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In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| Caixa de Rotllan | |
|---|---|
 The dolmen in 2012 | |
  Location in Occitania, France | |
| 42°28′52″N 2°36′04″E / 42.48111°N 2.60111°E | |
| Type | Dolmen |
| Periods | Neolithic/Chalcolithic |
| Location | Arles-sur-Tech, Occitania, France |
| History | |
| Built | c. 2250 BC |
| Site notes | |
| Material | Granite |
| Height | 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) |
| Length | 3 m (9.8 ft) |
| Width | 2 m (6 ft 7 in) |
| Public access | Free |
The Caixa de Rotllan (meaning "Roland's Tomb" in Catalan) is a dolmen in Arles-sur-Tech, Pyrénées-Orientales, southern France, dating back to the Neolithic period, during the second half of 3rd millennium BC.
A legend holds that Roland lived in Vallespir and that, after his death at the 1st Battle of Roncevaux Pass, his horse Veillantif carried Roland's corpse back to Vallespir and buried him under this dolmen. Dolmens are actually tombs, but they were erected many centuries before the legendary knight's adventures.
The Caixa de Rotllan is made of three upright stones in a H-shape, supporting a thick roofing stone and delimiting a rectangular, medium-sized chamber. The entrance faces south-east, as do many other dolmens in Pyrénées-Orientales. The building has been listed as a Monument historique since 1889 but has never been excavated by archaeologists.
The Caixa de Rotllan is one of 148 dolmens listed in the Pyrénées-Orientales department. Some have been destroyed or are attested by old sources but have been lost and not rediscovered by modern scholars.[1] They are all located in hilly or mountainous areas of the department, usually on a mountain pass, ridge or other high ground.[2]
Like others, this dolmen is situated on a ridge line. It is on the southern side of the Canigou, at 830 metres (2,720 ft) above sea level,[3] just beneath a granitic chaos[4] in the historical and geographical region named Vallespir. It stands on the border between French communes Arles-sur-Tech and Montbolo.[3]
Two ways lead to the dolmen from Arles town. A passable track along the Bonabosc river leads near it, but one must leave this track for a 60-metre (66 yd) walk to the dolmen. The GR 10 footpath also runs near the dolmen. This part of the GR 10 is an old track leading to the Batère iron ore mines from Arles-sur-Tech. This route takes an hour and a half to walk.[4]
The Caixa de Rotllan is indicated by a star on the 1:25000 Institut Géographique National map, indicating a curiosité (French for "curiosity").[3]
Like most of the dolmens in the Pyrénées-Orientales,[6] the Caixa de Rotllan has a simple plan — that is, without a corridor[5] — which relates it to other dolmens from the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age of the second half of the third millennium BC.[7]
In Catalan, Caixa de Rotllan means "Roland's grave", suggesting that the inhabitants of the region had long known that the dolmen had been used as a grave.[5] Many megaliths in the Pyrénées-Orientales are named after mythic characters such as Roland or his enemies the "Moors" (Catalan: Moros).[8]
Other nearby places are named after Roland. 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) north of the Caixa along the ridgeline lies the Palet de Rotllan ("Roland's Puck"). It refers to an ancient game named Palet, in which players had to knock down a target (usually a stick) standing on the ground by throwing a puck (or Palet) at it. According to a legend, Roland played this game, but used huge stones instead of pucks and enjoyed aiming at the castles of Vallespir as targets.[9]
Further to the north lies the abeurador del cavall de Rotllan ("the watering trough of Roland's horse") where the legendary knight's horse Veillantif used to drink. The Cova d'en Rotllan ("Roland's cave") is another dolmen in Corsavy, a nearby commune[9] where Roland used to rest.[8]
According to The Song of Roland, Roland and his friends Oliver and Turpin died at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass and their corpses were brought to and buried in the Basilica of St. Romain, in Blaye, by Charlemagne. Another legend tells that Veillantif brought the corpse of his master to the Vallespir near the place where he used to play palet. A tomb was built there: it is the Caixa de Rotllan. Many places in this region are named after the pawprints left by Veillantif.[10]
The Caixa de Rotllan may have been erected during the Chalcolithic or the beginning of the Bronze Age, during the second half of the 3rd millennium BC.
