A dolmen is a megalithic structure typically formed from a large horizontal stone slab resting on two or more upright slabs. The oldest European examples are found in Brittany, northern France, and date to the 5th millennium BCE. Dolmens are also present in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and especially large numbers exist in Korea, with examples there dating to c. 1000 BCE. The structures functioned as burial chambers or as sites of ancient cult worship, for example to an earth or fertility goddess.

(资料图片仅供参考)

支石墓是一种巨石结构，通常由放置在两个或多个垂直石板上的大型水平石板组成。欧洲最古老的支石墓是在法国北部的布列塔尼发现的，可追溯到公元前五千年。支石墓也出现在中东、北非和亚洲，特别是在朝鲜半岛存在的数量特别多，那里的支石墓可以追溯到公元前1000年左右。这些建筑的功能是作为墓室或作为古代祭祀的场所，例如对大地或生育女神的崇拜祭祀场所。

命     名

Megalithic architecture, specifically the construction of sanctuaries and tombs using enormous blocks of stone, occupies an important position in the cultural experience of Prehistory. The word dolmen, which derives from Breton t(d)aol meaning table and men or min meaning stone, appears in the scientific debate around the end of the 1700s CE. Until that time the examination of these “strange” monuments, scattered here and there, gave way to suppositions that were, to say the least, fanciful. It was thought they were works built by giants or, indeed, deeds of the devil. The first investigations were, therefore, to understand the use of these structures and establish their age, even though the absence of metal objects indicated the period they could belong to.

巨石建筑，特别是使用巨大石块建造的神殿和坟墓，在史前文化中占有重要地位。“Dolmen”这个词来自布列塔尼语t(d)aol，意为“桌子”，“men”或“min”意为“石头”，大约在18 世纪末出现在科学辩论中。在那之前，对这些散落在各处的“奇怪”纪念碑的研究，让人遐想连篇。人们认为它们是巨人建造的某种建筑，或者确实是魔鬼的杰作。因此，最初的调查是为了了解这些建筑的用途并确定其年代，尽管没有金属物品表明它们可能属于哪个时期。

初步调查

In the second half of the 1800s CE, the publication of the first European map of the known megalithic localities highlighted so many coincidences that it led to the belief that they were the work of one unique population. Therefore it seemed justifiable to consider the “megalithic phenomena” an unusual cultural manifestation of the Near East and dolmens, in definition, the unnatural reproduction of the Mediterranean burial grotto.

在公元19世纪下半叶，欧洲第一张已知巨石地点的地图的出版，展现了许多巧合，导致人们相信它们是一个独特群体的作品。因此，似乎有理由认为“巨石现象”是近东的一种不寻常的文化表现，从概念上讲，它是地中海墓葬石窟的非自然再现。

The Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe reinforced this hypothesis in his last book The Prehistory of European Society where he claimed that the construction of the enormous mausoleums was carried out by mythical megalithic missionaries, members of some early Aegean tribes from the eastern Mediterranean, who divulged a religious faith known to belong to the cults of Gaia the Mother Goddess, goddess of the earth.

澳大利亚考古学家维尔·戈登·柴尔德在他的最新著作《欧洲社会史前史》中强化了这一假设，他声称这种巨大陵墓是由神话中的巨石传教士建造的，他们是来自地中海东部的一些早期爱琴海部落的成员，他们传播了一种宗教信仰，已知属于大地女神盖亚的宗教信仰。

界定年代

The perfection of absolute dating systems, thanks to the 14C radio-carbon method, put an end to this thesis once and for all. It was proven that the oldest megalithic tombs originated in central/northern Europe. Breton dolmens date back to 4500 BCE (earlier, therefore, than the Egyptian pyramids, Mesopotamian ziggurats and the great Cretan and Mycenae sites). They spread further south to central and southern France, south-west to Spain and Portugal and north-east to the central lowlands of Europe, Sweden and so on. They concluded their phase with the most recent constructions in Malta, around 2400 BE and in Italy at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE.

随着碳十四放射性碳法，绝对年代测定系统的完善，考古学家们彻底结束了这一论点。事实证明，最古老的巨石墓葬起源于欧洲中部/北部。布列塔尼的石墓可以追溯到公元前4500年（因此，比埃及金字塔、美索不达米亚的神塔以及克里特和迈锡尼的遗址更早）。他们进一步向南传播到法国中部和南部，向西南扩散到西班牙和葡萄牙，向东北传播到欧洲的中部低地、瑞典等地。他们以公元前2400年左右在马耳他的最新建筑和公元前两千年初在意大利的最新建筑结束其阶段。

The above time range was sufficient for each region to evolve a local typology though keeping a common characteristic: the use of blocks or slabs of stone, at times colossal in dimension, which made them phenomena tied to a fairly widespread culture.

