They are found in numerous forests in northern Germany:accumulations of huge boulders. Sometimes circular, sometimes oblong, not always with a capstone. Sometimes they are surrounded by a mound of earth - sometimes half buried under sand, moss and leaves. The boulder groups have survived for thousands of years and bear witness to a Neolithic culture in the north - around 3,000 years before Christ.
Hune Tombs:Tombs or Mystical Places?
What is it about these stone settings? The popular name "Hunebedden" or Low German "Hunebedden" ("giant beds") refers to objects of a primeval death cult:the deceased could have found a last home between the gigantic stones.
But researchers have rarely found bone remains in the facilities - and if ever, then never a whole skeleton. That's why scientists today prefer to speak neutrally of dolmens (that's Breton for "stone table" and is used internationally as a technical term) or megalithic complexes (from Greek "mega":large, "lithos":stone).
"Apparently people in the 4th millennium BC were in a stressful situation:perhaps it was the need to mark territories with such large stone complexes, which defined the landscape, and to distinguish oneself from other clans," speculates Claus von Carnap-Bornheim from the archaeologist State Museum Schloss Gottorf. "Perhaps they also felt an obligation to the gods."
Muscle power and the laws of physics
In any case, setting up the giant stones weighing several tons was an enormous joint effort. The large stone complexes were created during the heyday of the so-called funnel beaker culture:Stone Age man had just settled down, had started farming and animal husbandry, and the wheel had just been invented.
Without the use of simple laws of physics, moving the gigantic stones would have been unthinkable. Our ancestors pulled the boulders with ropes and heaved them onto tree trunks, which served as rails and rollers. They used a combination of muscle power and leverage to stand upright. The capstones could be transported up a ramp that had been heaped up.
Hune grave is not equal to burial mound
Large dolmens, polygonal dolmens, ancient dolmens, passage graves:Scientists have categorized the systems according to recurring models. However, conceptual confusion sometimes prevails even in official maps - it is not uncommon for the burial mounds to be confused with the burial mounds found throughout Central Europe that date from the Bronze or Iron Age. However, burial mounds consist exclusively of earth material.
Today's traces of ancient cultures
According to Claus von Carnap-Bornheim, around 3500 B.C. a megalithic complex was erected in Schleswig-Holstein every month. The majority of the structures built in southern Scandinavia and the North German Plain - from the Vistula to the eastern Netherlands - were built in the Middle Neolithic between 3500 and 2800 BC.
The mighty boulders of the megalithic tombs have survived for thousands of years.Almost 900 megalithic complexes can still be found in Germany, a fraction of the former stock. Some of the stones form church walls today, numerous boulders disappeared with the onset of industrialization in port and road construction. Even where they got in the way of cultivating the fields, the stones had to go. A complete megalith complex near Quitzerow (Demmin district) was removed in 1924/25 in order to erect a war memorial from the stones. It is estimated that only a sixth of the Neolithic buildings are more or less preserved.
Yet there are signs of our ancestors to be found all over the north. The "road of megalithic culture", which winds 330 kilometers through western Lower Saxony, connects 70 such megalithic tombs between Osnabrück and Oldenburg alone.
Large stone tombs in the district of Lüneburg
An impressive example are the "Seven Stone Houses" near Fallingbostel in the Lüneburg Heath. People who introduced the farming system to the north German lowlands erected these five megalithic tombs around 3000 BC. They are among the most visited archaeological monuments in northern Germany. Other well-known stone graves in the district of Lüneburg can be found in the Schieringer Forest near Barskamp, on the Strietberg or in the Totenstatt near Oldendorf/Luhe. The Archaeological Museum in Oldendorf/Luhe provides information about the six burial sites that are located along a circular hiking trail.