There are many pages in the history of Adygea that, it would seem, are known to everyone, but conceal in themselves a lot of unknown and still not.
The republic is rich in monuments of one of the most ancient cultures - dolmens. Today there are several thousand such megalithic structures in the world.
Origin
The geography of dolmens is quite extensive - they are found in Africa, Europe, Asia, and are located mainly in coastal areas. Most researchers still believe that dolmens were burial structures. In our country, on the territory of the Western Caucasus, there are about 2,400 dolmens, but only a fifth of them have survived so that they have survived almost in their original form.
Similar structures are located in different parts of the world, and each nation on whose territory such structures are located has its own name for megaliths. For example, the Circassians have their own name for dolmen - "isp-un". It translates as "dwarf house". This name is associated with a legend from the Adygean mythology. The Circassians have a belief that dolmens were built by giants. According to legend, the buildings were supposed to shelter a small tribe of people from bad weather, who did not have the physical strength to build their own homes. They were said to be so small that they used hares for riding.
By the way, in the 17th century, one European clergyman claimed that such megalithic structures were created by giants.
Dolmens are chambers made of hewn stone slabs. Their weight sometimes reaches several tons. Since dolmens differ in shape and size, researchers distinguish several types of these buildings - tiled, composite, monolithic and trough-like. The most ancient are considered tiled. Dolmens are shaped like rectangular rectangles and trapezoids, but there are also polyhedra.
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There is a round hole in the front slab - in fact, this is the basis for most often recognizing a dolmen, and tourists are most interested in what is inside? Sometimes there are dolmens with a stone plug that tightly closes it. Actually, interest does not fall from such a turn of events.
The oldest dolmens date back to 2700-2600 years. BC. Dolmens of the North Caucasus are the most architecturally complete. Researchers are amazed at the massiveness of these monuments, as well as the degree of bonding of stone slabs, between which not even a knife blade passes.
Megaliths
Dolmens of Adygea - namely, they should and can become another hallmark of the republic - are located on flat terrain in groups of about 12 buildings. Although, there are also whole dolmen fields. For example, on the territory of the Maikop district there are clusters of monuments with more than 300 buildings, and on the Kizinka River, near the village of Bagovskaya, there are 564 dolmens.
Among the dolmens of Adygea there are especially interesting ones. In 1982, under the leadership of St. Petersburg archaeologist A. Rezepkin, a dolmen complex was investigated in the Klada (Khashpek) tract near the village of Novosvobodnaya in the Maikop region. This megalithic ensemble is one of the largest in the Western Caucasus. A unique dolmen was discovered in the complex - on its walls were depicted a bow, a quiver, a shield, geometric figures and a silhouette of a man. Today this rare find is kept in the National Museum of Adygea.