English language

How to pronounce cromlech in English?

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in Mesolithic times the Iberian Peninsula, like the rest of Western Europe,
was sparsely inhabited by a
dark, blue-eyed race of hunter-gatherers called Western hunter-gatherers by geneticists
.
Their neighbors in Anatolia, the Anatolian hunter-gatherers,
invented agriculture and gradually colonized limited areas of Europe. Their way of life
included a primitive form of cereal cultivation
and the domestication of animals, including the first domestic cows
that descended from the wild aurochs. The people known as the First
European Farmers spread along the Danube Valley and
the Mediterranean coast reaching the Atlantic coast about 7,000
years ago. The Neolithic culture in Iberia was
similar to that of France,
Brittany and Ireland which still preserve 26 00:01:01,840 --> 00:01:05,600
impressive megalithic monuments erected by this ancient race.
A recent publication revealed that the Neolithic British population was connected to the
Mediterranean Neolithic world not only through a maritime route along the Atlantic coast
as the most recent publication by Cassidy
and colleagues affirms and that explains their
genetic affinity with the Neolithic Iberians but also and more
plausibly via land routes from Normandy and central and southern France.
The Iberian Neolithic were all related to the British Neolithic peoples
and so it should come as no surprise that we can see parallels in
Spain and Portugal with the great stone circles and henges of
Britain like Stonehenge and Avebury
or chamber tombs like West Kennett. Longborough or Cairn Holy in Scotland.
But where did this tradition come from? An old theory was that
megalithic culture spread to Britain from the Near East but these
days archaeologists generally prefer a
more plausible theory that has gained prominence since
the 1970s that megalithic culture was a
Western European phenomenon that arose in the northwestern France
between six and seven thousand years ago and spread across the
Atlantic very rapidly in only two or
three hundred years perhaps as part of a new religion.
Northwestern France had earthen constructions up to 280
meters long by around 4900 BC
demonstrating massive social organization
They are the only large earthen constructions in Europe directly preceding
megalithic constructions and later megaliths are often associated
with accompanying earthen constructions the custom spread rapidly north and
south along the Atlantic coast to Brittany and Iberia and also
skipping to Sardinia and then spread overland through the
French interior and up to Scandinavia and finally experienced an
early Bronze Age revival in Italy and Sicily and even Brittany
but this revival is really associated with the Bell Beaker people rather
than the original builders of the megaliths. It is clear from the spread of
culture across the Atlantic and Mediterranean and from evidence of gene flow across the
Atlantic that the megalithic builders were competent seafarers.
Perhaps the environment creates these people
and helps explain why the Portuguese and the british were perhaps the greatest
seafaring and exploring powers in history
little remains of their dwellings but neolithic people in western europe
lived in large rectangular longhouses as in this
reconstruction at butser ancient farm in england. They used
stone, wood, and bone tools for everything
and had a diet that included wild meat
as well as crops and domestic animals. [Music]
Here you can see stone axes and Neolithic jewelry from Portugal
I have no idea what these bone cylinders were used for.
Because their houses were made of perishable materials such as wood and mud
they have not been well preserved, however the Neolithic Iberian people
left a permanent mark on the landscape for which
they are still remembered and celebrated: the stone circles and megalithic tombs.
this tomb is called the great dolmen of
in Iberia
and based on associated archaeological finds in the area
it is considered to be about 5000 years old. [Music]
[Music]
Similar chamber tombs of different regional styles
are found in all regions of the Atlantic megalithic culture.
we can compare them with the great burial mounds of England such as West Kennett Longbarrow
or the two chamber tombs of Cairn Holy in Scotland.
Originally both were covered
but now only one of them retains a covered chamber in which the dead
appear to have been placed.
Or to the great passage tombs of the Boyne Valley in Ireland
like Newgrange.
These monuments were communal, often found to contain multiple depositions of
interred bodies and cremated remains.
