Drago Spiti—The mysterious dragon houses of Euboea, Greece
“The common feature of these houses are the gates, where the frame usually consists of two huge stone plates,” notes Vasilis Kalalougas. Three of the dragon houses of Palli-Lakki are located on the western slope of the 682-meter-high mountain Kliosi. Although they are classified as smaller dragon houses, their construction is typically megalithic. The north and south houses measure 12.4 × 6.2 meters. In between there is a 7-meter-wide courtyard and, on the east side, the third house. Here, the walls, together with the ceiling, consist of rounded, heavy stone slabs, one on top of the other, as the structure becomes narrower toward the top. Who, during this ancient time, came up with the idea of building dragon houses on mountain slopes—and what was the point? In addition, several Stone Age families must have had the same thought—after all, there are twenty-five dragon houses on Euboea alone.
The most imposing of all these structures stands on Mount Ochi. Located on the slope of the same mountain, only 500 meters away, is the monastery of the prophet Elijah. He went to heaven in the Old Testament in a fiery chariot. (See 2 Kings, Chapter 2, Verses 11–15.) It happened when Elijah spoke to his favorite student Elisha:
Then suddenly appeared a fiery car with fiery horses from the sky and separated the two. So Elias went to heaven in a whirlwind. As Elisha looked on, he cried out, “My father, my father!” Then he did not see him anymore. Elijah's coat fell down to the ground, Elisha picked it up and turned back to the banks of the Jordan . . .
On top of Mount Ochi exists the most impressive Dragon house—gigantic stone blocks, perfectly cut and with poly-surface edges.
The ascension of Elijah most likely did not take place on Mount Ochi on Euboea, but you may ask why a monastery of Elijah with a total of four cells was built right there on the mountain of dragon houses.
In addition, the word Ochi is a variation of the ancient Greek Ohevo and once meant “riding, driving.” Does this mean to ride or drive to heaven?
The Ochi dragon house sits at an altitude of 1,386 meters between two mountain peaks (geographical position: 38 ° 03 ′31″ north + 24 ° 28′ 03″ east). It consists of mighty ashlars, cyclopean stone beams, and ceiling plates.
Its measurements are 12.7 × 7.7 meters. The blocks above the entrance were cut at right angles. It was quality craftsmanship. Neither the execution nor the tools used would lead one to believe that these clean-cut blocks stem from technically uneducated humans of the Stone Age. Here an irrepressible will to protect oneself from danger must have prevailed. Even today, as you stand–12700413385000 in a dragon house, a sense of absolute security comes over you. Some of the stone blocks and plates have a thickness of 50 centimeters. The overarching ceiling monolith is 4 meters long, 2 meters wide, and 34 centimeters thick. Here you feel safe and protected from all storms, lightning, and possible dangers from space. Was this the real reason and the driving force that made the builders carry out this titanic work?
Were these built for protection from something powerful that was not from this Earth? The Stone Age humans knew that flying dragons did not exist, and with their weapons they were able to defend themselves against many animals, especially in the mountains. But only shelters helped against the dangers of force majeure. These were places where the families could wait until the sky had calmed down again.
Such shelters do not only exist on Euboea, or even only in Greece, or even only in Europe, but they number in the tens of thousands on our large, vast Earth. Independent from each other, our ancestors must have been overcome by the same idea: “Build passage graves and great dolmens!” And all miraculous megalithic constructions were, without exception, built during the Stone Age. Skeletons have been found only in the few passage graves and great dolmens. The situation is different with the smaller dolmens. Most likely, they were supposed to be simple tombs. At some point, our Stone Age ancestors could no longer look at the body of a loved one being devoured by vultures and hyenas or mauled by wild boars and other creatures, so the clan began to bury their dead. I could imagine that until then, those who remained behind stared with gleaming, sad eyes at the spot on the ground where the admired person once lay. Was that all, was there really nothing left of him? One carefully held the few scraps of fur, tools, or works of art left behind by the deceased. Gradually, a veneration or cult of the dead arose. Could the person who had gone through life live on somewhere else, or maybe even return? Did the caterpillar not pupate to wake up as a butterfly in the spring? Would the person returning from the realm of the dead ask for his weapons, tools, clothes, and favorite objects? So they began to solemnly bury those who had passed away. The ground was hard, the stone tools were inadequate, they could not make a deep crypt, and so animals still brought body parts back to the surface. The idea of laying stone slabs over the burial sites was developed, and finally, based on this idea, they began to build the dolmens.
