessors, who (it was believed) had gone into stones.

But these first megaliths received their most famous name from the Breton language: menhirs (from menhir - “long stone”). And this is no coincidence - after all, Western Europe is especially replete with not only single stone pillars, but also entire compositions of them - many kilometers of straight rows (often several, parallel to each other), circles (cromlechs) and other, more complex groups. The largest of the European menhirs is Er-Grah in Brittany, the "great split menhir", erected around 5000 BC. e. and collapsed during an earthquake in 4300 BC. e., splitting into several pieces. This block once reached 20 m in height and weighed 380 kg; it was carved from gneiss, the nearest exit to the surface is 10 km from Er-Grah. The destroyed menhir stood in a line with 18 other, smaller stones.

The construction of menhirs was and is often attributed to the Celts. Allegedly, the Celtic Druid priests performed their bloody sacrifices near these stones. But the settlement of Western Europe by the Celts ended only at the beginning of our era; menhirs are several thousand years older. It is possible, of course, that the Druids used for their religious purposes structures that were already considered in their era to have been erected in ancient times. This was the case in other places where similar objects are found - in Europe, Africa and Asia, in the Altai, Sayan Mountains, Crimea and the Caucasus. Everywhere, peoples who replaced others left intact cult artifacts that reminded them of the former population.

However, one can only speculate about the purpose of the menhirs. Whether they were really centers for the performance of unknown rites and rituals, or served only as boundary signs dividing the territories of various tribes, or as some kind of viziers on the ground, marking some important directions for ancient people (including astronomical objects), this is not certain. clarified. At least, it has been established that all menhirs date back to the Neolithic era, when man first moved from an appropriating economy (hunting, fishing, gathering) to a producing economy - cattle breeding and agriculture. This was a huge breakthrough in the history of mankind - then, for the first time, small wandering groups of people wandering in search of food were replaced by more sedentary communities that provided themselves with food in abundance. As a result, naturally, in the regions where the “Neolithic Revolution” took place (this is the name adopted in science to denote this gigantic shift), the population increased many times; people had more free time, which they could devote not only to food; human resources have increased and, accordingly, the ability to use them to carry out large-scale work. It is estimated, for example, that it took at least several tens of man-years to fill the parallel earthen ramparts characteristic of Neolithic Europe or to build alleys of menhirs. Apparently, the organization of society has become more complicated, in any case, the class of shamans, priests, in a word - ministers of worship has probably already emerged. It was they who preserved and passed on from generation to generation those ideas that encouraged people to create structures that seemed to have no economic purpose.

However, it is quite possible that menhirs served many purposes at once - both religious and practical. In a still primitive society, any activity was of an undifferentiated, syncretic nature. Thus, art was not divided into genera and types - song, dance, even plastic and graphics formed a single complex. Only later, already at the emergence of the first state formations, did professional singers, sculptors, and artists appear. Such specialization, of course, contributed to the improvement of each type of artistic creativity, but something of the primitive integrity was lost.

Apparently, menhirs, initially representing something holistic and multifunctional, then began to develop in different directions. On the one hand, the compositions of menhirs - ranks, alleys, cromlechs, as well as more complex megaliths (trilithons in Britain, taulas in the Balearic Islands) - probably became the beginnings of architecture. And the appearance at first of only roughly hewn blocks of drawings, carved signs, carvings, and later attempts to give them an anthropomorphic appearance meant the birth of monumental sculpture.

Menhirs are monuments of that distant era when man, having first achieved some independence from nature, ascended to another level of awareness of himself and his place in the universe.

Menhirs are vertically installed huge stones processed by man. Their creation dates back to ancient times, before the Neolithic era. The largest of them is preserved in France - 20 meters high and weighing 300 tons. True, over time it split into three parts. There are several such menhirs in Crimea...

Menhir of Belyansky

The largest and most famous is the Belyansky menhir (Bakhchisarai menhir) in the village of Glubokiy Yar. Named in honor of the local historian who discovered a vertically standing stone pillar in the Bogaz-Sala ravine, near Bakhchisarai. The height of the menhir is four meters, weight is about 10 tons. It is interesting because, firstly, electromagnetic anomalies are periodically created around it, which cause the compass needle to deviate. And secondly, as the engineer of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory Alexander Lagutin proved, the Bakhchisarai menhir in combination with the rock mass opposite forms a unique ancient astrophysical observatory. Through a window carved into the rock, the rising sun hits the menhir twice a year. This ray records the direction west - east and, most likely, served to determine the days of the summer and winter solstices. It is at this time that esotericists come to the menhir to recharge with the energy of the sun. After all, it is believed that the summer solstice saturates space with energy and on this day those born under fire signs (Leo, Aries and Sagittarius) can feel like real magicians.

Menhir of Belyansky

Skel menhirs

In the village of Rodnikovskoye, in the Baydar Valley, there are three vertically standing blocks. The tallest menhir reaches almost three meters. The famous Crimean archaeologist Askold Shchepinsky, who studied the object in 1978, points out that the Skel menhirs are not only the largest, but also clear monuments of this kind in southeastern Europe, which have not been disturbed in subsequent centuries and stand in their original place. The scientist claims that the Skel menhirs had cult significance, and dates their appearance to the 3rd - early 2nd millennium BC. Thus, these ancient monuments are more than four thousand years old.

MENHIRS are stone pillars dug vertically into the ground. It is traditionally believed that the word menhir comes from the Breton roots men - “stone” and hir - “long”. Their height varies from 80 centimeters to 20 meters, weight reaches 300 tons. It is believed that the tallest was the Fairy Stone, which stood near the village of Lokmariaker in French Brittany. It rose 17 meters above the ground and went more than three meters into the ground, and weighed about 350 tons! The Fairy Stone was supposedly erected 4,000 years ago, but was unfortunately destroyed around 1727. Sometimes a third one lies on two vertically mounted blocks; such gate-like structures are called trilithons. The most grandiose ensemble of menhirs is located there, in Brittany, in Carnac - grandiose stone alleys of more than 3,000 uncut stones (it is believed that there used to be about 10,000 of them!) stretch for several kilometers. They are about 6000 years old. From the air you can see that some large and small megaliths form huge circles and triangles.

It is believed that menhirs are tombstones. Perhaps lighthouses. Or sights. There are known groups of menhirs that stand in such a way that from one you can see a second, from a second a third, from a third a fourth, and so on - very similar to a signaling system. True, the pelvans also stand far from the seashore, where it is strange to talk about them as lighthouses, and traces of burials are not found under all the long stones.

for the magazine "Man Without Borders"