Menhir
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"With the growth of communities, social organization, and trade and industry, monumental stone structures appear. Dolmens (dol, table, and men, stone), tombs or monuments to the dead, consisted of several stones set on end with a covering slab, hence the name. Single megaliths, menhirs (men, stone, hir, long), at times seventy feet high, were set up on end individually, or were arranged in long rows, as at Carnac in Brittany. Their purpose, though not clear, may have had to do with a cult of the dead or the worship of the sun." --Gardner's Art Through the Ages (1926) by Helen Gardner |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Standing stones, orthostats, liths, or more commonly megaliths (because of their large and cumbersome size) are solitary stones set vertically in the ground and come in many different varieties.
Standing stones are usually difficult to date, but pottery found underneath some in Atlantic Europe connects them with the Beaker people; others in the region appear to be earlier or later however.
Where they appear in groups together, often in a circular, oval, henge or horseshoe formation, they are sometimes called megalithic monuments. These are sites [it is thought] of ancient religious ceremonies, sometimes containing burial chambers.
See also
- Carlin stone
- Carnac stones
- Cove (standing stones)
- Cromlech
- Dolmen
- Fulacht fiadh
- Gowk Stone
- Henge
- Ley Lines
- Menhir
- Nature worship
- Orthostat
- Stone circle
- Stone row
- Stone ship
