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The A to Z Challenge – D for Dolmen

I’m participating in the A to Z Challenge. For 26 days in April and excluding Sundays (which I’ll be using for the Sneak Peek), I’ll write a post for each letter of the alphabet. Follow this link to nearly 2000 other bloggers and authors.

The A to Z Challenge – participating blogs

Today’s Calliope’s Writing Tablet post is brought to you by the letter D — D for Dolmen.

Usually, when people think of megalithic construction, the first thing that comes to mind is Stonehenge. The fact is, there are prehistoric stoneworks of all sorts peppered across Europe, the Middle East, parts of Asia, and even in the Americas. The early Neolithic period (4000 to 3000 BCE) saw a lot of this puzzling megalithic construction. One such enigma is the dolmen.

A dolmen, also known as a portal tomb or quoit, consists of large upright stones that support an equally large and flat horizontal capstone. It’s believed they were originally covered with earth and what we see today is actually the skeleton of the structure.

No one knows exactly who built them or what their purpose was. The most widely accepted theory is dolmen are tombs or burial chambers, but there’s little archeological evidence to back that up. The one thing everyone is certain of… they’re old. At least 7000 years old. This means the mysterious builders were contemporaries of the ancient Egyptians.