WH Travellers who have visited or are planning a visit to the Antequera Dolmen might be interested in a couple of “mysteries” concerning what they saw/will see which haven’t as yet been raised in any review and, in one case, isn’t even mentioned in the Nomination file! They arose during our visit in May 18 and have been supplemented by a degree of extra investigation on my part since our return.

As you climb from the visitor centre up to the Viera Dolmen you will pass a modern plaza titled the “Centro Solar de Michael Hoskin”. It contains a sun dial and a bust of said man. Born in 1930, he is an eminent British Archaeo-Astronomer, “one of the pioneers and driving forces behind Archaeo-astronomy” who has spent many years studying prehistoric sites in Europe/the Mediterranean area with reference to their astronomical orientation.  This article gives an impression of the “esteem” in which he is held in Antequera and the extent to which he is credited with identifying the factors which enabled its dolmens to gain WHS status. As a point of trivia - he also has a “Minor Planet” named after him - “12223 Hoskin”! 

The Nomination File states - “one should note - according to studies conducted by Dr. Michael Hoskin, professor emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University and one of the pioneers and driving forces of Archaeoastronomy - that over 95% of the dolmens in Europe and North Africa are orientated to the sunrise, a pattern which in the case of the Antequeran megaliths is followed only in the case of the Viera dolmen. The exceptional quality of the Antequera dolmens is that two of them - Menga and El Romeral - have an exceptional, if not anomalous, orientation.” Their “exceptionality”, according to Hoskin, is that they have a “terrestrial” rather than an “astronomical” orientation i.e Menga faces the anthropomorphic mountain of Pena de los Enamorados and El Romeral faces the highest point of El Torcal.

Now, one might be a bit surprised that it required a Professor Emeritus to point this out - you just have to stand in the Menga Dolmen entrance to see that it faces the Pena (Photo)! An additional aspect of El Romeral is that it is apparently unique in not facing the rising sun at all - instead it faces West to the mountains. But I guess it needs a lot of knowledge about the domain and a lot of calculations to establish that there was no specific “Astronomic alignment” and to document the differences from normal in such matters. Prof Hoskin’s main book (“Tombs, Temples and Their Orientations – A new perspective on Mediterranean Pre-history”) is printed in its entirety in the Nomination File even though Antequera gets only 5 paragraphs in a book of 220 pages (not counting appendices)! As well as simply “facing” the Pena it is believed that the Dolmen’s centre was directed towards a particular cleft now called “Abrigo de Matacabras” where there are cave paintings.

"Mystery 1". But that isn’t the end of the “orientation story” for Menga. There are a lot of misinformed claims about this on the Web – Solstices and Dolmens seem to attract a certain “kind” of interest which isn’t always concerned with accuracy! So – to pick just one site – it says “The entrance passage of Menga is 045 degrees north-east, perfectly facing the Peña de los Enamorados, making this one of the only Dolmens in Europe which faces a natural landmark.. This particular positioning is also significant because during the summer solstice, the sun shines directly above the peak of Peña de los Enamorados and bathes the Menga Dolmen's entrance passage in morning sunlight. It is believed that this would have held mystical importance for the tribes that originally built these structures.”  Incorrect – the writer obviously hasn’t been paying attention or has let her enthusiasm for the subject run away with her!

In fact, on the day of the solstice, the sun doesn’t rise directly behind the Pena and/or shine into the very centre of the Menga Dolmen but it DOES rise some degrees to the south and it DOES shine into a part of the Dolmen! The Nomination file has a nice picture of it doing so on Page 81 - “Image 64. View of La Peña from inside Menga dolmen illuminated by the sun of the 2007 summer solstice. Photograph: Javier Pérez González”. You can clearly see that the sun is rising SOUTH of the Pena but what DOES happen is that it is shining along one wall of the Menga Dolmen. Now Dr Hoskin didn’t mention this and neither did the Nomination File. Is it by pure chance or were the builders trying both to orientate towards the Pena AND provide for “something special” on solstice day? This article (which requires free registration to read in full), published in 2014, states that “the orientation of Menga, traditionally (has been) set to a nearby geographical feature but (is) also oriented to a certain chamber lighting during the summer solstice”. Furthermore, the article claims that the location of the stones on the left hand side on which the sun shines at the solstice is more carefully and regularly determined than the right hand side in order to achieve this effect amd contains nice drawings of how this happens! Very “clever” of those Neolithics -  they wanted their dolmen to point at the Pena but they also wanted the light to shine in on the solstice as with other monuments of their culture. As the article shows, with careful design it was (would have been??) possible to achieve this ……. Are you convinced??? The Nomination File makes no mention whatsoever of these theories although the article is cited in the bibliography as the “most recent but one” article/book written on the Dolmen. 

"Mystery 2" - At the far end of the passage inside the Menga dolmen is a shaft which “is almost perfectly circular with a diameter of 1.5 m, to a depth of 20 m, reaching the level of the water table” (Nom File). It is covered with a grill of course! A curious aspect about it is that it received absolutely NO mention in the Video which is presented in the visitor centre, despite the fact that this included a very detailed demonstration, using CGI, of the techniques used to build the structure. Why then was the shaft's construction not shown?  It turns out that it was only discovered in 2005 - which explains the rather “clunky” CGI since the video predated the discovery! Its dating and reason for construction are still matters of debate. We were told by one of the site guides that, among the infill, were Roman artefacts which indicated that the hole predated or was contemporary with that period. But why would Romans have dug it? The Nomination File however raises another possibility from a 19th C report - that it was dug during an excavation and refilled and forgotten. Despite this it concludes that “the evidence available compels us to consider the possibility that it is a prehistoric phenomenon, which would make it one of a kind, as in the whole of Europe there is no known megalithic monument with a well of these characteristics in its interior. This reinforces the claim that the design and architectonic concept of Menga are exceptional.” How likely that is or whether the claim was just trying further to “big up” the site to help its nomination – who knows? Another “mystery” about this interesting site!