I further propose that the hypothesis of dolmens as bunkers is also the only feasible explanation for this world-wide phenomenon in Palaeolithic to Bronze age times, that does not require the existence of a lost mysterious, global culture with identical burial or ritual practices.
I will not dismiss other proposed purposes that have been suggested, for instance the notion that dolmens were astrological arrangements or fertility cult sites it may suffice to say at this point most of these ideas are not supported by substantial evidence. Several of the large dolmen mounts were even refurbished with modern military bunkers in WWII. In many of those cases, even the archeological finds do not make it clear that we are looking at a ritual burial, some of the people were found in disordered position without any precious burial gifts, they had few stone tools or simple ceramic pots with them, some may even have died in the enclosure. Only in a few cases, the use as burial sites is supported by evidence of human remains and artifacts, and in these sites this seems to be a secondary use of recent millennia. I am going to propose that most or all of the dolmens were initially built for protection from extreme Earth changes events, primarily from cosmically induced disasters, such as meteor showers, atmospheric meteorite explosions (of the Tunguska type) extreme storms, electric discharge events in the atmosphere and space radiation flux. We will see shortly why the explanation, that these small openings were for the transfer of the soul of the deceased, makes no sense, these openings must have been simply entrances and the small size of these openings makes it implausible that these dolmens were use for housing or even for storage. Other structures have a very narrow entrance gap composed of two stone slaps. According to the traditional believe, still held within academia, this hole was created to leave a passage way for the soul of the deceased. Many of the dolmens (mostly the well preserved specimen) have a small round or oval access opening protruding the front wall stone, also known as ‘Seelenloch’ (German ‘soul hole’).
For most examples of dolmens, the date of initial construction is unknown and could only be estimated by degrees of erosion of the stone, which is inadequate if the time period during which they were exposed to the elements, is unknown. Most of the ascribed dates of construction are the result of archeological deduction dominated by artifacts found at or near the site. Few of these dolmens were dated properly by for instance radio-carbon dating. Although the celtic/ breton word is used for this type of structure (which suggest a connection to the Celts and thus the Bronze Age/early Iron Age), dolmens are typically assigned to a much earlier period, the Neolithic. They are also known as cromlech, anta, Hünengrab (German: Giant’s Grave), Hunebed, (giant’s bed) quoit and portal dolmen. The word dolmen is believed to be Breton and means ‚table of stone’, The Oxford dictionary claims the meaning to be ‘hole of a stone.’, derived from French, perhaps via Breton from the Cornish tolmen.