The interior of the monument known as the Menga Dolmen in Spain
Miguel Angel Blanco de la Rubia
Neolithic people appear to have had a sophisticated understanding of scientific concepts, including physics and geology, and they used this knowledge to build megalithic monuments in southern Spain.
The stones, known as the Menga Dolmen, are one of the earliest megalithic monuments in Europe, dating back to between 3600 and 3800 BC. The covered enclosure is made of 32 large stones, some of which are the largest stones ever used in such a structure. The heaviest stone weighs over 130 tonnes, more than three times as much as the heaviest stone at Stonehenge in England, which was built over 1,000 years later.
“[In the Neolithic Period]“It must have been very powerful to experience this massive stone building,” he says. Leonardo Garcia San Juan At the University of Seville, Spain. “It still moves you. It still leaves an impression today.”
García San Juan and his colleagues have now performed detailed geological and archaeological analyses of the stones to deduce what knowledge Menga’s architects might have needed to construct the monuments at Antequera.
Ironically, they found that the rock was a type of sandstone that was relatively fragile, meaning it was more prone to breaking, but the team found that they could compensate for this by adjusting the shape of the stone to hold it together into a very stable overall structure.
Neolithic people would have needed a way to fit the blocks together very tightly, García San Juan says. “It’s like Tetris,” he says. “You have to think that there was some idea of angles, even if it was rudimentary, given the precision involved and how well each stone fit together.”
Researchers also discovered that the 130-ton stones, which were placed horizontally to form part of the roof, were shaped so that the surface rose in the center and dropped toward the edges. García Sanjuán says this distributed forces in a similar way to an arch, increasing the strength of the roof. “As far as we know, this is the first time in human history that the principle of the arch has been documented.”
The menga, whose purpose is unknown, were placed to create distinct light patterns inside during the summer months, and the stones were protected from water damage by multiple layers of carefully hammered clay, adding further evidence to support the architect’s knowledge of architecture and engineering.
“They knew about geology and the properties of the rocks they used,” says García Sanjuán. “If you put all that together – you know, engineering, physics, geology, geometry, astronomy – you could call it science.”
There are Neolithic structures in France that are similar in size to Menga, but little is known about how they were built, says García San Juan. “For now, Menga is unique in Iberia and Western Europe.”
“What’s amazing about this is the level of sophistication,” he said. Susan Greeny “There is an architectural understanding of how weight distribution works that I have never seen anywhere else,” said the University of Exeter in the UK. But she added that it shows an understanding of architecture and engineering rather than science.
subject:
