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“...The waters were standing above the mountains. At Thy rebuke they fled; At the sound of Thy thunder they hurried away. The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst establish for them.” Ps. 104:6-8 NASB (New American Standard Bible)
Introduction
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An opportunity to have a fresh look at the mysteries of megaliths came up due to the first testing of nonstandard and even, at first sight, paradoxical view of the nature of modern relief.
For the first time I slightly opened some of basic points of this view in my article about so-called “cart ruts”, placed on the site www.cartruts.ru. This phenomenon consists of deep double ruts in hard limestone very similar to usual tracks left by transport on waterlogged road. Most of these ruts are concentrated on the Malta, but they are found in other places as well.
This work suggests answers to almost all mysteries that have already become timeless connected with these ruts. Meanwhile it became possible to find answers to many problems concerning construction of some famous prehistoric temples (Ggantija, Ħagar Qim, Mnajdra, etc.). In particular, it became clear why ancient people used such enormous blocks at their erection that nobody used afterwards. It tells how and where people extracted them and how such blocks were established.
The obtained results have confirmed me in accuracy of the chosen way and I made an attempt to turn to megaliths − constructions of the same period, much more well known, intriguing, and surrounded by numerous myths and legends.
Despite of "primeval" look of megaliths − primitiveness of their structure, roughness of processing and large size of the blocks used, − features seemingly would have simple and obvious explanation to everybody; the problem of their purpose has appeared to be not trivial at all. The problem is being complicated by the fact of wide spreading of such monuments on the planet: from Ireland in the West, up to Japan and Korea in the East.
Despite of active excavations in the 19th and the 20th centuries there are no convincing hypotheses explaining peculiarities of their structure and arrangement. The general recognition of these constructions as ritual ones based on finding traces of burial places inside or near many megaliths somewhat calmed the minds of scientists. The connection with cults did not any longer demand thorough explanations of other nuances. Monumental roughness of megaliths could be explained by imperfect ways of stone-working and primitive aesthetic worldview of ancient people. The situation, which has developed around these constructions nowadays, can be well characterized as stagnation: all arguments in favor of each existing versions are known, but they do not clearly explain separate features of concrete constructions (think of Stonehenge), neither do they explain mysteries of megaliths as a planetary-historical phenomenon as a whole.
It remains unclear: how to explain constructive similarity of megaliths in different areas of the world, the areas often removed by great distances and divided by mountains and seas. How could such uniformity arise in those ancient times? Were the builders connected by shared culture or this uniformity got born out of similarity of the natural environment, which in its turn determined the similarity of the way of life and aesthetics? How can one explain such unexplainable inclination to enormous stones at the erection of megaliths in the days when there were no iron tools, let alone elevating cranes? Why, at last, are they everywhere located near the seas?
Such situations always give good opportunity to go back to the drawing board again, to address the foundations, and to look critically at the phenomenons that are taken for granted. To check once again, whether there are any erroneous assumptions not always realized by researchers which probably defined all subsequent train of thought of several generations of people and sent them in a wrong direction. Starting my research on megaliths I was driven by a desire to check once more my «know how» applying it to such worthy problem.
However, first, I had to be acquainted with megaliths personally, that so I did.
It happened that the choice fell neither on England or Ireland where megaliths are more numerous, but on France. There, on the Brittany peninsula, near the Morbihan gulf and small town Carnac among woods and fields tens of dolmens, tumuli, and menhirs were hiding. However, the visiting card of this area certainly is the famous alignments, which have no worthy analogues anywhere in the world. There my wife and I went after I had finished my article about Maltese cart ruts.
As well as in the case of Malta my assumption that everything narrows down to erroneous views about the newest geological history was confirmed after the first examination of the monuments and surrounding landscapes, but fuller understanding of the connection of megaliths with terrain features, explaining these or those nuances of their structure and arrangement came some time later.
The present work suggests answers to overwhelming majority of these "eternal" mysteries. In details and, I hope, more convincingly, than it was done by authors of all existing versions, one can find the purpose of each kind of megaliths in this article. This work explains their location, orientation, general and particular features of their structure. However, the main thing is that the work points to the reason why these problems have not been solved for such long time. The reason lies in the inaccuracy of modern views concerning natural environment and kinds of landscapes, in which lived and operated original builders of megaliths. This is the key for understanding of all made by people during prehistoric times not only in Brittany, but also on the Planet in general. This work also explains what caused the end of this rather recent but still a mysterious period.
The difficulty of my position when writing this article consisted in the fact that I had to reveal the nature of megaliths not from the point of view of accepted scientific positions. (NB: I think that if this were possible in principle it would have been done a long time ago). I have to reveal the nature of megaliths using my own “know how” about the development of the relief, which itself was not published anywhere and had not been recognized by anybody yet. Using mathematical language, I had to solve an equation in two unknowns. It is always more complex, than a problem with one unknown, but a solution always gives double satisfactions – understanding what megaliths are and verification my hypothesis, which, I am sure, is not less important for «large-scale science».
Why did not I follow an easier and a more consistent way? Why did not I first write a work justifying my “know how” seeking its recognition and only then address to problems of the Neolithic monuments. The fact is that it could take the whole life. The tail of consequences of the mentioned approach touches practically all areas of geology and other fields of knowledge connected to it. Changes, which they have to undergo, are so grand and touch on interests of so many researchers working in these areas, that I have great fears, that such work simply will not be “seen" by those who are duty-bound to deal with these problems. Geology, as well as all sciences, in which truth cannot be verified by mathematical methods, is rather conservative and not inclined to self-reforming. All supporters of various concepts have somehow got used to each other, and they comfortly coexist together not breaking this status quo for whatever reasons. I hope that acceleration of the process of reading and legitimization of this new approach by competent experts can be done only under certain external pressure from other sciences, whose interests are touched by the received results. I mean archeology. The conclusions of the article are revolutionary for this science as well, but the ambitions of archeologists are not trampled, because the conclusions lay outside of the area of their competence. No less important is the position of people who are not indifferent about these problems, as well as public discussions. Moreover, both articles this one and the one about Maltese cart ruts and temples by themselves present a concrete practical result of application of the new hypothesis.
For this reason, working on this article, I tried to make it as much understandable to the broad reading public as possible. For the argumentation of my conclusions, I put the main emphasis on the popular materials: personal and other people’s photos, topographical plats or facts of common knowledge, which can be checked up by any Internet user within a few seconds.
Using of specialized materials is limited to the book by the archeologist Michael O’Kelly and titled “Newgrange. Archaeology, Art and Legend”. It is a report of excavations of this monument.
Consideration of this so-called “Neolithic temple” is out of keeping with the title of this work, in fact, it is located in Ireland, but it seemed necessary to me because unexpectedly for me the results of his excavations even in small things well agreed with the geological processes declared in the article and their consequences.
Before I start describing the results of my research, I shall try in general to explain the applied concept of the development of the relief and to point out where it differs from other existing concepts.
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