Minga dolmens are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, along with other dolmens in the region. It is one of the largest megalithic tombs in Europe and is located on a hill.
But how were the Stone Age people able to transport and place the huge stones they needed? The largest stone weighs 150 tons: five times the weight of the heaviest stone at Stonehenge.
A group of Spanish archaeologists have now found the answer. They came to the conclusion that Minga dolmens should be considered one of the greatest achievements of Neolithic architecture.
Huge dolmens shrouded in mystery
Impressive Neolithic tombs can be found throughout 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. It was put out.
Measuring 27.5 meters long, 6 meters wide and 3.5 meters high, the Minga dolmen is one of the largest structures from the European Stone Age.
The building has been a great mystery for years. Who is responsible remains an open question, as researchers can only conclude that the builders belonged to an agricultural community from the fertile Guadalhorce Valley.
Experts have also wondered for some time how Stone Age people with primitive tools were able to manipulate and move such large building blocks.
However, when the researchers carefully studied the stones using petrographic and stratigraphic analysis methods, they discovered that they were essentially so-called calcarenite: a type of limestone that is much more fragile than other rocks. This made it easier to edit.
In total, the researchers identified five types of rocks in the dolmen, all of which can also be found in rocks about a kilometer away. Therefore, researchers believe that the stones come from here.
Lifting a stone of 150 tons using a rope system
The researchers write in their book condition Moving such huge and fragile stones must have required careful planning and extremely complex engineering. This is especially true of the top stone.
Calculations show that the upper stone weighs about 150 tons. Lifting it and placing it above the room required strong scaffolding and ropes, and moving such a mass of stone without damaging it also required perfectly smooth roads.
Researchers believe that the large stone was transported from the quarry by rolling it a full kilometer on tree trunks. The 150-ton rock was then lifted with ropes to place it in place on top of the dolmen.
Spanish archaeologists also argue that the dolmens were deliberately oriented in a certain direction. It faces the nearby mountains and at sunrise “this creates a complex pattern of light and shadow in the space,” they wrote.
The Spanish researchers concluded that “the construction of the Minga dolmen is a unique achievement that represents the pinnacle of megalithic architecture in the Iberian Peninsula and perhaps in Europe.”
