Stonehenge and the Megalithic Cultures (16/39)

Some 5.000 monuments have been preserved from the Neolithic Age. They testify to a culture which left no written evidence and whose religious ideals are abscured by a veil of conjecture. Numerous unsolved questions still fascinate people, as do the huge dolmens and menhirs, the burial mounds and stone circles. They create for us a society which was capable of great feats.

 

The film focusses on Stonehenge, the symbol of megalithic culture, and investigates the relationship of space, power and death, essential to any understanding of this unique monument.


Aus der Zeit des Neolithikums, der Jungsteinzeit blieben in Europa rund 5.000 Monumente erhalten. Sie zeugen von einer Kultur, die keine schriftlichen Zeugnisse hinterließ und deren religiöse Vorstellungen in einem Nebel von Vermutungen verborgen liegen. Zahlreiche ungeklärte Fragen faszinieren die Menschen ebenso wie die riesigen Dolmen und Menhire, die Grabhügel und Steinkreise. Sie lassen vor unserem Auge eine Gesellschaft entstehen, die zu beachtlichen Leistungen fähig war.

 

Anhand von Stonehenge, das exemplarisch für die Megalithkulturen steht, hinterfrägt der Film die Beziehungen von Raum, Macht und Tod, um die sich alle Aussagen zu diesem einzigartigen Monument ranken.


This series portrays landscapes, metropoles, sacred sites and monuments, all of which have made a unique contribution to the cultural heritage of mankind. Each episode breathes life into civilizations which thrived in the past ten thousand years, some of them then vanishing without a trace into the shadows of history. The films describe epochs whose legacy lingers in the perceptions and ideas of our own age, and cult sites which have managed to preserve their religious and cultural power up to the present day.