The Menga dolmen is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, together with two other dolmens in the area. It is one of the largest megalithic tombs in Europe and stands on a hill.
But how could Stone Age people transport and place the enormous stones they needed? The largest stone weighs 150 tons: five times as much as the heaviest stone at Stonehenge.
A group of Spanish archaeologists have now found the answer. They have come to the conclusion that the dolmen of Menga should be seen as one of the greatest achievements of Neolithic architecture.
Huge dolmen shrouded in mystery
Impressive tombs from the Younger Stone Age can be found in much of Europe, including England, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, where they were built on a large scale. About 52 dolmens have been preserved in Drenthe, which were built between 3350 and 3050 BC. have been placed.
With a length of 27.5 meters, width of 6 meters and height of 3.5 meters, the Menga dolmen is one of the largest structures from the European Stone Age.
The building was one big mystery for years. And who is responsible is still the question – researchers can only surmise that the builders belonged to a farming community from the fertile Guadalhorce valley.
Experts have also wondered for some time how a Stone Age people with primitive tools was able to process and move such large building blocks.
However, when researchers carefully studied the stones using petrographic and stratigraphic analysis methods, they discovered that they were mainly so-called calcarenites: a type of limestone that is much more brittle than other rocks. This made them easier to edit.
In total, the researchers identified five types of rock in the dolmen, all of which can also be found in rocks about a kilometer away. The researchers therefore think that the stones come from here.
150 ton stone lifted with a rope system
The researchers write in their article that moving such large and massive, but fragile stones must have required careful planning and very complex engineering. This is especially true for the top stone.
Calculations show that the top stone weighs approximately 150 tons. Lifting it and placing it on top of the room would have required scaffolding and strong ropes, and transporting such a block of stone without damaging it would also have required perfectly smooth roads.
The researchers believe the large stone was transported from the quarry by rolling it a full kilometer on logs. The 150-ton boulder was then lifted with ropes to get it into place on top of the dolmen.
The Spanish archaeologists also argue that the dolmen was deliberately oriented in a certain direction. It faces the neighboring mountains and at sunrise “this creates a complex pattern of light and shadow in the space,” they write.
“The construction of the Menga dolmen is a unique achievement that represents the pinnacle of megalithic architecture in the Iberian Peninsula and possibly in Europe,” the Spanish researchers conclude.
2023-12-09 14:13:42
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