by Katinka Soetens

When i visited the Dolmen of Antequera for the first time last year, my jaw dropped. It is an experience i’d like to share with you about, as I was lituarly caught gasping, when seeing the amazing alignment of this ancestral ceremonial site, with the obvious sacred landscape it faces.
I’ve been lucky to visit many ancient megalithic sites over the decades, and always felt into their alignment to the landscape, both in present time and in relation to how the ancestors must have experienced their place within the historical setting of the sites.
Rarely has sacred alignment been as obvious as here.

Apart from the powerful energy of the site, and incredible skill with which the ancestors build this megalithic structure in the late Neolithic, early Copper age (5000 BCE to 2200 BCE), there were various mysterious features that peaked my fascination. These included the unusual alignment to the summer solstice sunrise, rising over the stargazing face with which the dolmen seem to somehow be ‘communicating’.

Now recent archaeological research is bringing up new insight into the relationship i felt existed, and which still resonates, in this very special ancestral site.

Just outside Antequera, a town in Andalusia, you can visit three 5000-year-old dolmens,built by farmers who lived in the fertile Guadalhorce valley.
Menga Dolmen, Viera Dolmen, which are both located just outside the town standing close together on a low hill, while El Romeral Dolmen is a few km away. These three prehistoric burial chambers represent some of the largest and most complete megalithic structures in Europe.

If the Dolmen de Viera was a rather conventional passage grave, then the nearby Dolmen de Menga is anything but. This is one of the largest megalithic structures in Europe, unusually aligned to the Summer Solstice sunrise, and more obviously, to the Sleeping Giantess ‘La Peña’ rising from the valley to dominate the landscape.

Archaeologists are still studying its unique features as there are many unanswered questions, however, diving down the more recent research ‘rabbit hole’, and following the intuitive guidance as a pagan ceremonialist, there are some incredibly exciting elements to this already spectacular site, that I am looking forward to sharing with those of you coming on the meditation retreat more fully.

Viera Dolmen, faces East and the Spring and Autumn Equinox sunrise (like the megalithic Mnajdra Temples in Malta).
It comprises of two different sections. The first is an open corridor including a ‘door’ structure carved from a monolith, and the second is a 21m-long passage section. At the back is a small quadrangular chamber, which is accessed through a small opening.

El Romeral Dolmen, amazing tholos grave, faces South-West, which is very unusual in Iberia, and points to the peak of Comorroro de las Siete Mesas mountain and the source of the life giving river Guadalhorce. It has a 26m long corridor  leading into a chamber at the end with a false dome. Standing in the chamber, as your eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, look to the wall to the right of the smaller chamber opening. You can see the ‘projection’ of the light from the entrance focused by the long corridor. During the afternoon around the winter solstice the sun shines directly on this back wall.

The Menga Dolmen was a ceremonial structure, famous for its significant geographical location On the summer solstice, the morning sun shines over the peak of the Peña de los Enamorados and straight along the dolmen’s entrance corridor. This very exact positioning would have held mystical importance for the prehistoric ancestors who built the dolmen thousands of years ago. The alignment is 045 degrees North-East.
(This is unusual, as 95% of dolmens align to the South-East.)
We will discover the possible hidden, as well as obvious reasons for this alignment.

The Dolmen de Menga has a female connection in its name, as it is suggested that it derives from the latin Cova Domenica meaning ‘cave of the lady’. It is one of the largest megalithic structures in Europe. (here comes the structural information, skip if not interested )

The wide entrance beneath a huge capstone leads into a very large chamber extending for 25m into the mound. The walls of the chamber are built from 32 massive monoliths, and roofed over with 5 even larger blocks – one weighing more than 150 tons. The wide span of the chamber roof required the builders to add 3 central pillars to support the huge slabs.

Detailed study of the construction of the mound and chamber has revealed that remarkably sophisticated engineering skills were used in its construction. Rather than build the chamber directly on the hill top, the builders instead shaped the bedrock there to form an internal core around which the huge stones were placed. The surrounding stone blocks sit in deep foundation sockets also cut into the bedrock, and these side slabs were shaped and angled inwards to fit closely together and support each other. Finally the huge roof stones were placed on top of the side walls, with their enormous weight ‘locking’ the whole structure together. Once all the stones were in position, the inner bedrock core was quarried away to reveal the stone lined chamber within. A testament to the builders skills and design is that this monument is still standing after 5000 years in an area that is prone to earthquakes.