Nothing against these seemingly reasonable considerations, but when it comes to large passage graves or giant dolmens, they fall short. Why? The general opinion is that gigantic dolmens such as those of Newgrange in Ireland (51 kilometers northwest of Dublin or 15 kilometers west of the town of Drogheda in County Meath) were erected as funerary monuments for powerful princes. But when a child was born, no one could foresee whether he or she would ever become a hero or a kind of superman or superwoman. The grave, however, had to be planned and built. Extensive calculations and measurements had to be made in advance and the terrain had to be leveled. Afterward, the megaliths had to be taken out of a quarry, processed, transported to the building site and assembled perfectly, which required at least two generations of people spending time on the task. So the grandfather would have to commission the funeral crypt for the future grandson. The builder could not even know if the hypothetical heir would even become a hero or heroine or perhaps die in a distant land. Even if he had the facility built for himself, where are the graves? They do not exist anywhere. People who live more than an average life usually have their names immortalized. But no names have ever appeared in any of the great dolmens.
The famous Newgrange in Ireland—it was never a grave mound.
Today, rich people build nuclear bunkers under their properties or in domes of rocks. The underlying idea is always safety. Something terrible could happen against which we have to protect ourselves. As in the case of the dragon houses on Euboea, I suspect that these great dolmen structures were also safety structures. In case of a fall, one could have sought shelter there.
Newgrange, Ireland
The Gavrinis tumulus in French Britany
The term dolmen was introduced by Frenchman Théophile M.C. de la Tour d'Auvergne (1743–1800). Originally, it meant a grave made of lateral support stones and one or more ceiling plates. But the great dolmens such as Newgrange in Ireland, Gavrinis in French Brittany, and the Cueva de Menga (Menga Dynasty) with a 180-foot ceiling stone, or the Tholos of El Romeral not far from it, both located in Andalusia, Spain, (accessible via the N 342 from Granada to Archidona), do not fit the original meaning of the word dolmen at all.
A side note: in the summer of 2018, the No. 8 highway between Bern and Interlaken in Switzerland was widened. The construction was disturbed by a so-called “foundling,” which is a stone that remained lying in the area millions of years ago when the glaciers retreated. The road builders had to move the obstacle a few meters. For the claws of the construction tools to grab a hold of it, several holes were drilled into the granite block. A crane device with two massive crossbeams lifted the over 300-ton block and steered it 3 meters to the side to make way for the new highway. In view of our current technical effort, the question is: how did Stone Age humans transport blocks weighing hundreds of tons, some in hilly terrain, such as in Baalbek, Lebanon? There, blocks with a weight of up to 1,600 tons were moved.
Cueva de Menga in Spain, built of megalithic stone blocks
Of the smaller dolmens that originally served as graves, there are hundr
eds of thousands worldwide. There are at least 5,000 of them in Germany alone: 190 are located in Schleswig-Holstein, 280 in the Hanover area, and 63 in the Oldenburg area. In Germany they are also called Hünengräber (“tombs of giants”), even though no bones were ever found in any of them. East of Bremen, near Wildeshausen, stands a large dolmen, which consists of a total of 134 megaliths and is a whopping 104 meters long. Who built the site, for whom, and when it was built remains a mystery, because there are no names or objects that could be assigned to specific persons. Things are a bit different in Russia and especially in the Caucasus. In western Caucasus alone, there are 3000 dolmens, all built with precision and partially assembled at right angles, as if the builders had worked with files and rotary cutters. Surprisingly, there are no quarries within a radius of 100 kilometers. Bones have been found in several Caucasian dolmens.