During the Middle Ages it marked the boundary between Arles and Montbolo.[5] The current boundary between these two communes runs very near the dolmen.[3]
The first paper that mentioned this dolmen was an article written by Jean-Baptiste Renard de Saint-Malo in 1837 and entitled Monument druidique (entre Arles et Batère) ("Druidic monument between Arles and Batère"). But Renard de Saint-Malo seems to have confused the Caixa with another stone, the nearby palet of Roland.[9] Louis Companyo's Histoire naturelle du département des Pyrénées-Orientales ("Natural History of the Pyrénées-Orientales Département"), in 1861, corrected this mistake, noting that the palet is not a dolmen and warning its readers against the frequent confusion between some natural stones and dolmens.[11][12] The first scientific description of the Caixa was made by Alexandre-Félix Ratheau in 1866, in «Note sur un monument celtique du département» ("Note On A Celtic Monument Of The Département") published in the Bulletin de la Société agricole, scientifique et littéraire des Pyrénées-Orientales. At this time, people thought that dolmens had been built by the Celts.[9] In his paper, Ratheau, a French engineer and author of several books on fortications, recorded the dolmen's dimensions, its orientation relative to the north and a plan with three elevation cuts.[13] Ratheau said that the palet was made of pieces of abandoned granite grindstones and clarified Companyo's correction. Indeed, reading Companyo's paper, people may have thought that no Caixa de Rotllan dolmen existed.[12] In 1887, an engraving, made from a photograph, of the dolmen was published in La création de l'Homme et premiers âges, by Henri Raison du Cleuziou.[9] In 1889, the Caixa de Rotllan was classified as a Monument historique.[14]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Caixa de Rotllan (meaning "Roland's Tomb" in Catalan) is a dolmen in Arles-sur-Tech, Pyrénées-Orientales, southern France, dating back to the Neolithic period, during the second half of 3rd millennium BC. A legend holds that Roland lived in Vallespir and that, after his death at the 1st Battle of Roncevaux Pass, his horse Veillantif carried Roland's corpse back to Vallespir and buried him under this dolmen. Dolmens are actually tombs, but they were erected many centuries before the legendary knight's adventures. The Caixa de Rotllan is made of three upright stones in a H-shape, supporting a thick roofing stone and delimiting a rectangular, medium-sized chamber. The entrance faces south-east, as do many other dolmens in Pyrénées-Orientales. The building has been listed as a Monument historique since 1889 but has never been excavated by archaeologists.
The Dolmen de Viera or Dolmen de los Hermanos Viera is a dolmen—a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb—located in Antequera, province of Málaga, Andalusia, Spain. It is located only 70 metres (230 ft) from the Dolmen of Menga and about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from Tholos de El Romeral. It was discovered in February 1903 by brothers Antonio and Jose Fuentes from Antequera, who also discovered El Romeral.
Dolmen de Axeitos is a prehistoric megalithic dolmen just to the northwest of the village Axeitos, in the parish of Oleiros, in the municipality of Ribeira, on the Barbanza Peninsula in the estuary of the Ría de Arousa in the Province of A Coruña, Galicia, in northwestern Spain. It is dated to 3600-4000 BC. Because of its historical and archaeological value, on March 11, 1978 it became a registered Bien de Interés Cultural landmark.
The Anta de Adrenunes, located on top of a hill at 426 metres above sea level, in the municipality of Sintra, within Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, Lisbon District, Portugal, is believed to be a Stone Age burial chamber or megalithic monument. It is a structure consisting of a cluster of granite stones, between which there is a gallery about 5 metres high that is surmounted by monoliths that rest horizontally on vertical stones. The passage is thought to have served as a collective necropolis or dolmen during the megalithic period although no artifacts or burial chambers have been found to prove this. The site contains a geodesic landmark that has been inserted into one of the upper stones. Initial excavations by Joaquim Possidónio Narciso da Silva (1806-1896) found no evidence of funerary use. However, Da Silva presented the results of his research at one of the sessions of the International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology in 1871, referring to the site as a megalithic funerary monument. Later writers have argued that the site combines natural granite rocks, which are also found elsewhere in the area, with some architectural elements. They point to the layout of the rocks and their orientation to the sunset to argue that this suggests a megalithic structure that was probably of natural origin and was later worked on by humans. More recent excavations of the stones have provided some evidence of the intervention of humans, as granite wedges in the foundations of some of the stones have been identified. The approximately rectangular shape of some of the rocks also provides possible evidence of human intervention, although other writers have argued that the site is no more than a natural collection of rocks. Visiting the site requires a walk of about one kilometre from a tarred road. It receives relatively few visitors, although it is popular at the solstices and equinoxes.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.