About the mysterious power of stone idols - menhirs (PHOTO), which the land of Kabardino-Balkaria was once rich in.
As you know, the word "menhir" is derived from the Breton men - stone and hir - long. It designates an ancient obelisk in the form of a roughly cut natural stone. Menhirs vary in shape from rectangular to oval. In particular, in Kabardino-Balkaria, oval menhirs up to three meters high prevail, tapering towards the top and standing alone. Most do not have any drawings, but in a small number the tops are processed and represent roughly hewn faces associated with the appearance of ancient warriors.
Scientists attribute the menhirs to the Neolithic era, but to a greater extent copper (the period of human development from 4th to 3rd millennium BC) and bronze (from 3500 to 1200 BC) centuries.
The most important question that arises when you see these first man-made objects in human history is what is their purpose. There are many assumptions, but which one is reliable? Indeed, among them:
- ritual (cult) building;
- a boundary pillar that defines the boundaries of the property;
- phallic symbol;
- memorial sign;
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- solar-astronomical sign;
- an element of an ideological system unknown to us;
- a place of sacrifices.
There are other versions, which can rather be attributed to fantastic than objective, remembering that we still do not know anything about the people who erected them, from the public organization to their religious beliefs.
Based on the fact that menhirs are common all over the world, that they can (and do) belong to different ancient cultures, let's talk about those that are available to us, and therefore are better known.
Until recently, there were dozens of them on the territory of Kabardino-Balkaria. Today there are only a few. The rest were destroyed: destroyed, smashed, shot (a single menhir is an excellent target!), Thrown into the abyss. Some were taken out of the republic (in particular, to Dagestan). Several more decorate the suburban estates of the modern nouveau riche.
Of the same units that have survived - not a single one in its original form. Almost all have their tops broken off, numerous inscriptions are barbarously applied on their surfaces. Most of the menhirs have been knocked down, thrown from the place where they were once installed. The material from which the stone idols are made is rather fragile, and they cannot stand up for themselves. Monuments that have stood for millennia have not resisted representatives of modern civilization.
Here is such a sad statement. But let's talk about something else: the purpose of the obelisks. And for this we will consider those that still stand in the Northern Elbrus region - the place of the largest concentration of menhirs. Unfortunately, in recent times, no one in the KBR thought to draw up a map of their location, and today this is almost impossible to do. Therefore, we will not consider the version that there was some regularity in the installation of menhirs, and possibly a system.
Let us dwell on the above and for this we will take as a basis two menhirs, still standing in their places in the Babugey tract. One of them is at the very beginning of a fairly flat area, diverging to the left, right and back from it for tens and hundreds of meters. Another is located on a low ridge, about a kilometer away. The first is powerful, more than three meters high (including the dug-in part) from it; more than a meter in diameter. The second is almost half the size - both in height and in width.
The first and unambiguous conclusion is that menhirs do not denote burials, that is, they are not grave monuments. This is evidenced by the very arrangement of the idols - the places of their installation do not meet the requirements according to which the dead were buried in the earth. And indeed, the excavations known to us, which were carried out in the Northern Elbrus by black diggers, did not reveal any burials as such under any of the menhirs.
Second conclusion. The very idea that the menhirs we are considering are boundary pillars defining the boundaries of the territory looks illogical and far-fetched. The question is: where and to where? Neither in the first nor in the second case, ownership as such is not defined, because it is not known what to start from in this very land survey. And if the menhir standing in the lowland can still be viewed with a stretch as a sign that defines someone's property or belonging (although its place does not indicate this in any way; it would be more logical to install it then at the very beginning of the same glade), then this the territory itself cannot define in any way. For a simple reason: there is no territory as such. The mountain ridge is the ridge. So this is not a memorial sign.
A phallic symbol? In this case, it is absent; visually, they are not emphasized in any way in either the lower or upper menhirs.
Solar-astronomical sign? But the stone idols are at a distance from each other; even with the greatest desire, it will not work to connect them as a single astronomical complex.
Place of sacrifices? But if with a menhir located in a lowland, this is still to some extent permissible, then with the fact that there is no way on the ridge - to drag a victim up a mountain, when it can be sent to another world without any effort below, means to doubt the mental health of those who lived here people. And something tells me that there were much more intelligent among them than frostbitten ones. It is clear that the latter is in no way an argument in this case, but forgive me such liberty: well, a narrow steep slope does not answer the place from which they were sent to another world.
