Along the dolmens of Drenthe
Assen, Schoonloo, Rolde
In the Middle Stone Age, around 4400 BC, a people we now call the Funnel Beaker people lived in Drenthe. We named this people after the shape of the most common earthenware cup found in their tombs. They made these tombs under monuments of heavy boulders: the dolmens. The boulders (megaliths), which sometimes weigh up to 40 tonnes, were brought to our country by huge glaciers during the Ice Age, about 150,000 years ago. Originally, they came from Finland and Sweden. The largest boulders were made into the frame, the flatter stones formed the roof and keystones were placed at the ends. How the people of the Funnel Beaker people managed to get the stones off the ground cannot be determined with certainty. At the Hunebed Centre in Borger, you can see that with a ramp of earth, and tree trunks to roll over, this must have been possible. In the Middle Ages, church leaders saw the hunebeds as works of the devil and obstacles from a pagan past. Consequently, they did not spare the megalithic tombs. Often the dolmens were taken apart and the stones used as foundations for newly built churches. In later centuries, several of the used stones were found and sometimes even replaced. In the Netherlands, 54 hunebeds can still be found in various states of being. None is complete any more. In Groningen you will find G1 and G2 and in Drenthe D1 to D54. D33 has been demolished and after investigation, D48 turned out not to be a hunebed after all. The mapping of these hunebeds was done in the early 20th century by Professor Doctor Albert van Giffen (1884-1973), commissioned by the Dutch government. Van Giffen was able to extensively survey the extant hunebeds and their burial vaults and published his report in 1925. Apart from the funnel cups, bottles, bowls and buckets were also found in the tombs. These finds have given us many insights into how people lived and dealt with the dead at that time. The objects and human remains found in the burial vaults under the hunebeds, by different researchers, in different periods, are scattered around various museums. Many of the objects found by Professor Van Giffen are included in the collection of the Drents Museum in Assen. In the years between 1960 and 1970, researcher Dr Jan Albert Bakker of the University of Amsterdam particularly investigated the contents of several of the burial chambers and the artefacts (objects) found there. These objects were loaned by the University of Amsterdam to the Hunebedcentrum in Borger. English researchers William Lukis and Henry Dryden conducted research in 1878, on their own initiative. They did not trust the approach of the Governor in charge, Gregory of Drenthe, in his research and restoration of hunebeds, and travelled to the Netherlands. Unfortunately, the finds they made they took with them to England and are on display at the British Museum in London. There were, over the centuries, more researchers with a keen interest in the dolmens. The finds of the first researchers were often not recovered. As with Johannes van Lier who carried out the first documented research, around 1756, probably on his own initiative. And Titia Brongersma, a poet and amateur archaeologist, who in 1685, also on her own intitiative, investigated a piece of the burial vault of D27. Danish archaeologist Erik Petersen was commissioned by the Nationalmuseet in Denmark to investigate the building techniques and cultural context in 1987. Consequently, no soil finds were made or taken away during his research. This was also no longer allowed at that time. A large number of hunebeds were restored by Albert van Giffen as a result of the research. With varying degrees of success, by the way; some say that in some cases Professor Van Giffen relied too little on the facts and too much on his own guesswork. Restoring hunebeds has always been controversial. The original situtation cannot usually be determined with certainty, as evidenced by the many different research findings. However, scholars have agreed on one thing. Digging out the burial vaults is too great an attack on the dolmens, and is unlikely to lead to many more new insights, so it will not happen again. This Premium cycle route was compiled by our editor: Désirée van Uffelen.
| Directions | Distance | Total distance | |
|
Start: Tienmaatsweg , 9444 TR Aa en Hunze | 57.2 KM | |
|
From
87
to
83
|
2470 M | 2.5 KM | |
| Head north on Tienmaatsweg | 884 M | ||
| Turn right | 436 M | ||
| Turn left | 1.2 KM | ||
| You are now at section 83 | 0 M | ||
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From
83
to
80
|
2241 M | 2.2 KM | |
| Head northwest | 14 M | ||
| Turn left onto Oostereind | 2 KM | ||
| Make a slight right | 44 M | ||
| Turn left | 15 M | ||
| Turn left | 38 M | ||
| Turn right onto Oostereind | 74 M | ||
| Make a slight left onto Hoofdstraat | 106 M | ||
| You are now at section 80 | 0 M | ||
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From
80
to
81
|
4233 M | 4.2 KM | |
| Head west on Amerweg | 123 M | ||
| Turn right onto De Pol | 221 M | ||
| Turn right to stay on De Pol | 89 M | ||
| Make a slight right | 997 M | ||
| Make a slight right | 508 M | ||
| Turn right onto Vredenheim | 244 M | ||
| Turn left onto Rolderstraat | 2.1 KM | ||
| You are now at section 81 | 0 M | ||
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From
81
to
79
|
3689 M | 3.7 KM | |
| Head west on Klaassteenweg | 1.3 KM | ||
| Turn left onto Holtenweg | 1.1 KM | ||
| Turn right onto De Heetharen | 1.3 KM | ||
