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Updated: June 5, 2025
If the pillar which supports the slab is, like the free-standing pillars, a baetyl, the slab is probably a mere roof to cover and protect it; if not, the slab is almost certainly a table. At the same time, although we may not accept the hypothesis that the cell is derived from a dolmen, Sir Arthur Evans may still be right in supposing the worship to have originated in a cult of the dead.
There was a great stone dolmen, as they call it a giant house, as it were, made of three flat stones for walls, and a fourth for a roof, so heavy that none know how such are raised nowadays. They might have served for a table, or maybe a stool, for a Jotun.
Of English examples we may mention the dolmens of Rodmarten and Avening; Merimee quotes several megalithic monuments in Wiltshire; and Sir J. Simpson, the well-known and oft-described KIT'S COTTY HOUSE, which is nothing more than a dolmen with an opening.
Another group of some twenty dolmens was discovered by M. de Saulcy on the plateau of El Azemieh, one of which rises in the centre of a belt of roughly sculptured upright stones; and yet a third group is to be seen near Mount Nebo, which Major Conder thus describes: "Here a well-defined dolmen was found northwest of the flat, ruined cairn, which harks the summit of the ride.
Jacob's words at Bethel, "This is the gate of heaven," may have an allusion to the prehistoric custom of the place; for we have reason to believe that a dolmen existed there, consecrated to solar worship, the original name of Bethel being Beth-on, the house of the sun.
In Lower Galilee a single dolmen has been found; in Upper Galilee four of moderate dimensions are known. West of Tiberias is a circle, and between Tyre and Sidon an enclosure of menhirs. At Tell el Kady, one of the Jordan sources, a centre of basalt dolmens exists, and at Kefr Wal ... there is another large centre.
One of the finest had an outer circle about 27 feet in diameter, and an inner circle 14 feet in diameter. Between these two a third circle, much more irregular and of small stones, could just be distinguished. But in most cases it was impossible to make out clearly more than the one outer circle and the dolmen within it.
Graves of the dolmen or cromlech type are found in all the countries of Western Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere, wherever stone suitable for the purpose abounds, and in this we have a striking illustration of the way in which lines of development in man's material civilisation are sooner or later correlated to his geographical, geological, and other surroundings.
Salomon Reinach, arguing mainly from the early appearance of the objects found in the tombs of Scandinavia and the rarity of the simpler types of monument, such as the dolmen, in Germany and South Europe, suggests that megalithic monuments first appeared in North Europe and spread southwards. Mackenzie is more inclined to believe in an African origin.
At Borreby, in Denmark, a skull was found from which large pieces had been taken; and another from beneath a dolmen at Noes, in the island of Falster, had a hole in it no less than two and a quarter by one and three quarter inches in size. In the one case the holes were parts of a wound to which the victim had succumbed; in the other the edges were too regular to have been caused by traumatism.
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