Megalithic architecture (passage grave and menhir)
Arquitectura megalítica (sepulcro de corredor y menhir)
- Date
- c. 4800 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Barnenez cairn and Locmariaquer, Brittany, France
- Credited to
- Atlantic Neolithic of Brittany
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Mounds with chambers of great slabs and corbelled vaults (Barnenez) and menhirs weighing up to 300 tonnes (Grand Menhir Brisé). The first collective stone funerary monument of Europe, binding the community to an ancestral territory.
Megalithism emerges almost simultaneously in Brittany, Portugal (Alentejo) and Iberia; a single origin spread by sea (Schulz Paulsson 2019) is debated against multiple origins.
What it led to
- Territoriality and lineage: ancestors as a title deed to the land
- Mobilisation of hundreds of people and techniques of hauling, levering and ramping
- Spread of megalithism along the Atlantic seaboard and the western Mediterranean
Built on
- Monumental pillar sanctuaryc. 9500 BCE
- Polished stone axec. 8000 BCE
- Plant-fibre cordage (linen rope)c. 7200 BCE
- Monumental temple of Göbekli Tepe
- Sledge and cordage
Made possible
- Megalithic templec. 3600 BCE
- Fortified settlement with bastionsc. 3200 BCE
- Maltese megalithic temple
- Megalithic circles (Stonehenge)
- Iberian dolmens (Los Millares, Antequera)