上述时间范围足以让每个地区发展出当地独有的地方类型，尽管都保持了一个共同的特点：使用石块或石板，有时是巨大尺寸的石头，这使得其现象与相当广泛的文化相联系。

The Mediterranean dolmens are to be dated back to an era closer to ours. Around 100 can be found throughout Sardinia, some of which, the so-called dolmen cysts made up of stone slabs assembled in a cubiform manner, are dated back to the Copper Age, around 3000-2100 BCE. Dolmens in southern Italy, which are more recent, date back to the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE, the period corresponding to the latter phase of the Bronze Age.

地中海的支石墓可以追溯到与我们更接近的时代。在整个撒丁岛可以找到大约100个，其中一些由石板组成的所谓的支石墓囊，可以追溯到铜器时代，大约公元前3000-2100年。意大利南部的支石墓出现时间较晚，可以追溯到公元前二千年的前半段，也就是相当于青铜时代最后阶段时期。

Outside of Europe, the most frequent occurrence of dolmens is in the Korean peninsula where there are some 200,000 megalithic structures. Korean dolmens are remarkably similar to those found in Europe. Finds excavated from within many of the dolmens illustrate that they were typically used for elite burials. Unusually, Korean dolmens were sometimes built in close proximity to each other, creating cemetery-like areas consisting of between 30 and 100 structures.

在欧洲之外，最频繁出现的支石墓是在朝鲜半岛，那里有大约20万座巨石结构。朝鲜半岛的支石墓与欧洲的支石墓非常相似。从许多支石墓中挖掘出来的物品表明，这些支石墓通常是用来埋葬精英的。与众不同的是，朝鲜半岛的支石墓有时彼此相邻，形成了由30至100个结构组成的类似大型墓地的区域。

主要特征

The most elementary configuration of the dolmen is trilithic: a horizontal slab of stone placed on top of two vertically positioned stones in order to form a construction where the structural elements frame a quadrangular space. Such forms can be found just about anywhere, in Iceland, Scotland, England, North Germany, France, Spain, Scandinavia, Denmark, Holland, Corsica, Sardinia, Apulia, Sicily, Malta, North Africa, Morocco, Tripoli, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Bulgaria, Crimea, Caucasus, Iran, India, Korea.

支石墓最基本的配置是三石结构：一块水平的石板放在两块垂直放置的石头上，其中结构元素构成了一个四边形空间。在冰岛、苏格兰、英格兰、北德、法国、西班牙、斯堪的纳维亚、丹麦、荷兰、科西嘉岛、撒丁岛、普利亚、西西里岛、马耳他、北非、摩洛哥、的黎波里、埃及、叙利亚、巴勒斯坦、保加利亚、克里米亚、高加索、伊朗、印度、朝鲜半岛，几乎任何地方都可以找到这样的巨石结构。

More complex forms which were made up of a long or even longer succession of triliths followed, so generating two particular types: the corridor tomb and the gallery tomb (allée couverte). The corridor tombs, made of big slabs of stone vertically fixed into the ground (orthostats), have corridors that vary in length and lead to a chamber or a number of chambers of a polygonal shape. The gallery tombs, instead, have just one rectangular-shaped space used entirely as a sepulchral chamber.

随后出现了更复杂的形式，它们由一连串甚至更长的三棱柱组成，因此产生了两种特殊的类型：走廊墓和石廊墓（alléecouverte）。走廊式坟墓由垂直固定在地面上的大石板（orthostats）制成，有不同长度的走廊，通向一个或多个多角形的墓室。石廊式墓则只有一个长方形的空间，完全作为墓室使用。

Some of these structures evolved into rather complicated constructions, as in the case of the false dome dolmens where the convex roof was obtained by gradually decreasing the distance between the slabs of the building. Another instance is that of the dolmens with lateral chambers; characterised by a series of cells around the central one. Each sepulchre, or series of sepulchres, was completed by being covered with earth mixed with stones.

