Book Review: Rider of the Lost Megaliths: Tombs,Temples and Their Orientations: A New Perspective on Mediterranean Prehistory

Gorbea Almagro M. J. , Los ídolos placa del Bronce hispano (Bibliotheca Praehistorica Hispana, xii; Madrid, 1973).

Several scholars have imagined that plate-idols can be used as actual calendars or even as eclipse predictors. See e.g. Rebullida Conesa A. , ‘Idolos-placa megalíticos’, in Astronomía y religión en el Neolítico y el Bronce (Tarrasa, 1988), 117–30.

Gorbea Almagro , op. cit. (ref. 1), 235–9.

As mentioned by Strabo (III, 4,6), ‘Some scholars are of the opinion that the galaics have no gods. However, this is not true for the celtiberians and other people having frontiers with them to the north. All of them have a certain divinity with no-name, in the honour of whom, the families dance until dawn at the front of their houses, in the nights of plenilunium’.

This is not the case in the Eastern Mediterranean where Egyptian pyramids and some megalithic monuments in the Levant have entrances open to the north. See, e.g., Belmonte J. A. , ‘Two examples of dolmenic necropolises in the Jordan Valley’, Archaeoastronomy, no. 22 (1997), S37–43.