Antequera’s Ancient Dolmens

Antequera has one of the largest and most important prehistoric burial sites in Spain, dating from the Bronze Age (3,500 B.C.) They are among the oldest objects on the planet and they are located only a short walk away from where we are living, on the outskirts of town.

The Antequera Dolmens are essentially Spain’s Stonehenge and were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2016. They are 1,200 years older than Stonehenge in England.

A dolman is a single chamber tomb consisting of two of more vertical megaliths supporting a large flat horizontal table of stone, then covered with earth so it is like an oval, underground stone igloo. From the outside, they just look like a big hill.

They were used for holy rituals and funerals. The Antequera dolmens are unique in that they face mountainscapes, instead of the sun.

Two of them, Menga and Viera, were constructed between 3000 and 3500 B.C. The third one, El Romeral, was built around 2500 B.C. Menga is the largest and oldest of the three. It’s been called one the “best preserved marvels on earth.” Its roof is estimated to weigh 200 tons.

We visited the first two dolmans after watching a very informative video in the interpretive centre. It showed a theory of how the blocks were cut and how they were moved from the quarry that is 1 km away. Pretty amazing considering that these dolmans were built with primitive tools, close to 6,000 years ago. It reminded us of how experts think the pyramids in Egypt were built. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

The Menga Dolmen in the largest in Europe at nearly 30m long. The largest upright stone weighs 180 tonnes. By way of comparison, the heaviest stone at Stonehenge, in Wiltshire in the UK, weighs 40 tonnes.

Its height gradually increases from 2.7m at the entrance to 3.5m at the far end. The widest point is 6m towards the back. There are three pillars that support four enormous 250-tonne roof stones.

Each side is made of 12 four metre tall upright stones and one stone closing the far end. The roof is made of five stones; a sixth that was placed over the entrance is missing. The tomb is covered by a 50m-diameter cover of stones and soil.

If you are inside and you look down the passage, you can the Peña de los Enamorados or the Indian Head framed in the entrance. That’s the mountain that I talked about in an earlier blog. During the the summer solstice, the sun rises directly over the peak and shines into the chamber.

Another dolman is aligned towards the Torcal mountain that we hiked in, the other day.
Apparently, these dolmans are the only ones in continental Europe that are aligned towards a natural landmark.

A mystery re the Menga dolman. At the back of this giant dolmen, in the centre of the floor, is a 30m (100 feet!) deep well perfectly carved from the bedrock and with water at its bottom. But why is it here? Some people think that the Romans built it. But why? There is a lot of water around the site. Why such a deep well?

Four kilometres down the road, there is another dolman that is much newer, built during the late Copper Age, 1,800 B.C. It has 2 chambers and a very long hallway.The walls are made of small pieces of limestone, like bricks rather than the giant stones used earlier. It still has the giant slabs on the roof though.

It was hard to keep our hands to ourselves. We just wanted to feel the history in the stones…Read more