by Alexander DMITRIEV, Head of the Black Sea Archeological Inspectorate, Board of Conservation, Restoration and Maintenance of Historical and Cultural Monuments, Krasnodar Territory The last builders of the dolmens (from the Breton to/, table, and men, stone) died off thousands of years ago. Relentless time has blotted out from human memory the name of the tribe that built them, and onrushing events have overwhelmed the idea that drove ancients to move around stone slabs each weighing many tons. Nothing-decayed manuscripts, or enigmatic symbols on stones, or hoary legends-can now tell the full story. The dolmen mystery spawns swarms of hypotheses. The less people know about the history of these structures, the more fantastic explanations they tend to offer. Articles in this rubric reflect the opinion of the author.-frf. page 75 Dolmens, or megalithic structures (from the Greek mega for large and lithos for stone), were commonly built in the northwestern comer of the Caucasus starting in the mid-third millennium B.C. to the early second millennium of the pre- Christian era. Cossacks who used to settle here in centuries past called them Giants', Granddads', or even Devil's Homes. For highlanders, they were anything out of dwarfs' homes, caves, ancient burial tombs or skeleton repositories. Legend tells us about wily dwarfs who duped dumb giants into building strong stone homes for themselves. Megaliths dot the mountain landscape in an area extending for almost 400 km from Anapa down south to the village of Ochamchiri in Abkhazia along the Black Sea coast and for 70 km from the shoreline to Maikop deep inland. Elsewhere, dolmens occur on a much smaller area. Ancients put them up in river valleys, foothills, on mountain slopes, and mountain tops. In Abkhazia, they stride up to 1,000 m above the sea level. The stone giants stand alone or are scattered haphazardly over the place, or else arranged into intricate patterns, as on the Ozereika riverside, a short dist ... Читать далее