The Significance of Megaliths

Megaliths are "memorials consisting of a very large stone forming part of a prehistoric structure (especially in western Europe)." (wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn) Megaliths are significant because they help to determine the history of previous peoples. Looking at megaliths can
show many clues of what happened and why. For instance, the Mayan ruins show ancient Mayan civilizations that were created and abandoned. This raises questions, and shows that megaliths cannot show all the information about ancient times. Megaliths are not perfect, and they cannot show what people in ancient time were thinking or feeling. We cannot see back into people's minds, we can only see what they showed and left for us to see. We see homes, ancient structures, and other buildings in megaliths. From these, we can draw conclusions about the people who lived and occupied these buildings. For example, if we were to see an ancient synagogue constructed, we would be able to draw the conclusion that the people who lived there were Jewish; etc. From megaliths, we can also see the types of religions that may no longer be around. Sacrifices, Roman and Greek religions, etc, all of these are religions that we learned from megaliths and that are no longer present or used. Pictures of the Roman and Greek gods and explanations of sacrifices help us to really understand about these ancient religions.
Works Cited:
1. Wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn. "Define:megalith - Search." Google. Web. 05 Feb. 2010. .
2.  "File:Ggantija Megalith.jpg -." Wikimedia Commons. Web. 05 Feb. 2010. . http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ggantija_Megalith.jpg