Men•Hir & Dol•Men

Er-Grah

In the Grail

« Mégalithiens celtisés »

Lost healing and rejuvenating spots from Neolithic cultures.

The Menhirs marked the relevant Earth's EM grid.

While the Dolmen were Healing/Rejuvenating Chambers.

(Cf. First Nations' suffumigation/smudge practises)

『➥ the Yuwipi healing ceremony is one of the principal ceremonies of the Lakota Sioux people, along with the inipi (sweat lodge) and hanbalecha (vision quest). The current ‘yuwipi man’, Godfrey, received the power to talk with spirits at the age of twelve and is considered one of the foremost healers of his kind in America today.』

These healing techniques belonged to the No•Mad epoch.

This was a world where standing stones created a sacred network, connecting the hearts and minds of our ancestors along with the Earth's Grid. The Great Menhir of Er-Grah "Beautiful Stone" 52 was one of the most powerful among these artefacts.

The agri•culture, the peasants and villains have all but destroyed the vestiges of these times.

Instead, we have had — since — only ménagers (managers)

Our time is the era of the husband and the husbandry

When Women Have No Say

Cf. Rear-Admiral Paul Réveillère (author notably of the book "Enigmes de la nature" and who defined the French as « Mégalithiens celtisés » "Celticized Megalithians")

支し石せき墓ぼ • (shisekibo) 

dolmen or prehistoric megalithic tomb consisting of a capstone supported by two or more upright stones, most having originally been covered with earth or smaller stones to form a barrow.

Breton

er

Contraction of e ur (“in a(n)”).

Contraction of e ar (“in the”).

grah

from Old Breton grad “rank” borrowed from French grade (“a grade, degree”), from Latin gradus (“a step, pace, a step in a ladder or stair, a station, position, degree”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰradʰ-, *gʰredʰ- (“to walk, go”). Cognate with Gothic 𐌲𐍂𐌹𐌸𐍃 (griþs, “step, grade”)

Almendres Cromlech (Évora, Portugal)

1. A cromlech (sometimes also spelled "cromleh" or "cromlêh"; cf Welsh crom, "bent"; llech, "slate") is a megalithic construction made of large stone blocks. The word applies to two different megalithic forms in English, the first being an altar tomb (frequently called a "dolmen"), as William Borlase first denoted in 1769. A good example is Carn Llechart. The second meaning of the name "cromlech" in English refers to large stone circles such as those found among the Carnac stones in Brittany, France.
2. The word dolmen entered archaeology when Théophile Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne used it to describe megalithic tombs in his Origines Gauloises (1796) using the spelling 'dolmin' (the current spelling was introduced about a decade later and had become standard in French by about 1885). The Oxford English Dictionary does not mention "dolmin" in English and gives its first citation for "dolmen" from a book on Brittany in 1859, describing the word as "The French term, used by some English authors, for a cromlech ...". The name was supposedly derived from a Breton language term meaning "stone table" but doubt has been cast on this, and the OED describes its origin as "Modern French". A book on Cornish antiquities from 1754 said that the current term in the Cornish language for a cromlech was tolmen ("hole of stone") and the OED says that "There is reason to think that this was the term inexactly reproduced by Latour d'Auvergne [sic] as dolmen, and misapplied by him and succeeding French archaeologists to the cromlech". Nonetheless, it has now replaced cromlech as the usual English term in archaeology, when the more technical and descriptive alternatives are not used. The later Cornish term was quoit - an English language word for an object with a hole through the middle preserving the original Cornish language term of 'Tolmen' — the name of another dolmen-like monument is in fact Mên-an-Tol 'stone with a hole' (SWF: Men An Toll). Dolmens are known by a variety of names in other languages, including Irish: dolmain, Galician and Portuguese: anta, Bulgarian: Долмени, romanized: Dolmeni, German: Hünengrab/Hünenbett, Afrikaans and Dutch: hunebed, Basque: trikuharri, Abkhazian: Adamra, Adyghe: Ispun, Danish and Norwegian: dysse, Swedish: dös, Korean: 고인돌, romanized: goindol, and Hebrew: גַלעֵד. Granja is used in Portugal, Galicia, and Spain. The rarer forms anta and ganda also appear. In the Basque Country, they are attributed to the jentilak, a race of giants. Dolmen originated from the expression Welsh: taol maen which means "stone table". The etymology of the German: Hünenbett, Hünengrab and Dutch: hunebed - with Hüne/hune meaning "giant" - all evoke the image of giants buried (bett/bed/grab = bed/grave) there. Of other Celtic languages, Welsh: cromlech was borrowed into English and quoit is commonly used in English in Cornwall.
3. Menhir, borrowed from French menhir, or from its etymon Breton maen-hir (literally “long stone”), from maen (“stone”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s (“big, great”)) + hir (“long”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *seh₁- (“long; lasting”)).
   

