Roughly speaking, the extension of megalithic monuments is from Spain to Japan and from Sweden to Algeria.  These are naturally merely limits, and it must not be supposed that the regions which lie between them all contain megalithic monuments.  More exactly, we find them in Asia, in Japan, Corea, India, Persia, Syria, and Palestine.  In Africa we have them along the whole of the north coast, from Tripoli to Morocco; inland they are not recorded, except for one possible example in Egypt and several in the Soudan.  In Europe the distribution of dolmens and other megalithic monuments is wide.  They occur in the Caucasus and the Crimea, and quite lately examples have been recorded in Bulgaria.  There are none in Greece, and only a few in Italy, in the extreme south-east corner.  The islands, however, which lie around and to the south of Italy afford many examples:  Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Gozo, Pantelleria, and Lampedusa are strongholds of the megalithic civilization, and it is possible that Sicily should be included in the list.  Moving westward we find innumerable examples in the Spanish Peninsula and in France.  To the north we find them frequent in the British Isles, Sweden, Denmark, and North Germany; they are rarer in Holland and Belgium.  Two examples have been reported from Switzerland.

It is only to be expected that these great megalithic monuments of a prehistoric age should excite the wonder and stimulate the imagination of those who see them.  In all countries and at all times they have been centres of story and legend, and even at the present day many strange beliefs concerning them are to be found among the peasantry who live around them.  Salomon Reinach has written a remarkable essay on this question, and the following examples are mainly drawn from the collection he has there made.  The names given to the monuments often show clearly the ideas with which they are associated in the minds of the peasants.  Thus the Penrith circle is locally known as “Meg and her Daughters,” a dolmen in Berkshire is called “Wayland the Smith’s Cave,” while in one of the Orkney Isles is a menhir named “Odin’s Stone.”  In France many are connected with Gargantua, whose name, the origin of which is doubtful, stands clearly for a giant.  Thus we find a rock called the “Chair of Gargantua,” a menhir called “Gargantua’s Little Finger,” and an allee couverte called “Gargantua’s Tomb.”  Names indicating connections with fairies, virgins, witches, dwarfs, devils, saints, druids, and even historical persons are frequent.  Dolmens are often “houses of dwarfs,” a name perhaps suggested or at least helped by the small holes cut in some of them; they are “huts” or “caves of fairies,” they are “kitchens” or “forges of the devil,” while menhirs are called his arrows, and cromlechs his cauldrons.  In France we have stones of various saints, while in England many monuments are connected with King Arthur.  A dolmen in Wales is his quoit; the circle at Penrith is his round table,