Dolmen de Menga, Antequera – Spain

  The Dolmen de Menga and Dolmen de Viera burial mounds stand close together on a low hill on the northern edge of Antequera town. If the Dolmen de Viera was a rather conventional passage grave (see previous post), then the nearby Dolmen de Menga is anything but. This is one of the largest megalithic structures in Europe, with the size and unique features of this single chambered burial mound being one of the main reasons why the Antequera dolmens are listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

  The wide entrance beneath a huge cap stone leads into a very large chamber measuring 6m across and 3m high, and extending for 25m into the mound. The walls of the chamber are built from 32 massive blocks of stone, and roofed over with 5 even larger blocks – one weighing more than 150 tons. The wide span of the chamber roof required the builders to add 3 central pillars to support the huge slabs. It is said that when the burial mound was opened in the 1800’s, the remains of several hundred people were discovered, but there appear to be no actual details about this.

  Detailed study of the construction of the mound and chamber has revealed that remarkably sophisticated engineering skills were used in its construction. Rather than build the chamber directly on the hill top, the builders instead shaped the bedrock there to form an internal core around which the huge stones were placed. The surrounding stone blocks sit in deep foundation sockets also cut into the bedrock, and these side slabs were shaped and angled inwards to fit closely together and support each other. Finally the huge roof stones were placed on top of the side walls, with their enormous weight ‘locking’ the whole structure together. Once all the stones were in position, the inner bedrock core was quarried away to reveal the stone lined chamber within. A testament to the builders skills and design is that this monument is still standing after 5000 years in an area that is prone to earthquakes.

Looking beyond

  As impressive as the construction of the Dolmen de Menga is, it is when standing within the chamber and looking out through the entrance that the site opens up a whole new level of significance. This view reveals that the axis of the burial chamber is oriented towards the isolated mountainous peak of Peña de los Enamorados, which stands on the skyline to the north east.

  Just for a moment, when looking out from the mound i actually doubted what i was seeing – as the profile of this huge rock outcrop looks exactly like a human head facing sky ward!

  Peña de los Enamorados means the ‘Rock of the Lovers’, – from a later story connected with the hill, but another local name for it is ‘El Gigante Dormido’ – The Sleeping Giant. So one of the key elements behind the construction of the Dolmen de Menga burial mound 5000 years ago was to align and link it with this ‘Sleeping Giant’ figure, which must have held a great significance in the culture and beliefs of the mound builders. The significance of the hill was apparently strong enough to take priority over the tradition of aligning sites to a sunrise position, although the sun does still illuminate part of the chamber at the mid summer solstice.

  After the initial moment of disbelief on seeing the ‘Sleeping Giant’, a flood of thoughts filled my mind, and for some reason they settled on the name Ymir. In Norse mythology Ymir was the first being created at the beginning of time, later his grandson’s performed a type of cosmic sacrifice – dismembering Ymir’s gigantic body, and using it to create the land, sea and mountains etc. This belief in a primeval being creating features in the landscape occurs in other cultures too, with the being usually dying and transforming into some prominent feature in the landscape, where their potent creative and fertile powers live on. A similar kind of belief may have been held by the people who built the burial mounds at Antequera, with the Dolmen de Menga burial chamber creating a ‘doorway’ or link to this ancestral hill for the spirits of those laid to rest within.

  As if conformation was needed of the connection between the Dolmen de Menga and the Sleeping Giant hill, the exact orientation of the burial chamber points to the ‘chin’ of the hill, which just happens to be the location of the Abrigo Matacabras rock shelter. This cave contains rock art and other features which archaeologist have been able to link with the Dolmen de Menga mound. Other archaeological remains on the slopes below the cave point to this location being an important ‘Neolithic open air sanctuary’, and an ancestral site for those who later built the Dolmen de Menga.

Return to the source

  If the Sleeping Giant was so significant why not build the burial mounds closer to it? or was there perhaps already something important on the hill where the chambered mounds would later be constructed? While the view of the Sleeping Giant was quite a jaw drop moment, walking to the back of the large burial chamber caused a ‘what the hell’s that’ moment too, as there was an illuminated circular metal frame fastened to the floor. This turned out to be covering a 20 metre deep shaft cut down into the bedrock, with the safety cover and lights allowing visitors to look down into it. Again, this unexpected feature triggered a flood of thoughts – was this a Neolithic ritual shaft inside a burial mound? Was it dug to connect the chamber to the underworld? Was the shaft used for burials or votive offerings?