A massive technical project to move a heritage erratic boulder for a highway expansion
But as demonstrated in the museum of Gelendschick—located on the northeastern Black Sea coast in the foothills of the Caucasus—the bones and megalithic structures date from completely different times. The dolmens had already existed for a long time before they were much later used as graves. In the Caucasus, a local legend has it that dwarves and giants lived peacefully side by side long, long ago. The dwarfs were so small that they used rabbits as mounts. For their part, the giants would have set up the dolmens as dwarf dwellings. But they didn't do this for free. The dwarves regularly provided the giants with plants that altered their minds. A few centuries later, the giants had become imbeciles. They trampled the dwarfs to death and eventually became extinct themselves.
Denmark is dotted with many dolmens. There are 119 of them on the island of Møn alone. Among them are some great dolmens, such as Skaglevaddyssen (26 meters long) or Cronsalen (102 meters long). The age of primeval buildings is unclear. They could have been made anywhere from 10000 to 6000 BC; anything is possible. But even here, the few bones that were discovered are much younger.
The same applies to Sweden. Dolmens exist in the provinces of Halland and Småland, on the Baltic island of Öland, in the county of Kronoberg (near Ljungby) and in Västergötland in southwestern Sweden. Scientists don't know for certain who the builders were and what the original reason for the megalithic structures was.
This statement applies, however, worldwide. Who knows of dolmens in North Africa? They exist in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. They exist in Lixus, which is located 100 kilometers southwest of today's city of Tangier. And far from Europe we see the same story: there are dolmens in Japan and Korea.
A dolmen in Morocco at Lixus
The sites of Gochang, Hwasun, and Ganghwa have even been included in UNESCO's World Heritage list for Asia and Oceania. There are 35,000 dolmens in Korea alone. The same goes for India. East of the city of Dharwar in the Indian state Karnataka lies a plateau with the hill Durgadad. And there, presented like a panoramic view of ancient times, lies an incredible world with hundreds of dolmens of different sizes. Five-meter granite slabs rest on three-meter-high monoliths as if they were tables for giants. In between, overturned menhirs, oversized stone slabs, and remnants of stone circles can be admired. It appears as a chaotic open-air museum.
It's unbelievable: a planet full of dolmens and no science to explain why. Although the prehistoric Europeans built dolmens by the thousands and inspired each other in their construction, the question remains, why did the distant Indians, Koreans, North Africans, and Colombians do the same? And if even smaller sites were later used as graves, why not build something much simpler? The weight of many of the individual blocks of those dolmens in the Caucasus is 15 to 30 tons. Grave sites could be secured with much smaller, lighter stones. And these gigantic graves could not have been dedicated to once admired and revered people because, as I emphasized, no names were engraved on any of them.
The Frenchmen of prehistoric times were the best of these examples with their great dolmens. Brittany has rows of Carnac stones (menhirs) that can be seen for as far as a mile, which, as we now know, all reflect geometric messages.40 It is also the place where we find the sites with the largest dolmens on the planet. One of these is located in the village of Essé, between Vitré and Châteaubriant in Brittany.
The large-scale structure carries the name La Roche-aux-Fées (meaning rock of the fairies) only because it was impossible for many to imagine how Stone Age humans would have transported such weights. The construction is 21 meters long, 6 meters wide, and 4 meters high. It consists of twenty-six side stones, so-called orthostats, and eight ceiling stones, each weighing up to 45 tons. Like many great dolmen sites, La Roche-aux-Fées is astronomically oriented. On the day of the winter solstice, on the 21st of December, the sun rises exactly above the center of the dolmen entrance. Is this a former tomb? With ceiling stones weighing up to 45 tons, the word tomb becomes silly. As elsewhere, neither skeletons nor engraved names were discovered here. It is becoming more and more obvious that the great dolmens found worldwide served as shelters.
