Free Republic

Until now, experts wondered how it was possible that in the middle of the Neolithic period, more than a thousand years before the first pyramids of Egypt were built, these enormous stones could be moved and placed with millimetric precision, orienting them towards the sunrise for astronomical purposes. The 32 stones that make it up weigh about 1,140 tons. Of these, the largest — and the one that covers the back of the chamber — weighs 150 tons. This is the largest slab that was moved during the megalithic phenomenon in the Iberian Peninsula and the second-largest in Europe.

According to a Phys.org report, a team of archaeologists, historians, geologists, and physicists led by José Antonio Lozano Rodríguez of the Canary Islands Oceanographic Center and the University of Alcalá examined the Menga dolmen, a megalithic monument built in what is now southern Spain some 6,000 years ago, to learn more about how it was constructed. The structure consists of stone walls topped with a stone ceiling supported by stone pillars. Some of these stones weigh more than 160 tons. The researchers suggest that the stones were quarried about one-half mile away and transported to the site on sledges dragged...