They are widely distributed across Europe, Africa and Asia, but most numerous in Western Europe; particularly in Ireland, Great Britain, and Brittany and other parts of France, where there are about 50,000 examples, while there are 1,200 menhirs in northwest France alone.

Megaliths are spread across the Indian subcontinent, though the bulk of them are found in peninsular India, concentrated in the states of Maharashtra (mainly in Vidarbha), Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Dolmens are also present in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and especially large numbers exist in Korea, with examples there dating to c. 1000 BCE. The structures functioned as burial chambers or as sites of ancient cult worship, for example to an earth or fertility goddess.

Megaliths are classed in two general categories: “dolmens” and “menhirs.” Dolmens, also called “chamber tombs,” usually contain one or more chambers or rooms in which the dead were buried. Menhirs are large standing stones, or groups of standing stones, arranged in circles, or cromlechs, and henges.

A dolmen (/ˈdɒlmɛn/) is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of two or more vertical megaliths supporting a large flat horizontal capstone or “table”. Most date from the early Neolithic (4000–3000 BC) and were sometimes covered with earth or smaller stones to form a tumulus.

There is strong archaeological evidence that Stonehenge was used as a burial site, at least for part of its long history, but most scholars believe it served other functions as well—either as a ceremonial site, a religious pilgrimage destination, a final resting place for royalty or a memorial erected to honor and …

A World Heritage Site Stonehenge is the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world, while Avebury is the largest in the world. Together with inter-related monuments and their associated landscapes, they help us to understand Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial and mortuary practices.

The Pyramids, the only remaining monument of the original seven, will be named an “honorary wonder”. Awards leaders said Stonehenge was losing out because of the British public’s voting apathy and the Government’s lack of interest – despite US magazine Time naming the monument a “certain winner”.

The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study.

granite stones

The Egyptians’ quarrying technique consisted of digging a trench around a block of stone, then cutting beneath the stone and pushing it out. Once the stone was extracted, workers cut a series of holes with a hammer and chisel. Bronze tools were used with limestone and other softer rocks.

Slave life Chattel and debt slaves were given food but probably not given wages. There is a consensus among Egyptologists that the Great Pyramids were not built by slaves. Rather, it was farmers who built the pyramids during flooding, when they could not work in their lands.

Some enslaved people received small amounts of money, but that was the exception not the rule. The vast majority of labor was unpaid.

It would be great to say that the Great Wall was built by dedicated citizens of China but alas that is not the case. It was built by recruited workers, military soldiers, peasants and slaves through forced labor, criminal convicts and prisoners of war.

Slaves on small farms often slept in the kitchen or an outbuilding, and sometimes in small cabins near the farmer’s house. On larger plantations where there were many slaves, they usually lived in small cabins in a slave quarter, far from the master’s house but under the watchful eye of an overseer.

Maize, rice, peanuts, yams and dried beans were found as important staples of slaves on some plantations in West Africa before and after European contact. Keeping the traditional “stew” cooking could have been a form of subtle resistance to the owner’s control.

On a typical plantation, slaves worked ten or more hours a day, “from day clean to first dark,” six days a week, with only the Sabbath off. At planting or harvesting time, planters required slaves to stay in the fields 15 or 16 hours a day.

As a result of this high infant and childhood death rate, the average life expectancy of a slave at birth was just 21 or 22 years, compared to 40 to 43 years for antebellum whites. Compared to whites, relatively few slaves lived into old age.

Slaves worked from dawn to well after dark from Monday through Saturday. Sundays were the only day they had to rest during the week. The only holidays that were usually free of work were Christmas and the Fourth of July. House slaves worked seven days a week.

Slaves were forced to eat the animal parts their masters threw away. They cleaned and cooked pig intestines and called them “chitterlings.” They took the butts of oxen and christened them “ox tails.” Same thing for pigs’ tails, pigs’ feet, chicken necks, smoked neck bones, hog jowls and gizzards.

President Abraham Lincoln

Presidents who owned slaves

No.	President	While in office?
1	George Washington	Yes (1789–1797)
3	Thomas Jefferson	Yes (1801–1809)
4	James Madison	Yes (1809–1817)
5	James Monroe	Yes (1817–1825)

Slavery in northern Africa dates back to ancient Egypt. The New Kingdom (1558–1080 BC) brought in large numbers of slaves as prisoners of war up the Nile valley and used them for domestic and supervised labor. Ptolemaic Egypt (305 BC–30 BC) used both land and sea routes to bring slaves in.

Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land (a quarter-quarter section) and a mule after the end of the war.

William T. Sherman

General William Tecumseh Sherman

40 Acres and a Mule Would Be at Least $6.4 Trillion Today—What the U.S. Really Owes Black America.

The order reserved coastal land in Georgia and South Carolina for black settlement. Each family would receive forty acres. Later Sherman agreed to loan the settlers army mules. Six months after Sherman issued the order, 40,000 former slaves lived on 400,000 acres of this coastal land.

1320 FT. 40 ACRES 43,560 sq. feet.

1.32 acres