Dolmens tombs

Excavations at 5000 year old Irish dolmen:
http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/004068.html

Drusin, could you send a private message to Red Clay? Anyone with an interest in ancient archaeology is welcome here, especially if it's outside of Classical-era Europe.


Edited by Nick1986 - 17-Feb-2012 at 09:06

Originally posted by Drusin I participate on the forum at Megalithic Portal too.  Runemage is a wonderful moderator.  Which I'm sure you will be too. They have great maps of sites, you can even search for mining and industry and it just pops up.   All those mines and megaliths

Thank you, Drusin, for your kind words and for your feedback on my poems, I really appreciate that.
You mean this Megalithic portal I got the first 2 pictures from? I didn't even notice they had a forum...
I'm going to go this summer in Bulgaria /I'm from there, came to US 10 years ago/ and I will buy some books on dolmens and the Thracian tombs, I hope to find some in English and post from them here. Much archeological work done the last years there and I hope to get my hands to some newly published academic volumes.

This is a video about the Thracian tombs, there are dolmens included.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYr08HEe6EY

I participate on the forum at Megalithic Portal too.  Runemage is a wonderful moderator.  Which I'm sure you will be too. They have great maps of sites, you can even search for mining and industry and it just pops up.   All those mines and megaliths

There are dolmens in Bulgaria too - this link is good, with following pictures  http://bulgariatravel.org/en/object/255/355_The_Dolmens 
This one is 8-7 century BC
Oryahovo Dolmen submitted by StanislavIliev


























http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=23414
This one is Thracian
















http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=14502
Thracian one, 9-7 century BC, Belevren

http://www.horizonfoundation.nl/projects/strandja/

This is a very interesting research on the orientation of  more than 80 dolmens in Bulgaria - they were all orineted toward some pick or a hill,I suppose  because tye Ancient Thracians were Orphics, with both Greek and Thracian Orphism, and the mountain/hill was one of the symbols of Mother-Goddess.  http://mgu.bg/geoarchmin/naterials/33Kolev-et-al.pdf



Edited by Don Quixote - 16-Feb-2012 at 20:20

Hello all and thank you to the folks that make this forum possible. I do have some interesting information on dolmen. 30,000 in Korea alone. There are also countless dolmen in India and the Middle East.  They pop up all over the planet and most actually don't contain remains, this is telling in that their original purpose was not to serve as tombs.  Recent discoveries of interred remains under the floors of houses and even beds in Catal Huyuk tells us the people of the neolithic and bronze ages had different views about how best to deal with human remains.   They were likely functional structures that served as well-protected  housing and storage for the mining and trade industries of their times. Megalithic Portal is an excellent site with maps and the most comprehensive list of megaliths globally I have found online. 

People  spent a lot of time with dead one&buried.They still spend it.In my town,city graveyard still have covered dining room for those that have come to eat with their dead relatives.

Ancients were practical people first,than artists and mystics&philosophers.Stone structures had shown us there was long time,human presence,inside those areas.They had had a lot of time to built them for community's usages.

Edited by medenaywe - 07-Jan-2012 at 12:18

Med. it doesn't surprise me that there were no burials found under the many Dolmen that exist in the US.  Cremation was used in many prehistoric cultures.  The ashes may have been placed under the rocks.  In the region I'm in there are quite a few cremation sites.  There was also a custom in which the deceased was buried in a sacred place, then they would have a ceremonial fire, into which offerings were placed.  The fire could be kept burning for weeks. 

Originally posted by Nick1986 A dolmen in itself is merely the ruined remains of a burial mound. The earth has long worn away, but originally the standing stones served as a burial chamber for a dead chieftain who would be buried with his bronze weapons, treasure, and food for his journey into the otherworld

 

Edited by red clay - 07-Jan-2012 at 10:49