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Updated: May 27, 2025
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.
Syria is comparatively rich in megalithic monuments, but it is remarkable that almost all of them lie to the east of the Jordan. Thus while there are hundreds of dolmens in the country of Pera and in Ammon and Moab, very few have been found in Galilee, and only one in Judæa, despite careful search.
Perhaps the most widely approved theory is that which considers this position to be embryonic, i.e. the position of the embryo previous to birth. None of these explanations is entirely convincing, but no better one has been put forward up to the present. This custom, it must be noted, was not limited to the megalithic peoples.
But there is no need why these researches should be extended to the region of fancy. Gargantua has been proved by some to be of Celtic origin. Very often he is a solar myth, and the statement that Rabelais only collected popular traditions and gave new life to ancient legends is said to be proved by the large number of megalithic monuments to which is attached the name of Gargantua.
Such a custom is not unknown in other parts of the megalithic area. With these bodies were found large quantities of painted pottery, a few implements of copper and many of flint. Among the ornaments which the dead carried for they seem to have been buried in complete costume were several axe-shaped pendants of polished stone, precisely similar to those of Sardinia, Malta, and France.
The others yielded a few cinders, but it was impossible to come to any definite conclusion. In many cases, as we have seen, the megalithic monument was surrounded by a double or triple ENCEINTE of stones without mortar. Inside these ENCEINTES were some small circular structures made of stones reddened by the action of heat.
The inner ellipse was formed by nineteen upright masses of granite, within which was the famous slab of blue marble, by many supposed to have been an altar. The pillars and lintels of the outer portico, and those of the trilithons, are fitted together with the greatest skill, with tenons and mortices, a remarkable exception to the general rule with megalithic monuments.
It is, however, very probable that these alignements had some religious signification, and the same is no doubt true of certain small circles of small stones, also found in the Deccan. The modern inhabitants of the Khasi Hills in India still make use of megalithic monuments. They set up a group of an odd number of menhirs, 3, 5, 7, 9, or 11, and in front of these two structures of dolmen form.
One of the roof stones having been broken, it has been strengthened by the addition of an inside pillar. Covered avenue near Antequera. In the Long Barrows of Littleton, Nempnitt, and Uley, the crypt is reached by an avenue, the entrance of which is closed by a trilithon, and a similar arrangement is met with in many megalithic monuments of Scania.
But in the dolmens of Lozère distinctly broad skulls were frequent. A series of British neolithic skulls, mostly from barrows, ran from 67 to 77. The builders of the megalithic monuments thus belonged in the main to a fairly dolichocephalic race or races, for the large majority of the skulls measured are of a long-headed type.
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