5,400-year-old tomb discovered in Spain perfectly captures the summer solstice

Archaeologists have found a 5,400-year-old megalithic tomb close to a distinguished lone mountain in southern Spain, suggesting the height could have been significant to prehistoric folks there.

The world, within the countryside close to town of Antequera, is famend for its megaliths — prehistoric monuments produced from giant stones — and the newly discovered tomb appears to unravel one of many mysteries of their alignment.

The tomb was designed to funnel gentle from the rising midsummer solar right into a chamber deep inside — very like the up to date megalithic tomb constructed greater than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away at Newgrange in Eire, suggesting each locations shared related beliefs concerning the afterlife greater than 5,000 years in the past.

“Newgrange is way larger and extra advanced than the tomb we’ve got found [in Spain], however they’ve one thing in frequent — the curiosity of the builders to make use of daylight at a selected time of the yr, to provide a symbolic — probably magic — impact,” Leonardo García Sanjuán (opens in new tab), an archaeologist on the College of Seville, informed Stay Science.