Large Megalith That Predates Stonehenge Exhibits Science Savvy of Neolithic People

Large Megalith That Predates Stonehenge Exhibits 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 great rudimentary grasp of physics, geometry, geology and architectural ideas, finds an in depth examine of the positioning.

Utilizing knowledge from a high-resolution laser scan, in addition to unpublished images and diagrams from earlier excavations, archaeologists pieced collectively a possible development course of for the monument often called the Dolmen of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

The dolmen pre-dates the primary stone circle at Stonehenge in the UK by about 1,000 years, however the development course of described within the examine would have concerned related strategies and demanded an identical stage 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 extensive and three.5 metres excessive. The biggest 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 enormous slabs from the quarry to the positioning with out breaking them would have required explicit care, the researchers say, notably with the delicate sandstone used for the roof. They counsel that this might have been performed utilizing specifically constructed wood tracks to cut back friction because the stones had been dragged alongside, a lot because the builders of Stonehenge are thought to have performed.

One other process that demanded precision and talent 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 rigorously into the sockets, tilting them at exact, millimetre-scale angles. The stones had been carved into aspects that meant they locked in opposition to their neighbours when the weights and ramps had 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 not like 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 revealed on August 23, 2024.