As impressive as the construction of the Dolmen de Menga is, it is when standing within the chamber and looking out through the entrance that the site opens up a whole new level of significance. This view reveals that the axis of the burial chamber is oriented towards the stargazing face of the isolated mountainous peak of La Peña, which stands on the skyline to the north east.

Menga is thus likely to have originally been conceived to refer to a landform that its builders deemed so important, that it would outweigh a more typical solar orientation for the monument.

Over the last 15 years, Archaeology has consistently emphasised the importance of La Peña’s northern sector in the configuration of the Antequera landscape. The exact orientation of the Menga burial chamber points to the ‘chin’ of the hill, which just happens to be the location of the Abrigo Matacabras rock shelter. It is also worth noting that the rock shelter is located in the ‘neck’ area below the chin of the Sleeping Giant – roughly where the voice box is found in a human.

This cave contains rock art (petroglyphs) and was a sanctuary whose schematic motifs were painted before c. 3800 BCE: that is, before Menga was built and which was likely the specific ‘target’ of Menga’s orientation.

Archaeo-acoustic experiments at the Matacabra rock shelter have shown that the location has good acoustic properties, not unlike a Greek or Roman amphitheatre. The concave cliff face focuses sound onto a small area enclosed by large boulders located below the rock face.
The strongest reverberations were in the male baritone frequency range, so the sound of any one speaking or chanting within the rock shelter would be heard strongly in the area enclosed by boulders.

Here, other archaeological remains called the Piedras Blancas site, has been discovered immediately below Matacabras, with it’s megalithic tomb that also pre-dates the Menga dolmen. (García Sanjuán et al. Reference García Sanjuán 2015)
The placement of this site points to this location being an important ‘Neolithic open air sanctuary’, and an ancestral sacred site for the ancestors of those who later built the Dolmen de Menga.

Abrigo Matacabras rock shelter (triangular shape on lower slope) above the Piedras Blancas site. (Pic by university of Seville).

Piedras Blancas megalithic ancestral grave tomb.

Ancestors and memory

If one views memory as central to the cultural behaviour of human communities, one might reasonably suggest that an ethnography of mnemonic practices are an important and fertile direction for archaeologists to endeavour in the future.

Memory is, in fact, central to understanding human cultural and social behaviour, and archaeology is waking up to this.

To invoke the past in the present became inherent within a set of religious ideologies that, from the Neolithic onwards, placed great emphasis on ancestors. Ancestors are our memory keepers.
Memory is not just something of the past, but something practiced in the present when we connect to the ancestors.

To that purpose, place is crucial in understanding ancestral memory. It has been overlooked, because memory was linked with time, and place was diminished to description.

However, having been in places is a fundamental resource for remembering our being in the world.

This is why pilgrimage is and has always been important, and also why a mythical significance is given to visiting certain places within every spiritual path and religious orientation. Places that include water sources and mountain peaks, such as in found within the alignments of the Antequera dolmens.

There is much to say about the significance of water in relation to the Menga Dolmen as well, but this will have to wait for the in-situ visit during the Andalusian meditation retreat 

Suffice it to say that the ancestors who build the amazing ceremonial megalithic structures facing their ancestral sacred mountain Goddess, knew something of how to retrieve and keep alive ancient memory, in a way that we can still connect to today, by visiting these ancestral sites.

These places serve as reference points and triggering mechanisms for the formation of memories in the present, and connect us deeply to the memories held by our ancestral (and spiritual) lineages.

What wisdom will they hold or awaken for you?.

Are you feeling the call of the ancestors to Andalusia?
I look forward to exploring these amazing megalithic sites with you.

Come into presence with yourself and set your intentions for the new year in a setting filled with beauty, peace, delight and inspiration.

To go on retreat is not an indulgence, it is instead an act of determination and self-love.

How do we stay true to the intentions of our heart?

It can be helpful to lean into the gifts of the ancestors, and to come home to a peace within ourselves, to guide our way into the future.

The ANDALUSIAN WINTER RETREAT is the perfect retreat for recalibrating and recharging.

Let the daily meditations prepare you like never before, for the visits to sacred and historical sites, and for the rituals and ceremonies of release and gratitude, of opening to receive and offering up, of intention and celebration, and of finding your inner peace, pleasure and clarity.

To Megaliths and Meditation, Palaces and Pleasure, Rest and Relaxation.