Langenrehm

The site has a flat, round hill bank. In it are the remains of the northwest-southeast oriented burial chamber. In situ are still the northwestern endstone and five support stones of the northeastern long side, of which the middle one, however, is slightly shifted inwards, as an overturned capstone rests on it. The mighty capstone has some drill holes.

The tomb is located about 90m west of the radio tower Langenrehm under a row of trees at the edge of a field. Coming from Emsen, drive north on the Emsener Dorfstrasse in the direction of Langenrehm. After about 1.5 km you reach a crossroads, here you turn right into the street Am Hamboken. Follow this road for about 280 m, before turning left onto the street Diekkoppel into a residential area. Here you park the car and follow the road to the north on foot. After about 110m the road ends, a dirt road leads then between the houses and a paddock around a field directly to the grave.

Visited May 2019

taken from the on-site information board:

Megalithic tomb from the Neolithic Emsen-Langenrehm

Around 5,500 years ago – and thus long before the construction of the pyramids – the custom was spreading among the people of northern Germany to bury the dead in megalithic tombs. These sites were used repeatedly and over a longer period of time as a tomb.

The Hohe Stein (High Stone) at Langenrehm is a so-called passage grave: it had on one side an access, through which you got into the burial chamber originally covered with a mound. The grave was destroyed long ago by stone seekers, who smashed the large boulders and processed into building material. The small, long oval depressions that run in two rows over the many tonne capstone are typical signs that someone had tried to break this boulder with iron wedges.

Excavations in 1931 and 1934 were used to recover some finds from the grave. These are stone utensils and tomb ceramics from around 3200 BC.

For thousands of years, megalithic tombs were the only permanently visible structures in the landscape and therefore always had a great effect on people.

Around 2000 BC the Hohe Stein was used a second time by people who also buried their relatives here. Finally, between 500 BC and Christ’s birth the deceased were buried a third time in the mound that covered the burial chamber.