Marienborn 1 Chambered Tomb View all content for Marienborn 1

taken from the information board: Archaeological-historical hiking trail Marienborn (8) Opfersteine Megalithic tomb, around 3300-2900 BC Mid-19th century Forestry master Ernst Schmidt and local historian Gustav Maas from Altenhausen discovered these three large stone blocks lying in a row. Probably due to the two natural and connected by a channel depressions on a stone, the site was named "Opferaltar" (sacrificial altar) or "Opfersteine" (sacrificial stones). Only in 1921, the stones were recognized as capstones of a megalithic tomb. Unlike the northern megalithic tombs, the burial chamber has been sunk into the ground so that the capstones are at surface level. Perhaps these were formerly covered by a mound and not visible. The building material used was the tuber quartzite (also known as lignite or tertiary quartzite) which occurs in the region. Three capstones and the bearing surface of a wall stone are visible. The main distribution area of ??sunken megalithic or chamber tomb lies in the Hessian-Westphalian area (gallery graves) up to the Paris basin (Allées couvertées). From the Middle Elbe-Saale area and the Lower Saxon region only a few sunken chamber tombs are known, which were generally much smaller (5-10 m long). Here, these megalithic tombs are associated with the Walternienburg-Bernburg culture (around 3300-2900 BC), while the non-sunken or low-set, consisting of erratic blocks, nordic megalithic tombs of the Haldensleber Forst and the Altmark region were often built much earlier (from about 3600 BC). Despite the lack of research to date, it can be assumed that the "Opfersteine" were a megalithic burial chamber for a village or relatives group.

Posted by Nucleus 28th April 2019ce

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