[Music]
It is possible that the tradition of passage tombs
arose from the simpler and smaller dolmen-type tombs
that were built about 7000 years ago and are common throughout Atlantic Europe
from Spain to Scotland. These were single chamber Neolithic tombs
made with several large boulders supporting a stone ceiling.
Originally they would all have been covered with a mound of earth
but most are now fully exposed as Spinsters'Rock on Dartmoor.
Like most megalithic monuments, this one has accumulated local folklore
over the centuries. Locals say that this dolmen was erected in
a single night by three spinners,
like the witches known to the Norse as the Norns
and referred to by Shakespeare as the
Fateful Sisters. It is easy to see how these were developed by powerful kings
who would demand larger and more elaborate versions of
these chamber tombs. The simple dolmen is common in Iberia
but unlike in northwestern Europe, these structures have sometimes been
appropriated by the church in such a way that they became Christian monuments such
as the Chapel-Dolmen of São Brissos
in Portugal. They incorporated the dolmen at the
entrance of this small chapel. This was because pagan customs
involving Neolithic dolmens survived in the region
until medieval times and the Catholic Church determined that it
was better to absorb these places of spiritual power
than to destroy them entirely.
Many other megalithic structures and archaeological curiosities
have been discovered around the city of Évora, famous for its Roman temple.
[Music] The cork oak forests are full
of stone circles and raised rocks some of them are only known to farmers
and archaeologists. tThis one is marked on some maps but is
hidden in the cork plantations.
The largest in the area is in fact the largest in Iberia
and one of the largest groups of menhirs in
Europe. It is the Cromlech dos Almendres. I'd like to call it a stone circle but
it's not really a circle. It started out as such, but came to its
present configuration through various stages of construction
like Stonehenge in England. [Music]
As in the case of Stonehenge, Newgrange and other megalithic monuments,
there are theories relating the position of the stones
with solar or lunar alignments. The Cromlech dos Almendres
is oriented along a northwest
to southeast alignment axis. Many of these stones have carvings on them
and one of them, number eight, has a flat surface
with some holes carved into it that have been theorized to aid
astronomical observation, such as calculating the equinoxes,
presumably for some sort of agricultural religious festival.
Not all aspects of Iberian megalithic culture
have parallels elsewhere. Unique to Iberia
are some large anthropomorphic sculptures
depicting humans in loose flowing robes that are associated with
dolmens. This is called Estela de Serra
Boulhosa. More common is a variety of much smaller idols
found mainly in southern Iberia and persisting throughout the
Neolithic age. These have sort of
contemporary equivalents in Brittany. The Venus of Orkney or Westray Wife found
in 2009 is a 3D Neolithic idol of a woman with a
shape similar to that seen on Iberian plate idols.
Although it is not flat it also has similar incisions and patterns
seen on Iberian idols. However the styles of ornament on
Iberian Neolithic idols are typical of primitive ornamentation on ceramics and
rocks throughout the world throughout
history often consisting only of lines and zigzags,
probably because they are the easiest patterns to carve. .
This whalebone idol from Skara Brae also in Orkney
and this Neolithic female ash idol from Somerset, England
known as God Dolly dated between 2285 BC and 3340 BC
are both distinct from contemporary Iberian idols.
[Music] One of the unique features found on some
Iberian Neolithic idols are the so-called
solar eyes which are believed to have been
ideologically significant to the people who used these idols.
a physical enhancement of the eye likely represents
a form of power associated with the eyes or gaze of the
person or entity the idol represents. Some have interpreted it
as representing tattoos or face paint that may have been worn in this
culture.
The so-called Venus de Gava is dated to 3900 BC.
She is sitting with her hands crossed under her breasts
and has jewelry represented by incisions. It is incredible to think that the same
motifs of this idol are found in others dated some 1400 years
later. This shows an amazing continuity of this
tradition although it evolved significantly
as we will see. In southern Iberia a variety of styles of
these so-called idols developed and they are combined in different ways in
different contexts so although they are all different
we can say that they belong to the same tradition.
