The Stone
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The oldest stone cairns in North Africa predate the desertification of the Sahara. Wikipedia's cairn entry documents "cairns (kerkour), dolmens and circles" in "vast numbers in presently arid and uninhabitable wastelands" — remnants of a time when the Sahara was green. As the climate dried, the stones remained. In the High Atlas today, kerkour mark passes, graves, and the boundaries between tribal territories. They are functional. They are also ancient beyond any living memory of who placed the first stone.

The word inuksuk means "something which acts for or performs the function of a person" in Inuktitut. In a landscape with no trees, no fences, no buildings — the stacked stone becomes the human proxy. A distinct form, the inunnguaq, is shaped like a human figure with arms, legs, and a head. But most inuksuit are simpler: directional pointers, cache markers, warnings. About 100 inuksuit on Foxe Peninsula, Baffin Island, are 2,000+ years old and still standing. The inuksuk is on the flag of Nunavut.

Mongolian shamanism recognises 99 tenger — 55 benevolent, 44 malevolent. Ovoos were originally built to honour them. When Tibetan Buddhism arrived, the tradition absorbed Buddhist elements without losing its shamanic core. Travellers circle an ovoo three times clockwise, adding a stone each time and leaving offerings — blue silk, horse skulls, vodka. Some ovoo complexes contain 7 to 13 cairns in formation, the largest in the centre. In a 2013 survey, 75 of 144 Mongolian respondents said they believe in ovoo ceremonies.

At high Andean passes, travellers add a stone to the apacheta and offer coca leaves, chicha, or a prayer. The act marks the transition from one valley to another — a liminal moment. The cairns grow over centuries as each traveller adds to the collective prayer. The same principle as the kerkour, the ovoo, the Scottish cairn: I was here, I survived the crossing, I leave a stone for the next person.

In Scandinavia, varder serve both land and sea navigation. Coastal cairns, painted white for visibility, guided ships through island-strewn waters — still maintained today as part of the nautical marking system. Mountain varder mark trails above the treeline where snow obliterates paths for months. Iceland, with almost no trees, uses cairns extensively. The tradition connects to the Sámi stone-stacking practices documented across Fennoscandia, Finland, and Russia.

An old Scottish Gaelic blessing: "Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn" — "I'll put a stone on your cairn." Before battle, Highland clans would each place a stone in a pile. Those who returned removed their stone. The remaining stones became a cairn for the dead. In Ireland, it is traditional to carry a stone from the bottom of a hill to place on the summit cairn. The word "cairn" itself comes from Irish and Scottish Gaelic: carn. Clava Cairns near Inverness date to the Bronze Age, 4,000 years old.

Korean mountain cairns are rooted in the worship of San-shin, the Mountain Spirit — one of the oldest layers of Korean folk religion, predating Buddhism and Confucianism. Hikers add stones to existing cairns at peaks and passes, trying to balance one more stone on top for good luck. The tradition has survived through centuries of Buddhist, Confucian, and Christian influence. On any Korean mountain trail today, you will find cairns.

In Genesis 31, Jacob and Laban set up a cairn at Gilead as a border marker and witness to their covenant. The Hebrew gal-ed literally means "heap of testimony." Its Aramaic equivalent, Yegar Sahaduta, means the same thing. In modern Hebrew, gal-ed is still the word for cairn. The stone pile as legal boundary and witness — the same function as the Amazigh kerkour marking tribal territories.

The Buddhist stupa probably began as a simple burial cairn — a pile of stones over cremated remains. Over centuries, it evolved into the elaborate hemispherical and spired structures found from Sri Lanka to Japan. But the origin is the same universal act: pile stones over the dead, mark the place, make it sacred. Tibetan mani stone piles, inscribed with mantras, are a direct descendant of the cairn tradition.