Dutch Dolmens, Skeletal Remains of Burial Mounds. History and Excavation. Drenthe, Netherlands.

#hunebedden #DutchDolmens #DrentheDolmens

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Drenthe is a province of stunning beauty with sanddunes, woods, moors, picturesque villages, And prehistoric monuments.

It's the province with almost all of the Dolmens, situated in the north east of the Netherlands.
In a radius of 30 kilometers there are 52 dolmens scattered throughout the beautiful landscape.

These Dolmens are the 5400 year old granite skeletal remains of Megalithic monuments predating Skara Brae, Loughcrew, Bryn Celli Ddu, Wayland's Smithy and maybe even predating Newgrange.

To start; it’s very surprising to encounter these megalithic monuments with stones weighing up to 20 tonnes in such a flat and sandy country as the Netherlands.

Along the “Hondsrug” in the Northern Dutch provinces of Drenthe and Groningen lie 54 remains of passage graves.
The havelterberg is a part of this area. I think it’s funny to mention that Hondsrug is literally translated to; Dogs Back.

The Hondsrug was formed during the Penultimate Glacial Period, which began approximately 194,000 years ago, and ended around 135,000 years ago.

In the area of the Havelterberg the cover sand doesn’t cover everywhere as even as it has in other places.

Perhaps the wind had a different effect due to the existing landscape or the way the ice had moved.
Or perhaps there simply was less sand available.
But somehow this had formed dunes and ridges in the area.

And it is precisely these relief like parts of the landscape that later attracted the prehistoric settlers.

Amateur archaeologist Hendrik Voerman lived in the area of the havelterberg and in the 1930’s he made a couple of very interesting finds.

Among these finds was an encampment of reindeer hunters, set up around 12.000 BCE.

The Swifterbant culture was a sub-neolithic culture in the Netherlands dated between 5300 BCE and 3400 BCE.

The term sub-neolithic refers to people that were in contact with neolithic farmers,
but who remained attached to their traditional hunter-gatherer practices.

They did incorporate elements of the neolithic farmers into their lives, such as pottery.

The Dutch dolmens all stem from the Western group of the funnel beaker culture, which were the descendants of the Swifterbant culture.

They occupied the North European plain between Current Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Hamburg in Germany between 3400 and 2850 BCE.

We do need to remember that the stones that were used to build these dolmens are classified as glacial erratics
and the dolmens that we see today are simply the skeletal remains of what they once used to be.

Their magnitude can be quickly overlooked since their mounds have been destroyed.

In the Netherlands dolmens are known as “Hunebedden”, which means “Giants beds”.

There used to be between 80 and 100 dolmens in the Netherlands.
76 locations are known today, of those 53 are intact, 1 is severely damaged and 18 have been destroyed during the middle ages.

D53 is the second largest dolmen in the Netherlands, it was built between 3400 BCE and 3100 BCE.

The Dolmens of Havelte during the occupation by the Germans in WW2.

On the Orders of the Germans in the Second world war D53 was demolished for the construction of an airstrip that was part of a constructed airfield.

Professor Van Giffen made arrangements with the German air force to not actually destroy the stones of Dolmen D53.

As a result of his plea, the stones of the dolmen were then buried in a hole of 7 meters deep.

And D54 was buried under a layer of sand, so that it could not serve as a landmark for the allied forces.

Most of the footage is made by us in this video.

Drone footage:
   • De Wijk - Drenthe  
   • Drenthe, The Netherlands | 4K drone f...  
   • hunebedden in havelte  
   • Drenthe van boven  

Sources:

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/D53_(hu...)
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/D54_(hu...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnelb...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swifter...
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunebed....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witte_W...
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_...

A GEOGRAPHICALLY REFERENCED 14C DATABASE FOR THE MESOLITHIC
AND THE EARLY PHASE OF THE SWIFTERBANT CULTURE
IN THE NORTHERN NETHERLANDS

RAAP-RAPPORT 2021
Gemeente Westerveld
Een archeologische verwachtingsen
beleidsadvieskaart

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