What The Heck Is "Megalithic" Anyway?

In our first blog, we mentioned the term "megalithic", gave a brief definition and some examples. This time around, we're going to explore this phenomenon in greater depth and show why this has become such a prolific subject for millions of people around the world.

The term "megalithic" is literally defined as "huge stone." Sites from the distant past located all over the world have constructions made from huge stones. These huge stones are often made from very hard stone such as granite or basalt, worked into complex polygonal shapes that are unique to each individual stone, then fitted together with high precision creating joinery a sheet of tissue paper wouldn't fit between and using no mortar.

Not all "megalithic" construction uses huge individual stones, however. Sometimes a megalithic site is constructed out of living bedrock. There are examples all over the world of high precision features cut directly into a cliff wall resembling a door or portal, or at ground level resembling an altar.

Other types of precision stone work can qualify a site or an object as "megalithic." For instance, in Egypt, tens of thousands of high precision vases and bowls have been recovered that have been manufactured from some of the hardest substances known such as diorite and corundum. Many of the vases and bowls are tiny and are therefore not "mega"-lithic, they are "micro"-lithic! One example that was studied was a small vase that was was made of granite, milled to have a thickness of 2mm (it was translucent, you could shine a light through it), while having a variance in thickness between the interior and exterior surfaces not exceeding 2 microns! Absolutely amazing.

Regardless, these vases are part of the broader "megalithic" field of research because they represent definite high technology in their design and manufacture, but come from eras in the past where the tools that exist in the archaeological record from those periods wouldn't be capable of making them.

Another example of "megalithic" is ultra high precision carved caves around the world. A great example of this phenomenon are the Barabar Caves in India. Caves carved with ultra precision to the point where if you divide the caves in half along their centers, the 2 sides mirror each other within a fraction of an inch of variance. Caves designed with acoustics where a single sound can reverberate for over 60 seconds! Caves with surfaces polished to a smoothness finer than glass. Only the latest in our own technology to measure smoothness can reveal the level of sophistication involved with achieving this level of smoothness consistently over surfaces that curve and corner for dozens of meters.

Clearly there was a level of mastery in stone working and masonry that existed on a global basis in deep antiquity. In many cases, sites exist around the world that feature successive eras of construction literally right on top of preceding eras where it is obvious the earlier eras of construction are far more sophisticated than the later ones.

If human technology has evolved upward in a linear fashion since the beginning of human history, this glaring anomaly of earlier technology being higher than later technology at megalithic sites all over the world presents a bit of a problem for that idea.

A megalithic mystery to be sure.

See you next time!