Dolmen 113

Spain has a great many megalithic tombs, and the Atlas's Spanish dolmens run from Andalusia in the south to Galicia in the north-west. The finest are at Antequera in Andalusia, where the Dolmen of Menga, dated to about 3750 to 3650 BCE, is among the largest ancient megalithic structures in Europe. It is 27.5 metres long, 6 metres wide and 3.5 metres high, built with thirty-two megaliths, the largest weighing about 180 tonnes. After the chamber was finished it was covered with soil and built up into the hill seen today; when it was opened in the nineteenth century archaeologists found the skeletons of several hundred people. The Dolmen of Viera stands 70 metres away, and the tholos of El Romeral lies about 4 kilometres off; the three were inscribed as the Antequera Dolmens Site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 2016. The full article, “Dolmens of Andalusia, Extremadura and Galicia”, follows below under About this kind of monument.

Typological estimate, not a date for this site: monuments of this kind in this region are normally dated 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE. The range comes from what is known about dolmen monuments in Spain; nothing measured on this site itself is on record, so it may be younger or older than the range suggests.

The range rests on this regional background (source: the Wikipedia article “Dolmen”): Most dolmens date from the Late Neolithic period (4000-3000 BCE); the Dolmen of Menga in Andalusia dates to about 3750-3650 BCE.