The Dolmen of Menga is a megalithic burial mound called a tumulus, a long barrow form of dolmen, dating from the 3750-3650 BCE approx. It is near Antequera, Málaga, Spain. It is one of the largest known ancient megalithic structures in Europe. It is long, wide and high, and was built with thirty-two megaliths, the largest weighing about. A very rare singularity, in megalithic buildings, is the presence of a deep and narrow well in the bottom of the chamber. It presents in the first orthostat of the corridor a series of anthropomorphic engravings in the form of a cross as well as a star. The structure of the dolmen is covered with a tumulus of 50 m in diameter. After completion of the chamber and the path leading into the center, the stone structure was covered with soil and built up into the hill that can be seen today. When the grave was opened and examined in the 19th century, archaeologists found the skeletons of several hundred people inside. The dolmen sits from the Dolmen de Viera and about from another subterranean structure known as Tholos de El Romeral. In 2016, the dolmens of Menga, Viera, and El Romeral were all inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name "Antequera Dolmens Site".
Abrigo de Matacabras
The Abrigo of Matacabras, located at the foot of the northwest face of the Peña de los Enamorados, is closely linked with the Dolmen of Menga whose central axis points directly to it. The tomb is orientated to the northeast, north of the sunrise on the summer solstice, and is the only known tomb so oriented in Europe in this cultural context. In 2018, the ATLASresearch group from the University of Seville published a study of the high resolution analysis of Abrigo de Matacabras's schematic style cave paintings. The small cave has both visual and symbolic links to the Menga dolmen, establishing landscape relationships that are possibly unique in European prehistory. The results confirmed the Neolithic chronology of the cave “probably, at least, at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC... and its importance as a place of reference for the Neolithic population of the region...”