Mesolithic

• c. 7400 BC: A 12 m long monolith probably weighing around 15,000 kg found submerged 40 m underwater in the Strait of Sicily south-west of Sicily. Its origin and purpose are unknown.

Neolithic

Klekkende Høj passage grave, Denmark, c. 3500-2800 BC

• circa 9000 BC: Constructions in Asia Minor (Göbekli Tepe*, Nevalı Çori and other sites); perhaps proto-Hattian, a yet to be named culture (the oldest discovered ceremonial structures in the world).

• c. 7000 BC: Construction in proto-Canaanite Israel (Atlit Yam).
• c. 6000 BC: Constructions in Portugal (Almendres Cromlech, Évora) - Possibly first standing stones in Portugal.
• c. 5000 BC: Emergence of the Atlantic Neolithic period, the age of agriculture along the western shores of Europe during the sixth millennium BC pottery culture of La Almagra, Spain nearby, perhaps precedent from Africa.
• c. 4800 BC: Constructions in Brittany**, France (Barnenez) and Poitou (Bougon).
• c. 4500 BC: Constructions in south Egypt (Nabta Playa).
• c. 4300 BC: Constructions in south Spain (Dolmen de Alberite, Cádiz).
• c. 4000 BC: Constructions in Brittany (Carnac), Portugal (Great Dolmen of Zambujeiro, Évora), France (central and southern), Corsica, Spain (Galicia), England and Wales, Constructions in Andalusia, Spain (Villa Martín, Cádiz), Construction in proto-Canaanite Israel c. 4000~3000 BC: Constructions in the rest of the proto-Canaanite Levant, e.g. Rujm el-Hiri and dolmens.
• c. 3700 BC: Constructions in Ireland (Knockiveagh and elsewhere).
• c. 3600 BC: Constructions in Malta (Skorba temples).
  

  A model of the prehistoric town of Los Millares, with its walls (Andalusia, Spain)
• c. 3600 BC: Constructions in England (Maumbury Rings and Godmanchester), and Malta (Ġgantija and Mnajdra temples).
• c. 3500 BC: Constructions in Spain (Málaga and Guadiana), Ireland (south-west), France (Arles and the north), Malta (and elsewhere in the Mediterranean), Belgium (north-east), and Germany (central and south-west).
• c. 3400 BC: Constructions in Sardinia (circular graves), Ireland (Newgrange), Netherlands (north-east), Germany (northern and central) Sweden and Denmark.
• c. 3300 BC: Constructions in France (Carnac stones)
• c. 3200 BC: Constructions in Malta (Ħaġar Qim and Tarxien).
• c. 3100 BC: Constructions in Russia (Dolmens of North Caucasus)
• c. 3000 BC: Constructions in Sardinia (earliest construction phase of the prehistoric altar of Monte d'Accoddi), France (Saumur, Dordogne, Languedoc, Biscay, and the Mediterranean coast), Spain (Los Millares), Sicily, Belgium (Ardennes), and Orkney, as well as the first henges (circular earthworks) in Britain.

* Göbekli Tepe

At a number of sites in southeastern Turkey, ceremonial complexes with large T-shaped megalithic orthostats, dating from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN, c. 9600–7000 cal BC), have been discovered.

At the most famous of these sites, Göbekli Tepe, parts of the oldest level (III) have been C14-dated as far back as to the mid-10th millennium BC (cal). On this level, 20 great stone circles (up to 20 meters in diameter) with standing stones up to 7 meters high have been identified. At least 5 of these circles have so far (as of 2019) been excavated. Many of the standing stones are richly ornamented with carved reliefs of "[b]ears, boars, snakes, foxes, wildcats, aurochs, gazelle, quadruped reptiles, birds, spiders, insects, quadrupeds, scorpions" and other animals; in addition, some of the stones are carved in a low profile with stylized human features (arms, hands, loincloths, but no heads).

On the younger level (II) rectangular structures with smaller megaliths have been excavated. In the surrounding area, several village sites incorporating elements similar to those of Göbekli Tepe have been identified. Four of these have Göbekli Tepe's characteristic T-shaped standing stones, though only one of them, Nevalı Çori, has so far been excavated. At Göbekli Tepe itself, no traces of habitation have so far been found, nor any trace of agriculture or cultivated plants, though bones of wild animals and traces of wild edible plants, along with many grinding stones, have been unearthed. It is thus assumed that these structures (which have been characterized as the first known ceremonial architecture) were erected by hunter-gatherers.

Göbekli Tepe's oldest structures are about 7,000 years older than the Stonehenge megaliths, although it is doubtful that any of the European megalithic traditions (see below) are derived from them.