The next of these amazing creations from the Stone Age is called Table des Marchand, meaning table of the (merchant family) Marchand. It is located in the village of Locmariaquer in Brittany, France, and is covered by an 8-meter-long, 4-meter-wide plate that weighs 50 tons. It remains an absolute mystery in our enlightened computer age how people of the Stone Age could lift a 50-ton plate over the side stones. And why did they ever undertake such a superhuman task? For a grave, lighter plates would have served the purpose. But the Table des Marchand has an additional curiosity. In 1979, archaeologist Dr. Charles-Tanguy Le Roux discovered strange engravings on one of the huge ceiling stones that seemed somehow unfinished or half-finished and then destroyed. They showed neither names nor writings, but a large, ax-like object and pointedly approaching lines. The same Dr. Le Roux also investigated another great dolmen called Gavrinis (also in Brittany).
He immediately noticed a similarity between the engravings of Gavrinis and the Table des Marchand. In fact—a comparison of the two dolmens confirmed the assumption: the cutting points of the engravings fit together perfectly. The ceiling slab of the Gavrinis dolmen, like that of the Table des Marchand, had originally been a single, gigantic block! It seems obvious that the engravings must have been done in the quarry. Otherwise, one half of the engraved block wouldn't have ended up in Gavrinis and the other half at the Table des Marchand in Locmariaquer. It seems to me that the builders of both dolmens were suddenly unconcerned with the engraved message. The aim was to have huge, solid ceiling stones available for both dolmens as quickly as possible. What immediate danger did they think they were in?
Only 2 kilometers from the already mentioned Cueva de Menga lies the site called Tholos de El Romeral (also called Cueva del Romeral). This Spanish location measures 44 meters in length and contains two transverse spaces each 10 meters long. Again, no bones were found, but the bottom of both chambers was covered with a thick layer of compact black ash. It cannot have originated from any kind of fire that once flared here, because the ceiling of the rooms shows no traces of smoke. It is possible that ash once also covered the soils in other great dolmens far away. But the new users of the old sites could have cleaned up the dirt.
Why did people of the Stone Age create underground temples? They exist worldwide; for example, in Central America, like the ones created by the Maya. Such underground sites were found under Palenque and under Chichén-Itzá. The same is true for Xochicalco, which lies at the foothills of the volcano Ajusco near Mexico City. The main temple is the step pyramid of La Malinche, and it is decorated with symbols of a flying snake—or could it be a dragon? An astronomically oriented sanctuary can be found underground. Under the gigantic pyramid city Teotihuacan, which is located about 50 kilometers north-east of Mexico City, as well as in the distant Tiahuanaco in Bolivia, subterranean sacral systems have been found. The same applies to the impressive temple complex of Chavin de Huantar in Peru, and, of course, to other sites
in Europe. The best-known subterranean temple is the Hypogeum on the island of Malta. With all these underground systems, the question is why religious communities have to create sacred places underground in addition to their imposing structures on the surface? I suppose this was not so much about secret rituals, which were celebrated in closed rooms on the surface—the main driving force was security. Were they wondering what they would do if they could not perform their ceremonies because the sanctuaries on the surface had been destroyed?
The step pyramid in La Malinche with the feathered serpent
Also, you find a subterranean astrological sanctuary.
In addition to the man-made dolmens, there are also the so-called paradolmens (or pseudodolmens). These are mixed systems of natural, local megaliths and artificially added rock slabs. The best known sites can be seen in Catalonia, Spain; in Luguria and Tuscany, Italy; both Italy and in France. With paradolmens, it can be difficult to argue that they were originally planned as graves. Why? The graves of princes or ethnic people were not allowed to be built just anywhere; that is to say, they were not built far away from their own tribal territory. There might have been foreign customs, and the location of a grave site might have been out of the control of the tribe, but people were generally buried close to where they lived. Paradolmens, however, often emerged far from people's settlement areas.
Forty-five years ago, I reported on a cave system in Ecuador, South America.41 And because I was so vehemently attacked, I explained the story again thirty-five years later.42 Yes, that tunnel system in far-off Ecuador actually exists. Here I show a picture of the entrance and one of the insides of the cave complex. The entrance to the subterranean world is still guarded today by the indigenous tribe of the Shuar. The white Ecuadorians called the native people Jivaros, and before 1950, they were known only as headhunters. And where exactly is the main entrance? For future researchers who can afford the protection of the Ecuadorian army, here is the geographical position: 77 ° 47′ 34″ West and 1 ° 56′ 00″ South.
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