Ses Roques Llises

Latitude:
39° 54' 1.07 N
Longitude:
4° 6' 55.44 E
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Ses Roques Llises

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Whoop_John Jul 6, 2013

The name of this site is definitely Ses Roques Llises and not Lisses. Sounds something like Lyeeses, although English has no exact similar double ll sound.

I visited with a Menorcan friend who told me the name simply means the sliced and squared rocks. I was told it is a word sometimes used to describe the limestone blocks quarried at the Ciutadella end of the island. I suppose the description given to Jane, smooth flat rocks, also applies.

This is one of nine similar holed tombs. One is in Mallorca, one in Formentera and famously four in Menorca. There have been found a further three in recent years, one in Mallorca and two in Menorca.

The tomb is much earlier than the Talayotic culture which built the sanctuary of Sa Comerma de Sa Garita which sits in the same field. The holed tomb dates from the earliest settlements, probably about 2000 BC.

Ses Roques Llises

Moth
Moth Jul 30, 2007

Approximate long/lat coordinates only, as we were taken (in the end) to the site & Na Comerma by someone who knew where they were!

Access: A walk of a few hundred metres after parking in a ‘back entrance’ to Torre d’en Gaumes a few hundred metres south of the main entrance.

For road directions to here, see Torre d’en Gaumes.

From there, we walked a few metres south down the lane (away from Torre d’en Gaumes). We went through the first gate on the left (east side of the lane). I’m afraid this is where it gets difficult!

From the gate we headed a few hundred yards diagonally right – roughly SSE, and amongst the dry stone walls & scrubby bushes, we found the tomb.

Visited 3 June 2005
A little beauty (actually, not that little!) this is one of the very few more ‘standard’ megalithic tombs on Menorca (only 4, I think I read somewhere!)

It’s the only one we saw, but one of the others is pretty near Torre Llisa Vell. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find it.

Ses Roques Llises

Jane
Jane Jul 30, 2007

Ses Roques Lisses, which means ‘the smooth flat rocks’, is an open chamber formed by huge flat slabs of limestone, making roughly a double square 2ms x4ms. In common with the navetas and other Mediterranean sites, the entry stone has a doorway hole cut into it, just big enough for someone to squeeze through.

The slabs sit on their own platform of rubble kept in by a wall. It was once covered entirely with stones, like a cairn, I suppose.

We would NEVER have found this without expert help from the archaeology student/ticket collector at Torre d’en Gaumes who took us straight to it, clambering over stone walls and across a least two paddocks. She was thrilled to have met people like her with so much enthusiasm for the really old stuff – for Ses Roques Lisses predates the taulas and poblats by many, many centuries.

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