** Locmariaquer megaliths

Locmariaquer, like Carnac, must have been an important religious site: “Throughout the entire area of ​​the town, and in all directions, there are burial mounds, fairy caves, dolmens, menhirs. They once covered the whole region: broken and knocked down by passers-by, they successively disappeared from the ground (...)” wrote A. Marteville and P. Varin in 1843. The ransacking of prehistoric monuments had begun long before: Christophe-Paul de Robien already pointed this out at the beginning of the 18th century; for example, when the town of Auray had its townhouse built between 1776 and 1782, the aldermen demanded that the paving and the steps be made of "Locmariaquer stones": "armed with such a clause, I suspect that the four contractors who succeeded (...) did not hesitate to ransack the dolmens and menhirs of the region” wrote Gustave de Closmadeuc in 1892; it also indicates that in 1825 several dolmens of Locmariaquer (as well as the covered alley of Luffang in Crac'h) were used for the construction of the Charterhouse of Auray and the Mausoleum of Cadoudal. It was not until 1882 that the main megaliths of Locmariaquer were acquired by the State, which then ensured their conservation. In 1899 again, Rear Admiral Reveillère had the project of transferring the broken Grand Menhir to Paris to make it the "highlight" of the 1900 Universal Exhibition, but his project did not succeed because it raised numerous protests.

A drawing dating from 1853 represents "Les Pierres Plates". "Locmariaquer not only has the largest menhir in the world, but also the most grandiose dolmenic tombs: the Table des Marchand, the Mané-Rétual, the Mané-er-Hroëk and this curious bent alley, rich in engravings and known as the name of Pierres-Plates” stated Louis Marsille in 1943; he also writes that the Grand menhir must have kept the secondary destination of bitter for centuries.

Jules Coignet, 1836, Dolmen à Locmariaquer

Broken Menhir of Er Grah

The Locmariaquer megaliths are a complex of Neolithic constructions in Locmariaquer, Brittany. They comprise the elaborate Er-Grah (Er-Grah is meant to be a “beautiful stone”) tumulus passage grave, a dolmen known as the Table des Marchand and "The Broken Menhir of Er Grah", the largest known single block of stone to have been transported and erected by Neolithic people.

The broken menhir or Men ar hroëc'h which means « Pierre de la Fée » "Stone of the Fairy" in Breton, was erected around 4700 BC at the same time as another 18 blocks nearby, is thought to have been broken around 4000 BC. Measuring 20.60 metres (67.6 ft) and with a weight of 330 tons, the stone is from a rocky outcrop located several kilometres away from Locmariaquer. The impressive dimensions of this menhir still divide specialists about the techniques used for transport and erection, but the fact that this was achieved during the Neolithic era remains remarkable. This alignment suggests the existence of an ancient complex of standing stones, erected in single file, which stood aligned, from largest to smallest, over more than 55 meters in a northerly direction from the base of the Large menhir but the area beyond the current road has not been excavated. The pits are associated with wedges of post holes which could be the elements of the scaffolding intended to cut and raise these large menhirs.

Table des Marchand (des Marchants ?)

An Daol Varchant, the Table des Marchand is a large dolmen containing a number of decorations. The main capstone of the chamber includes a large carving on its underside depicting an axe, and part of a carved depiction of a plough, apparently pulled by oxen. This fragment indicates that the capstone was originally part of the broken menhir since the design matches up with carvings on the broken remains across the breaks. Other parts were used in the tumulus and in the nearby dolmen of Gavrinis, on a nearby island. The stone at the back of the chamber contained an engraved stele with whorls and arched decorations which may represent fields of crops.

The dolmen was fully exposed and above ground until it was excavated and rebuilt inside a cairn in 1993, reconstructing its original appearance and protecting its contents.

The local toponymic name for this megalith is An Dol March'hand (literally horse alley table, which translates to "Horse Alley Table"). Its dubious francization as Table des Marchands by the painter Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Jorand who took part in the excavation in 1824, then as Table des Marchand (an onomastic parenthesis which falsely associates this dolmen with a Marchand family), has imposed itself, in particular under the influence of the Inspector of Historic Monuments Prosper Mérimée who popularized the erroneous French translation after his visit to the open excavations at Locmariaquer and Carnac.

Er-Grah tumulus

The Er-Grah tumulus is 140 metres (460 ft) long. It was probably originally constructed in the fifth millennium BC as a cairn, which was extended in both directions. A pavement surrounded the stepped structure. The capstone indicates that the monument was completed at around 3,300 BC. According to A. W. R. Whittle, "In front of the south facade of the primary phase of the long cairn of Er Grah, close to where the menhir Brise originally stood...a pair of domesticated cattle were found in a pit. Radiocarbon determinations suggest a date in the late sixth and early fifth millennium BC."