МЕНХИРИ В БЪЛГАРИЯ И НА БАЛКАНИТЕ – ПРОБЛЕМИ И НАЛИЧНОСТ
THE MENHIRS IN BULGARIA AND IN THE BALKAN PENINSULA – PROBLEMS AND AVAILABILITY

Summary/Abstract: The present study deals with a specific type of megalithic monuments – with menhirs in Bulgaria and on the Balkan Peninsula. At the beginning, some important methodological issues are discussed: definitions of megalithic sites in general and menhirs in particular – individual as well as grouped in various sets. Then information about menhirs on Bulgarian territory from the end of XIX till the beginning of XXI century is collected and presented in detail. Individual menhirs, menhir rows and cromlechs from North-East and South-East Bulgaria are described. They are compared with similar sites on Crimea Peninsula and in South Ireland. In this sense, Bulgarian megalithic area represents a significant transition region from West European and Mediterranean megalithic world in east direction towards the big Black sea megalithic arc: Balkan Peninsula – Crimea – Caucasus – Armenian Mountains Zangezur. The main methodological problem discussed here is the formal resemblance between prehistoric menhirs and medieval Islamic tombstones. Turkish researchers assert that nearly 2,000 orthostats registered in the area between Edirne and Lalapasha are menhirs and significantly differ from Islamic tombstones. Within the limits of Europe, this problem occurs only on the Balkan Peninsula and – if neglected – it can distort the overall picture of megalitism in the whole region. After a critical review of a number of similar sites in northeastern Bulgaria and Rhodope Mountains, this report comes to the opposite conclusion: The Edirne orthostats are most probably abandoned medieval Muslim gravestones and not prehistoric megaliths – menhirs.

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