THEbelix made them popular – menhirs. As the operator of a quarry, he didn’t have to worry about selling his menhirs, after all, the famous Gallic village of Asterix & Co. was in Brittany, the stronghold of those megaliths that were erected in the Neolithic period as solitary or in a targeted arrangement, as they dominated large parts of Western Europe and are still impressively visible today.
Even in the days of the Romans and Gauls, the knowledge of why it was so important four to six thousand years ago to lay out round and square stones in long rows or concentric circles was probably lost. They undoubtedly served cult or astronomical purposes and gave the scattered people orientation as calendar buildings and places of the ancestors.
Only a few large stone structures have survived in Germany. Most of them have disappeared since Christianization and reclamation in the Middle Ages to use as building material for roads, dykes, canal and rail beds. And not much was missing, then Hessen would be a blank spot in this regard.
Shredded stones
Fortunately, the local history researcher Heinrich Gunkel heard in time that farmers who cultivated the Scheftheim meadows east of Darmstadt were shredding stones that were in the way with increasing mechanization. Gunkel was able to secure the remains in 1966, knowing that the conical chunks belong to the megalithic culture.
This is how Hessen came up with its first and only Stonehenge, even if the local counterpart is a little more modest. After all, some granite blocks were painstakingly put together and put back on the edge of the original area. There they were inaccessible for years, since in 1993 the Scheftheim meadows were protected on 166 hectares. Thanks to the cultural and historical association of Roßdorf, a solution was found later by fencing off the stone group and making it accessible via a footbridge.
Indiscriminate logging in the 16th century
In addition, an observation post was created for the meadows, which are equally important as natural and cultural monuments. Originally created through indiscriminate clearing in the 16th century, it preserved the hunting passion of the Hessen-Darmstadt rulers when the forests were prepared accordingly well into the 18th century.
The game could graze better in open spaces and could easily be hunted from wooden stands. In the meantime used for agricultural purposes, the meadows, which were kept short by a fixed flock of sheep, developed into valuable humid biotopes, also protected like a large part of the extensive deciduous forests around Darmstadt.
Directions
The starting point, the Steinbrücker pond in the Oberwald, also goes back to the hunting world. The water was dammed to supply the neighboring pheasantry from 1715, supplemented in 1902 by an architecturally playful inn that still exists today. The bus stops in front of it and there are large parking spaces.
From the building we follow the bank with the yellow 2. Beyond the leisure facilities, it points over the water into the valley of the Ruthsenbach, lined with alders, poplars and magnificent oaks. Fallen trees have been lying there for years, which has already created a jungle-like vegetation pattern, subject to narrow strips of meadow.
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