Large Megalith That Predates Stonehenge Reveals Science Savvy of Neolithic People

Large Megalith That Predates Stonehenge Reveals Science Savvy of Neolithic People

By Roff Smith & Nature journal

The Neolithic farmers and herders who constructed a large stone chamber in southern Spain almost 6,000 years in the past possessed a very good rudimentary grasp of physics, geometry, geology and architectural ideas, finds an in depth examine of the location.

Utilizing knowledge from a high-resolution laser scan, in addition to unpublished pictures and diagrams from earlier excavations, archaeologists pieced collectively a possible building course of for the monument often known as the Dolmen of Menga. Their findings, printed on 23 August in Science Advances, reveal new insights into the construction and its Neolithic builders’ technical skills.

The dolmen pre-dates the primary stone circle at Stonehenge in the UK by about 1,000 years, however the building course of described within the examine would have concerned comparable strategies and demanded an analogous degree of engineering.

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“These people had no blueprints to work with, nor, as far as we know, any previous experience at building something like this,” says examine co-author Leonardo García Sanjuán, an archaeologist on the College of Seville in Spain. “And yet, they understood how to fit together huge blocks of stone” with “a precision that would keep the monument intact for nearly 6,000 years”.

“There’s no way you could do that without at least a basic working knowledge of science,” he provides.

Tremendous-solid construction

To assemble the dolmen, its builders transported 32 large stone blocks from a quarry round one kilometre away and used them to kind the partitions, pillars and roof of a large chamber measuring round 28 metres lengthy, 6 metres vast and three.5 metres excessive. The most important of those blocks, one of many capstones that varieties a part of the roof, is 8 metres lengthy and weighs an estimated 150 tonnes. By comparability, the most important stone used to construct Stonehenge weighs about 30 tonnes.

Transporting these big slabs from the quarry to the location with out breaking them would have required specific care, the researchers say, significantly with the gentle sandstone used for the roof. They recommend that this might have been executed utilizing specifically constructed picket tracks to cut back friction because the stones have been dragged alongside, a lot because the builders of Stonehenge are thought to have executed.

One other job that demanded precision and ability was finessing the upright slabs into sockets carved 1.5 metres deep into the bedrock. The laser scans revealed that the builders used counterweights and ramps to maneuver the uprights fastidiously into the sockets, tilting them at exact, millimetre-scale angles. The stones have been carved into sides that meant they locked towards their neighbours when the weights and ramps have been eliminated.

“I’ve always been amazed by the engineering skills needed to build this dolmen,” says Michael Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at College School London. “This paper reveals just how precisely that has to have been done, with an extraordinary eye on dimensions and angles. With such big stones, they could not have afforded to make mistakes when manoeuvring them into position. If even just one was a few centimetres out, that would have been hard to correct once an upright stone was set in its trench.”

Parker Pearson provides that the prehistoric engineers’ understanding of physics and geometry resulted in a ‘super-solid monument’. “It’s the sort of thing we see at Stonehenge a thousand years later, with the mortise and tenon joining of uprights and lintels.”

However in contrast to Stonehenge, the Dolmen of Menga is in a seismically energetic, earthquake-prone space. Regardless of this, after almost 6,000 years, the stonework continues to be comfortable and safe, says García Sanjuán. “These people really knew what they were doing.”

This text is reproduced with permission and was first printed on August 23, 2024.