  This deep shaft was only discovered (or rediscovered) in 2005, as it had been totally filled up in the past. The shaft is 1.5m wide and descends 20m down to the water table at this location, so it is often described as a well, but again, research has shown that it seems to have had a greater significance.

  There is currently no datable evidence for when the shaft was originally dug – it could be prehistoric, it could be Roman, or even medieval. But if it was simply dug to supply water, why go to all the effort of digging a deep well shaft through the solid bedrock inside an ancient burial mound when there are plenty of other water sources in the area, and when the same water table could have been reached nearby with just a 2 metre deep shaft? Some archaeologist think that the shaft could actually predate the burial mound, and that it is the reason why the burial mound was built there. This might explain why the Dolmen de Menga is so different from the nearby Dolmen de Viera and El Romeral, having no long passage or separate burial chamber, just the one large chamber and the deep shaft, where perhaps the burials were placed. The site’s main archaeologist (Leonardo García Sanjuán) suggests that the shaft was part of the original chambered mound, being located centrally behind the rear pillar at the back of the chamber, it is perfectly circular and constructed to the same high standard as the rest of the structure. He also suggests that just as the chamber’s alignment to the Sleeping Giant hill highlighted the importance of that landscape feature, the shaft reaching down to the water table at the rear of the chamber reflects the ancient importance of the areas hydrology.

  The town of Antequera and the Neolithic burial mounds are located at a point where the La Villa river drops down to the fertile plains of the Guadalhorce river (one of the largest rivers in southern Spain). The La Villa runs into the Guadalhorce – whose waters flow past the Sleeping Giant Hill and its Neolithic Sanctuary, 4 miles up stream. Since prehistoric times the La Villa has supplied fresh water for settlement and irrigation in the Antequera area, with the river having its source at a large spring flowing from the foot of the dramatically shaped limestone hills called El Torcal, located 3 miles to the south of the town. The waters emerge in a cave called ‘El Nacimiento’ – meaning ‘The Birth’, with this spring being described as the ‘inexhaustible treasure’ of Antequera. So these abundant underground waters flowing from beneath the El Torcal hills to the south, along with the fertile plains to the north, were of key importance to the original settlements in this area in the past.

  The El Torcal hills are also the location of another significant early Neolithic cave site called Cueva El Toro – ‘Cave of the Bull’. In addition to this, the rocky crags of El Torcal have been weathered into strange and fantastic shapes – not unlike our very own Brimham Rocks (El Torcal has been described as “Brimham Rocks on steroids”). So this would seem to be another unusual shaped feature in the landscape with an Neolithic ancestral cave. The Dolmen de Menga and Dolmen de Viera were built on a hill from where both the Sleeping Giant Hill and the El Torcal hills can be seen, while the passage of the Tholos El Romeral burial mound is actually aligned on the highest point of the El Torcal.

  So just as the entrance to the Dolmen de Menga chamber provides a link to the ancestral location of the Sleeping Giant outcrop, so the deep shaft at the rear of the chamber provides a link to the subterranean life sustaining waters that emerge from beneath the El Torcal hills and the ‘birth’ cave of the La Villa.

  At Antequera the archaeologists have managed to reveal something of the thoughts and beliefs of the people who built these impressive burial mounds 5000 years ago. For them the ‘power’ of the sun held great significance, along with the rivers flowing across the land, and the hidden waters beneath it, while the hills, mountains, and caves in the landscape around them were also woven into their history. They carefully chose the locations to build their burial mounds to align with these special places, and form a web of connections across the land.

After notes

 There are so many interesting details connected with the Antequera burial mounds that it is difficult not to mention them. However this makes for an even longer post, so ignore this final section unless you are ‘hooked’.

  The profile of the Sleeping Giant hill is generally regarded as masculine, but some have referred to it as the ‘Sleeping Woman’, and from some angles or in silhouette the hill can appear more feminine in profile. This is interesting because the ‘Rock of the lovers’ story connected with the hill has a young woman and her lover jumping to their deaths from the cliff top, after their fathers forbid them to be together. It is said that they were buried beneath the cliff, and so perhaps she is the ‘sleeping woman’. That the profile of the hill can be seen as both male and female when viewed from different sides is also interesting, and perhaps hints at a much older creation story to account for the Sleeping Giant. The Dolmen de Menga also has a female connection in its name, as it is suggested that it derives from the latin Cova Domenica meaning ‘cave of the lady’. ‘Menga’ was also said to be the name of a woman in the 16th century who contracted leprosy, and came to live in the ‘cave’ in the mound. In the past, deities or spirits connected with water were generally female, so if the chamber and its deep well shaft were once a kind of healing water shrine, then Menga may have been a faint memory of its guardian spirit.