Cylindrical and plate figures have always been assumed to be idols
and used to be associated with the idea of a primordial Neolithic goddess cult but m
re recently archaeologists are consi
ering some alternatives They
ould represent ancestors, or be a sta us symbol of a religious hiera
chy or even body ornaments that were used in some way.
I still call them idols anyway. They were made from the fourth millennium BC
to the time of the invasion of the Bell Beaker people, when they
changed significantly. Some of their faces have
zigzag lines that are interpreted as facial tattoos but could also be
facial hair. Idols are gendered - women have
breasts and long hair - which tells us that women
wore long hair in that culture while men are depicted with
male genitalia and sometimes with clubs or bats of some sort.
Male idols are more common than female ones which
could be evidence of a more patriarchal power structure.
Over time, the various variants became homogenized,
culminating in a combination of many previous elements in a
more clearly anthropomorphic idol style. The trend towards naturalism
was supplemented by a standardization of body posture
so that everyone stands with their arms at their sides.
The proportion was also standardized. In Évora, not far from the Cromlech dos
Almendres is the archaeological site of Perdigões,
where several of these idols have been found, one of which is a bit special. Many of these
idols are found in funerary contexts and have been burned as part of a
cremation ritual, but this one was not cremated
and had a broken leg that was later replaced with a piece of charred bone.
The standardization of the naturalistic idol
coincides with perhaps the most coincides with perhaps the most cataclysmic event
in the history of Iberia: The invasion of the Bell Beaker people.
This enormous social and ideological upheaval
evidently influenced the idol tradition such that the people of the megaliths were
influenced by or were reacting against the invaders
from the north. In southern Iberia the shift to idols with
more clearly individualistic human features
coincided with the transition from Neolithic mass tombs
to the individualism of the Bell
Beaker tombs that followed, where singular great men are honored. The
archaeologist Antonio Valera wonders if the emergence of a realistic anthropomorphism
in this context can be related to the
emergence of new ways of being in the world and new
social relationships, where the individual played a more distinctive role.
Around the middle of the third millennium BC
a Indo-European-speaking people known to archaeologists as
the Bell Beaker people invaded Iberia from the north. Their arrival marked a
shift to new burial styles centered on
individuals normally buried in the fetal position and
accompanied by grave goods. One grave goods item they liked is a
large bell-shaped vessel used for
ritual libations. These are beginning to appear throughout
Western Europe wherever the Bell Beaker people invaded
and is why people often think that the Beaker
came from Portugal. You see, the earliest
maritime-type Bell Beaker ceramics were found near
Lisbon and are dated to around 2700 BC but are not associated with
the Bell Beaker culture as such, rather, these vessels were later merged into an
archaeological culture. consistent with a specific burial custom and
material elements including early metalwork in
Britain and Ireland and have been found all over Europe from
Ireland to Hungary and this is why we call it the Bell Beaker Culture.
The mistake was assuming that the pot was the basis of that culture,
especially the primitive pots from Portugal. The truth was revealed in 2019 in a
publication on genetics by Íñigo Olalde et al.
They found that around 2500 BC the megalith builders had been living
alongside an invading race from the north that
we call the Bell Beaker people, the same race that landed in Britain and
Ireland at the same time. These people carried significant amounts
of heritage from the
Proto-Indo-European-speaking herdsmen of the Eastern European steppe as
the Yamnaya culture. In just 500 years the invaders
accounted for about 40 percent of Iberia's overall gene pool
, which is much, but significantly less
shocking than the invasion of Brittany, which
was 90 percent. However, virtually 100%
of the male lineages of meghalite builders in Iberia
were replaced by r1b lineages of the Bell Beaker people.
This means that the reason that 60% of the
ancestry of the megalith builders was preserved in Iberia
after the invasion, was simply because the invaders
took the native women as wives or at least mixed with them in some way
while they prevented native men from having children at the same time.
