SPM24 Tour Dolmens of Antequera (Unesco world heritage site)

Our students after a short video to present the historical site and understand why and how it was built, have the chance to visit 3 different places. The Dolmens, dating back approximately 6,000 years, are of great historical value and a Unesco world heritage site. The Antequera Dolmens Site consists of three cultural monuments: the dolmens of Menga and Viera and the tholos of El Romeral. It is one of the oldest and most original forms of landscape monumentalising using the integration of megalithic architecture and nature that is known in worldwide Prehistory, a great ritual hub whose origin dates back to the first half of the 4th millennium BC. The megalithic structures look like a natural landscape (buried under mounds of earth) oriented towards two natural monuments: La Peñaand El Torcal.
The megaliths are characterised by the use of large blocks of stone that form chambers and spaces covered by lintel roofs (Mengaand Viera) or corbelled roofs (El Romeral). The three structures conserve all their constitutive elements and their unitary character. 

The communities who constructed these megaliths expressed their symbolic link with earthly elements and the cosmos through the different alignments that they established with the axes of their corridors. It is one of the most important cultural phenomena in human history. Thus, in many regions around the world, it is common to find large isolated standing stones known as menhirs, or grouped in alignments, or in enclosures known as cromlechs. In Granada, they form funerary chambers called dolmens. The Neolithic was a cultural period that began on the Iberian Peninsula some 7,500 years ago and involved a complex transition towards new ways of life characterised by an economy based on agriculture and livestock. It is in this context that megalithism emerged as a monumental manifestation of new social relationships based on kinship. Megalithic monuments were the first structures that dared to impose themselves on the natural surroundings in order to create a cultural landscape. Since the last centuries of the Il millennium BC, the intensity of funerary use of megalithic tombs decayed, which does not mean that these sites were forgotten. On the contrary, subsequent reuses occurred not only during the so-called Late Bronze Age, but also in historical times. The deposition of human skeletal remains and grave goods during the Iron Age, Roman, Visigothic and even Islamic times evidences that megalithic monuments remained as sacred places, probably connected to the memory of local communities. 

Understanding the fantastic history of the Dolmens, the culture, the society and strong leadership of that time combined with deep-rooted religious commitment of the people. The students read, watch about and listen to historical facts while physically experiencing the atmosphere of the Unesco site enhancing their learning and understanding. The endurance of megalithic monuments in the collective memory through millennia invites us to think about human cultural variability and its complex manifestations.