  Archaeologist suggest that the burial chamber has been open or at least accessible for hundreds of years, possibly even since Roman times. There are references from the late 1500’s showing that the ‘Menga Cave’ (the burial chamber) was believed to have been a place of pagan worship and ‘demonic rituals’, and with its huge blocks of stone it could have only been built by supernatural powers. In spite of this reputation, water pots from this time found around the site suggest that people were visiting the chamber, perhaps to use water from the well or to carry it away. The story of Menga – the women with leprosy, living in the cave in the 1600’s might also suggest that the water was believed to have had healing properties, and perhaps in another context this might have been regarded as a holy well. However, the well’s location inside an ancient pagan ‘cave’, along with any folk religious practices taking place there, would be regarded as unchristian activity, and met with church disapproval. It is such activity which is suggested to have led to the well shaft being completely filled in during the early 1700’s, along with the entrance to the chamber, to effectively close down the site.

  A century later, Rafael Mitjana re opened the chamber and dug down into the shaft, as he believed that bones and urns had been found in the chamber in the past, but he found nothing – not realising that the shaft had been filled in only 100 years previously. This was confirmed by the modern excavation which dug down to its full 20m depth, but unfortunately it did not produce any dating evidence for when it was originally dug. The excavation found that the shaft had been completely filled in during the early 1700’s, and this filling required 50 tons of material to be brought into the chamber and dumped down the shaft. Some of the fill appears to have come from the mound and surrounding area, but other material came from some distance away, including the complete carcases of dead animals. The great effort and expense of filling up the well shaft, along with the the dead animals thrown into it, suggests that this was an official act to stop people visiting the well and using the water. Several crosses carved on the side slab near the entrance to the chamber also indicate an effort to cleanse and sanctify the site.

  It is curious that the excavation found nothing dateable at the bottom of the shaft prior to its infilling during the 1700’s. It seems highly unlikely that the shaft was dug down into the bedrock at this time, and then immediately filled in, so this points to it being totally cleared out before the infilling took place, thus removing any evidence of its previous use. Perhaps in the early 1700’s the whole shaft was dug out by treasure hunters who found the bones and urns mentioned by Raphael Mitjana 100 years later.

Alternatively, if the shaft had been in use as a well for a long time, then this clearing out might indicate that there was something of value at the bottom of the well shaft. Coins found inside the chamber perhaps point to offerings being dropped into the well as part of some healing or other folk religious practices that the church wanted to put a stop to. Over many years such offerings (coins and other valuables) may have built up to the point where it was worth the effort of clearing out the bottom of the shaft, before finally filling it in.

Ancestral voices

  Archaeo-acoustic experiments at the Abrigo Matacabras rock shelter in the cliff face below the ‘chin’ of the Sleeping Giant hill have shown that the location has good acoustic properties, not unlike a Greek or Roman outdoor theatre. The concave cliff face focuses sound onto a small area enclosed by large boulders located below the rock face, where the high looming cliffs above also creates a dizzying effect. The strongest reverberations were in the male baritone frequency range, so the sound of any one speaking or chanting within the rock shelter would be heard strongly in the area enclosed by boulders. It is also worth noting that the rock shelter is located in the ‘neck’ area below the chin of the Sleeping Giant – roughly where the voice box is in a human. So perhaps this acoustic effect was regarded as the voice of the giant ancestral figure who ‘sleeps’ within the landscape – able to communicate through a person within the rock shelter.

  The Dolmen de Menga is an incredibly fascinating site, and archaeologists are still studying its unique features as there are many unanswered questions. Such as – does the shaft predate the burial mound? Or when was the burial chamber first opened, and by who? More tantalising perhaps is when and where were the remains of ‘several hundred people’ found within the chamber? Were hundreds of bones piled up on the chamber floor ,or were they perhaps originally buried in the deep shaft, and only found when treasure hunters dug down into the shaft?

References
The archaeologist Leonardo García Sanjuán of Seville University, and his colleagues really do deserve credit for the work they have done at Antequera. Much of the information above is from these articles written by the archaeologist’s who have worked on the Antequera sites.
Waterscapes Through Time – The Menga Well as a Unique Hydraulic Resource
A multimethod approach to the genesis of Menga, a World Heritage megalith
Early science and colossal stone engineering in Menga, a Neolithic dolmen (Antequera, Spain)
Sounds from a Mountain. Acoustics at La Peña de los Enamorados, a Neolithic sanctuary.
In the bosom of the Earth: a new megalithic monument at the Antequera World Heritage Site.

Part 3 – Tholos de EL Romeral