The authors of the publication used the example of a Bronze Age couple buried
in the so-called solar sanctuary of Castillejo del Bonete in Spain,
where the woman was a native and the man was an invader from the Bell Beaker of
Central Europe. So the Bell Beaker people invaded Iberia, they
didn't come from Iberia. Their funerary customs and
material culture are mainly derived from those of the
Individual Grave Culture variant of the Corded Pottery Culture in Denmark
and northern Germany. The original village of the Bell Beaker is
probably the neighboring village of the Bell Beaker in the Lower Rhine area of the Nethe
lands. If p really did originate in Portugal
then it would be because the invaders copied the
style and spread it everywhere else they invaded,
but not because the culture was native to Portugal.
I really don't think the glasses originated in Portugal, anyway.
The argument they used is based on comparing the Beaker pottery of Portugal above
with the Moroccan pottery below and affirming that what is above is derived from what is below.
This is a typical Yamnaya pot made by
steppe people that all of Europe's Bell Beakers really descend from,
while none of them descend from Moroccans, and they look pretty much
like Bell Beakers, to me, so I don't see the need to look at
Portugal as the origin of the Bell Beaker in the first place.
These two illustrations show the oldest types of Yamnaya vessels
from about 800 years before the Bell Beaker phenomenon began.
They look much more like Bell Beakers than Moroccan pots
and are older than these too. There is evidence that the Bell Beaker people in
Iberia integrated to some degree with the natives. There is evidence of the use and reuse
of megalithic Tholos for secondary burials
after the Campaniform invasion. This practice was quite common
in Iberian megalithic tombs. It has been interpreted as an attempt
by the incipient Bell Beaker elites to legitimize their position. To
do so they would have created a fictitious genealogy
to link themselves to the sacred lineage
of the ancestors. This would contrast with a more
aggressive appropriation of megalithic monuments by the Bell Beakers in the
British Isles, who deliberately vandalized some tombs by
blocking them or in the case of the great
Gibb Hill burial mound in the Peak District of England,
on which they placed a Indo-European style round barrow
clearly showing who was in charge of that area from then on
and in case there was any doubt about that they also placed another round barrow
on top of the adjacent
Arbor Low henge which now overlaps the fallen
circle woods of inner stones.
Each burial mound would have contained a high-status Bell Beaker
with social or political power in the region.
In addition to more anthropomorphic idols, the archaeological record marks
the invasion of the Bell Beaker people and the start of the Bronze Age with the
presence of scores of Bell Beaker vessels, bronze weapons
like these ax heads and this [Music] blade,
and incredible jewelry. gold
not unlike the gold jewelry made by the Bell Beaker people in Ireland
and Britain around the same time.
You can see these gold crosses from Ireland, Spain and England
and this incredible gold hat in
Ireland has a clear parallel example in the north of Spain.
Modern Iberians obtain 40% of their DNA from these invaders
and more than half comes from the steppe,
while this figure is double in Brittany and Ireland
where the Bell Beaker invaders left a greater genetic impact.
In addition to their weapons, another indication that these
Bell Beaker people were warriors is found in the landscape.
At the time of the invasion in the Chalcolithic, fortifications arose in
Iberia, such as the Castro do Zambujal in Portugal.
It had two stages, in the second of which it
was clearly dominated by the Bell Beaker culture,
but the initial construction could have been done by the natives
as they tried to defend the region from invaders.
If that was the case then they failed, because it became a beaker fort
and these types of forts remained in use throughout the Bronze Age
and sometimes much longer. Returning to the region of Évora,
on the top of a hill, now dedicated to eucalyptus plantations
, stands the Castelo de Geraldo, which was initially built in the
Chalcolithic by the Bell Beakers, although the ruins of these walls are
medieval and its name refers to to a famous
folk hero, Geraldo Fearless. He came
from northern Portugal to fight the Moors and successfully expelled them
from Évora in 1165.
He reclaimed his homeland with the help of this ancient fortress erected by
his Bell Beaker ancestors thousands of years before thousands of years before.
This statue of him wielding the decapitated head of a Moor
was moved to the fort from its previous location
in the city center of Évora. Now it remains in this ancient place as a
reminder of the brave men who reconquered
their land from invaders.
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