Megalithic Sites: The Sacred Stones of the Ancient World
Between 10,000 and 1,500 BCE, human communities on every inhabited continent moved stones that, by any reasonable calculation, they should not have been able to move — and arranged them with a precision that, by any reasonable assessment, they should not have been able to achieve. The megalithic tradition is global, ancient, and stubbornly resistant to complete explanation. We know some of what was built, and where, and approximately when. We know much less about why — what motivated communities without metal tools, without writing, often without permanent settlements, to devote decades or centuries of collective labor to the alignment of massive stones with solar and lunar events, with the movements of specific stars, with the topography of landscapes understood as sacred. The megaliths do not explain themselves. They simply stand, patient as stone, waiting for questions that may be better than our answers. Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey (c. 9600 BCE) — the olde...