其中一些结构演变成更复杂的结构，例如假圆顶支石墓，凸形屋顶是通过逐渐减少建筑板块之间的距离而获得。另一个例子是带有侧室的支石墓，其特征是围绕中央室的一系列室。每个墓室或一系列的墓室都是用混有石头的泥土覆盖的。

Inestimable problems had to be faced in whichever region they were built such as finding suitable stones and transporting the material for construction. In those areas where the stone was extremely hard and difficult to shatter, they raised enormous monuments; whereas, in other places where the stone was easy to chip, dry-stone method structures were built rather than using the real megalithic technique. This is the case of the small Sicilian dolmens.

无论在哪个地区建造，都要面临不可估量的问题，如寻找合适的石头和运输建筑材料。在那些石头极其坚硬、难以粉碎的地区，他们建造了巨大的纪念碑；而在其他石头容易碎裂的地方，则建造了干石法结构，而不是使用真正的巨石技术。这就是西西里岛的小型支石墓的情况。

To the south, the islands of Malta and Gozo are home to the most extraordinary prehistoric sites of the Mediterranean, the “megalithic temples”. They were built between about 4000 and 2500 BCE. They were dedicated to a cult worshipping a fertility goddess. The dolmens, as they should be correctly called, (around 20 in all) are to be dated back to a successive period (the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE). In most cases, we are dealing with small chambers, with the cover made of a large slab placed on upright stones. They are claimed to belong to a population certainly different from that which built the previous megalithic temples.

在南部，马耳他和戈佐岛是地中海最特别的史前遗址“巨石神庙”的所在地。它们建于大约公元前4000年至2500年之间。它们是专门用于崇拜生育女神的崇拜物。这些支石墓（共约20座），可以追溯到一个连续的时期（公元前三千年的后半段）。在大多数情况下，它们是小房间，屋顶由放置在垂直石头上的大板形成。据称，它们属于一个不同于以前建造巨石神庙的人群。

Not all megalithic stone structures were funeral monuments: the cromlechs of Stonehenge in England and the Carnac menhirs in France, to mention some, would have served other extraordinary purposes, perhaps connected to the practice of an astronomy cult. They could have represented the product of a culture that sought to capture the irradiation centre of absolute positive energy in the universe. The “prototype” of this architecture almost certainly had its origins in a series of lucky coincidental factors - the natural occurrence of fallen stones or some suggestive natural “scenery” must have let loose the religious imagination of certain prehistoric communities. So much so, an exceptional mystic significance was given to the stones.

并非所有的巨石结构都是丧葬纪念碑：英国巨石阵和法国的卡纳克石柱等，都有其他特殊的用途，也许与天文学崇拜有关。它们可能代表了一种文化的产物，这种文化试图捕捉宇宙中绝对正能量的辐照中心。这种建筑的“原型”几乎可以肯定是起源于一系列幸运的巧合因素（自然发生的落石或一些暗示性的自然“环境”释放了某些史前社区的宗教想象力）。如此一来，这些石头就被赋予了特殊的神秘意义。

参考书目：

Bonanno, A. "Temple Megalithism vs Funerary Megalithism: The case of the Maltese Islands, XIII International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (Forli, Italy, 8 – 14 September 1996)." Colloquia, 9, 1991, pp. 103-7.

Cartwright, M., "Dolmens of Ancient Korea", Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2016Accessed 19 Mar 2020.

Cipolloni Sampò, M. Dolmen: Architetture Preistoriche in Europa. De Luca ed. d'Arte, Rome, 1990

Mackie, E. W. The Megalith Builders. Phaidon Press Ltd., Oxford, 1977

Piccolo, S. Ancient Stones: The Prehistoric Dolmens in Sicily. Brazen Head, Thornam/Norfolk (UK), 2013

Reden (von), S. Die Megalithkulturen:Großsteinmale in England, Frankreich, Irland, Korsika, Malta, Nordeuropa, Sardinien, Spanien. Dumont, Koln, 1978

Renfrew, C. Before Civilization: Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe. Jonathan Cape, London, 1973

Whitehouse, R. "Megaliths of the central Mediterranean." Antiquity and Man: Essays in Honour of Glyn Daniel: 106 – 127, edited by Evans, J., B. Cunliffe and C. Renfrew (eds). Thames & Hudson, London, 1981

原文作者：Salvatore Piccolo

考古学家，他的发掘工作包括西西里岛的石墓，在 "Cava dei Servi"，他发现了人类遗骸和陶瓷碎片，发现了地中海石墓的功能和年代之谜。

原文网址：https://www.worldhistory.org/dolmen/

关键词： 西西里岛 布列塔尼 考古学家