There is also an opinion that menhirs are an element of an ideological system unknown to us. Well, here I don't know what to argue. What ideology can be in two stone idols, not connected with each other by any external signs - a question, really, interesting.
There remains only one purpose - a ritual (cult) building, a sanctuary. And it fully has the right to life.
Religious buildings in our view are primarily a church or a mosque. In today's performance. And the ancients? Whom did they worship? Who could they put signs on the land on which they lived? What they saw daily, and what their daily life depended on. Can menhirs be considered as signs of worship of the luminary? This is known in history - the tribes living in the Bronze Age on the territory of present-day Azerbaijan worshiped the sun.
But if menhirs were ritual structures and involved ritual actions, how does the fact that some of them have a human appearance relate to them? Let us recall the same menhir, which is called (or rather called, because he is no longer) the guard of the Elbrus region. Here is what the archaeologist Biyaslan Atabiev wrote about him: “The image is made extremely primitive: the contours of the nose, eyebrows and the entire lower part of the face are indicated by one continuous line, wide and deeply cut, forming a vicious circle. The eyes are shown by two circular indentations and the mouth by a short arcuate groove. In the technique of convex relief, only the edging of the lower edge of the helmet is depicted, as well as the torch (?) In the form of a horizontal roller around the purported "neck". On both sides of the helmet, at the "temples", from the lower edging hang two semi-oval with dots in the center. Probably,these are the so-called "headphones" - more precisely, devices for attaching a helmet strap."
And further: “In our opinion, this (headdress - author) is nothing more than an Assyrian helmet with short side ears for a strap, by means of which the helmet was held on the warrior's head. Researchers date the appearance of such helmets in the North Caucasus to the time or “not earlier than the end of the 8th century. BC BC ", or" no later than the turn of the VIII-VII centuries. BC e. ". It seems that these landmarks give some reason to tentatively attribute this statue to the beginning of the 7th century BC. e. ".
Indeed, what does the sanctuary have to do with here, in the context of this description? And despite the fact that the human appearance was given to the menhir much later than the time of its installation. After all, most of the menhirs of Kabardino-Balkaria, including those in the Babugey tract, are cylindrical pillars with a smoothed top, on which there is no face image. Others represent rectangular stones, both worked and unworked. Moreover, in a number of places they are located next to each other. And as a group, they testify even more to their ritual purpose.
Now about where the megaliths were installed. Knowing at least 12 such primary places, I suppose that it, the place, was determined by only one: its unusualness, its difference from other plateaus, peaks, slopes, hollows.
On the Internet, getting acquainted with materials related to menhirs, I drew attention to the following conclusion: “Studies of recent years have shown that the location of menhirs in the territory of linear dowsing anomalies is caused by tectonic faults in the earth's crust, along which energy flows, which has a certain effect on human organisms. In ancient times, menhirs were used for rituals and healing rituals."
Analyzing the trips to the menhirs of the Northern Elbrus region - Dzhilysuevsky, Tuzluksky, Babugeevsky, Kharbazsky, I recall the special aura of these places. That feeling of calmness and peace that seized me and my companions when I didn't want to go anywhere, when, unconsciously for ourselves, we switched to a whisper. And we all felt a surge of energy, although before that it seemed that it would be impossible to take an extra step, the way to the menhirs was so hard and long.
Consequently, the places where menhirs are installed are characterized by some kind of special energy. This was also shown by the simplest instruments (TriField Natural EM Meter; K-II EMF Meter), which testified to the presence of anomalies that were not typical for these places, still pristine from civilization.
Recently, a copy of the menhir was installed at our publishing house in Nalchik. With a request to find a tuff block for him, I turned to Abdulakh Gilyakhov, and he, in turn, to Kellet Gemuev, who gave us the stone for free. Also, on a voluntary basis, without payment, Artur Khortiev made a copy of the menhir, whose workshop "Arka" is located at the Volnoaulsky cemetery. He, Arthur, helped to install it. The head of the Nalchik administration, Arsen Alakayev, advised to provide the stone with an explanatory plate. I thought about its content for a long time and settled on this: “Menhir is a stone idol, a megalith (II millennium BC). It is believed that they were installed in places of power (geopathogenic zones). Becoming next to him - you can feel the passage of time. Having touched - take a trip into the past. Putting your arms around - to feed on energy."
You can smile and even grin, and you can’t believe it, so it goes without saying. But go to it, but look at it, but touch it, and what happens in the future depends only on you.