The inside of the monument in Spain referred to as the Menga dolmen
Miguel Ángel Blanco de la Rubia
Neolithic folks appear to have understood refined ideas in science, corresponding to physics and geology, utilizing this information to assemble a megalithic monument in southern Spain.
Referred to as the Menga dolmen, it’s among the many earliest European megaliths, courting to between 3600 and 3800 BC. Its roofed enclosure was constructed from 32 giant stones, a few of that are the most important utilized in such constructions. The heaviest one weighs in extra of 130 tonnes, greater than 3 times as a lot because the heaviest stone at Stonehenge within the UK, which was erected greater than 1000 years later.
“[In the Neolithic Period], it will need to have been very highly effective to expertise this constructing made with these huge stones,” says Leonardo García Sanjuán on the College of Seville in Spain. “It nonetheless stirs you. It nonetheless causes an impression even at the moment.”
García Sanjuán and his colleagues have now carried out detailed geological and archaeological analyses of the stones to deduce what information Menga’s builders would have wanted to assemble the monument, which is within the metropolis of Antequera.
Paradoxically, they discovered that the rocks are a sort of comparatively fragile sandstone. Whereas this implies a higher danger of breaking, the group found that this was compensated for by shaping the stones so that they locked into a really secure general construction.
Neolithic folks would have wanted some solution to make the blocks match very tightly collectively, says Garcia Sanjuán. “It’s like Tetris,” he says. “When you take a look at the precision concerned and the way properly every stone locks with one another, it’s a must to suppose that they’d an concept of angles, nonetheless rudimentary.”
The researchers additionally discovered that the 130-tonne stone, which was positioned horizontally on high to type a part of the roof, had been formed in order that its floor rises within the centre and declines in the direction of the perimeters. This distributes drive in an analogous solution to an arch, bettering the roof’s energy, says García Sanjuán. “To one of the best of our information, that is the primary time that the precept of the arch has been documented in human historical past.”
Menga – whose objective is unknown – can be aligned to provide distinct patterns of mild within the inside throughout the summer time solstice and has stones which might be protected against water harm by a number of layers of rigorously overwhelmed clay, which provides to proof supporting the builders’ information round structure and engineering.
“They knew about geology and the properties of the rocks they have been utilizing,” says García Sanjuán. “While you put all this collectively – you realize, engineering, physics, geology, geometry, astronomy – it’s one thing we will name science.”
There are Neolithic constructions in France that rival Menga in dimension, however how they have been constructed is much less properly understood, says García Sanjuán. “Because it stands at the moment, Menga is exclusive in Iberia and in western Europe.”
“What’s stunning about that is the extent of sophistication,” says Susan Greaney on the College of Exeter, UK. “The architectural understanding of how the load distribution works, I’ve not seen that wherever else earlier than.” However she provides that that is maybe much less an illustration of an understanding of science than of structure and engineering.
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