The mystery of the paintings
A Pedra da Lebre is the beautiful name of a dolmen that has been very altered but has interesting surprises. At the end of the 1990s, remains of black and red prehistoric paint were discovered on four of its stones, right in the areas that were not exposed to the open air, but underground, protected by sediment. Several pigment samples were analysed and one of them provided one of the oldest dates of Galician megalithism, between 5300 and 4700 BC. Archaeologists think that it could be a deviation derived either from problems in obtaining the sample or from possible contamination, which would give a totally wrong date.
Another suggestive hypothesis that has been suggested lately is that the painting would have been made on an earlier monument, of the pedrafite (menhir) or stele type, which could have been reused in the construction of the dolmen much later. This could explain, at least in part, the presence of such ancient dates.
Currently there are no remains of the earth mound, but most of the slabs of the dolmen remain in their original location, which allows us to deduce the existence of a chamber of seven or eight stones and a corridor of which a single stone seems to be preserved.
