Previously Unknown Dolmen Discovered In Adygea

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Video: Previously Unknown Dolmen Discovered In Adygea

Video: Previously Unknown Dolmen Discovered In Adygea
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Previously Unknown Dolmen Discovered In Adygea
Previously Unknown Dolmen Discovered In Adygea
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In the Maykop region, a previously unknown dolmen was discovered during work in a gypsum quarry. The burial turned out to be unbroken. A bulldozer bucket damaged the structure, and the work in the quarry is now frozen.

The dolmen did not retain its original appearance. After meeting with the excavator, only two side plates remained in place. And, nevertheless, this find may become historical.

Dolmen
Dolmen

Dolmen was discovered in a plaster quarry. The excavator driver began a new cut into the rock - an ancient structure was found under the layer of earth. The dolmen did not retain its original appearance. After meeting with the excavator, only two side plates remained in place. And, nevertheless, this find may become historical. Archaeologists expect that the burial itself remained intact.

Archaeologist Nurbiy Lovpache restores the original picture by the fact that he withstood the fight against the machine: a tiled dolmen - that is, one of the earliest. It was oriented traditionally - to the east. It had the shape of a truncated pyramid. In its ritual purpose, it was probably used more than once: only a superficial study suggests that at least four people and several animals were buried here.

Nurbiy Lovpache, head of the archeology department of the Adyghe Republican Institute for Humanitarian Research, says:

Work on the restoration of this dolmen and its further research, as well as archaeological exploration of the area for the search for new antiquities will be carried out at the expense of the company developing the quarry. Preliminary, the research will take six months. During this time, the activities for the extraction of nonmetallic materials will be frozen here.

Dolmens are the most valuable monuments of ancient culture, and it is in Adygea and near it that there are so many dolmens as in no other country in the world

And what do we actually know about the dolmens of Adygea? Where did dolmens originate from in the Caucasus? Scientists believe that the dolmen culture originated in India. There are also dolmens there. Then, in two branches, it spread across the continent. The first branch went through the Mediterranean, to the Caucasus and northern Europe. The second branch went to the north of Africa, to Egypt, where people who built dolmens and were engaged in hunting and cattle breeding finally settled, moving on to agriculture.

In the West, dolmens have been found in France, England, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Corsica, they are found in Palestine and other countries. However, the largest accumulation of dolmens on Earth was found along the Black Sea coast from Taman to Abkhazia and on the northern side of the foothills of the Krasnodar Territory and Adygea. Here the strip of dolmens is 500 kilometers long and 75 kilometers wide. The total number of recorded dolmens exceeds 2300 pieces.

If we talk about Adygea, then a large settlement of dolmen builders was found in the Doguak glade near the village of Dakhovskaya and was named Doguak-Dakhovsky. It contained a lot of household items, all kinds of products made of horn and bones, pottery forges, smelting furnaces, bronze knives and axes, ancient ceramics, stone arrowheads, beads and pendants. And most importantly, charcoal was found in large quantities, according to which it was possible to establish that the forge was fired here for the last time about 4050 years ago.

Many people were involved in the construction of the dolmens. The weight of one slab of an average dolmen is 4 - 7 tons, and in general, the weight of a dolmen reaches 25 and more tons. When processing stone slabs, bronze, stone and wooden wedges were used. Slabs were moved on rollers. Dolmens were collected using scaffolding and levers.

A very interesting and one of a kind - dolmen, found in a mound on the banks of the Psynako River in the Tuapse region, near the village of Anastasievka. The place where he stands was used for ritual actions as far back as the third millennium BC and was a sanctuary.

A stone corridor approaches the dolmen, partitioned off in several places by large slabs. Scientists suggest that it contains an imitation of the firmament. Here the laws of the solstice were studied and observations of the moon were carried out. This is a kind of ancient observatory. There are four more similar megalithic structures in the world. One in Ireland, one in Denmark, one in Portugal and the fourth in Spain. All dolmen buildings have one thing in common: they are facing the sunny or light side. This indicates that the dolmen builders worshiped the Sun.

Dolmens of the Western Caucasus are closest to dolmens located in countries along sea currents. These currents run in the Mediterranean from Gibraltar, along the northern coast of Africa and turn into the Black Sea. Ancient people, carriers of the dolmen culture, could have arrived in the Caucasus by sea.

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