| You are now at section 79 | 0 M | ||
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From
79
to
53
|
1476 M | 1.5 KM | |
| Head northeast on Eldersloo | 1.5 KM | ||
| You are now at section 53 | 0 M | ||
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From
53
to
7
|
2377 M | 2.4 KM | |
| Head northwest on Nijlande | 729 M | ||
| Turn left onto Berkersweg | 371 M | ||
| Make a slight left to stay on Berkersweg | 447 M | ||
| Turn left to stay on Berkersweg | 527 M | ||
| Turn right onto Deurze | 303 M | ||
| You are now at section 07 | 0 M | ||
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From
7
to
9
|
2115 M | 2.1 KM | |
| Head west | 141 M | ||
| Turn left | 78 M | ||
| Continue onto Boerkamppad | 668 M | ||
| Turn left onto Boerkampweg | 474 M | ||
| Turn left | 106 M | ||
| Continue onto Uitkamp | 648 M | ||
| You are now at section 09 | 0 M | ||
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From
9
to
10
|
1046 M | 1 KM | |
| Head northwest on Vredeveldseweg | 1 KM | ||
| Turn right onto Buizerdstraat | 14 M | ||
| You are now at section 10 | 0 M | ||
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From
10
to
16
|
3166 M | 3.2 KM | |
| Head north on Buizerdstraat | 277 M | ||
| Turn right onto Steendijk | 10 M | ||
| Turn left onto Wethouder Buningstraat | 59 M | ||
| Turn right onto Wethouder Buningstraat | 99 M | ||
| Turn left to stay on Wethouder Buningstraat | 148 M | ||
| Make a slight right onto Rotonde Rolderhoofdweg | 96 M | ||
| Make a slight right | 32 M | ||
| Continue onto Lonerstraat | 101 M | ||
| Turn left onto Mesdagstraat | 56 M | ||
| Turn right onto Ruysdaelstraat | 345 M | ||
| Continue straight | 231 M | ||
| Continue onto Lonerstraat | 1.7 KM | ||
| You are now at section 16 | 0 M | ||
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From
16
to
23
|
1800 M | 1.8 KM | |
| Head southeast on Meanderdijk | 1.8 KM | ||
| You are now at section 23 | 0 M | ||
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From
23
to
66
|
1365 M | 1.4 KM | |
| Head northeast on Van den Muyzenbergpad | 400 M | ||
| Turn left onto Van den Muyzenbergpad | 64 M | ||
| Turn right to stay on Van den Muyzenbergpad | 901 M | ||
| You are now at section 66 | 0 M | ||
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From
66
to
69
|
133 M | 0.1 KM | |
| Head northeast on Balloo | 133 M | ||
| You are now at section 69 | 0 M | ||
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From
69
to
70
|
1028 M | 1 KM | |
| Head south on Balloo | 60 M | ||
| Make a slight right onto De verlengde weg | 165 M | ||
| Turn left onto G.A.M.van den Muyzenbergpad | 795 M | ||
| Continue straight | 8 M | ||
| You are now at section 70 | 0 M | ||
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From
70
to
73
|
2261 M | 2.3 KM | |
| Head east | 89 M | ||
| Continue straight | 267 M | ||
| Turn right onto Hunebedweg | 266 M | ||
| Turn right to stay on Hunebedweg | 136 M | ||
| Turn left onto Hoofdstraat | 199 M | ||
| Turn left onto Gieterstraat | 92 M | ||
| Turn left onto Hunebedweg | 16 M | ||
| Turn right onto Esstraat | 447 M | ||
| Turn right onto Slokkert | 744 M | ||
| Turn left onto Koelandsdijk | 5 M | ||
| You are now at section 73 | 0 M | ||
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From
73
to
71
|
1985 M | 2 KM | |
| Head east on G.A.M. van den Muyzenbergpad | 1.4 KM | ||
| Turn left onto G.A.M. van den Muyzenbergpad | 212 M | ||
| Turn right onto Landrietendijk | 396 M | ||
| You are now at section 71 | 0 M | ||
|
From
71
to
65
|
1002 M | 1 KM | |
| Head south on Nijend | 1 KM | ||
| You are now at section 65 | 0 M | ||
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From
65
to
55
|
3163 M | 3.2 KM | |
| Head east | 163 M | ||
| Continue onto Gieterstraat | 713 M | ||
| Turn right | 2.3 KM | ||
| You are now at section 55 | 0 M | ||
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From
55
to
61
|
2231 M | 2.2 KM | |
| Head southeast | 2.2 KM | ||
| You are now at section 61 | 0 M | ||
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From
61
to
2
|
2382 M | 2.4 KM | |
| Head east | 1.9 KM | ||
| Turn left onto Veldkampsweg | 4 M | ||
| Turn right onto Lutkenend | 487 M | ||
| You are now at section 02 | 0 M | ||
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From
2
to
42
|
1952 M | 2 KM | |
| Head southwest on Kerkstraat | 335 M | ||
| Turn left | 10 M | ||
| Turn right onto Borgerweg | 1.6 KM | ||
| You are now at section 42 | 0 M | ||
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From
42
to
43
|
2903 M | 2.9 KM | |
| Head east on Markeweg | 356 M | ||
| Turn right onto Bosweg | 53 M | ||
| Make a slight right onto Alinghoek | 561 M | ||
| Turn right onto Kerkweg | 750 M | ||
| Turn left | 817 M | ||
| Continue onto Steenakkersweg | 347 M | ||
| Turn left onto Dorpsstraat | 19 M | ||
| You are now at section 43 | 0 M | ||
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From
43
to
41
|
1956 M | 2 KM | |
| Head southeast on Molenweg | 203 M | ||
| Turn right onto Westerlandsweg | 1.8 KM | ||
| You are now at section 41 | 0 M | ||
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From
41
to
88
|
646 M | 0.6 KM | |
| Head southeast on Mammoetpad | 253 M | ||
| Turn right | 370 M | ||
| Continue onto Buinerstraat | 23 M | ||
| You are now at section 88 | 0 M | ||
|
From
88
to
28
|
739 M | 0.7 KM | |
| Head southeast | 22 M | ||
| Turn left | 131 M | ||
| Turn left | 53 M | ||
| Turn right onto De Drift | 533 M | ||
| You are now at section 28 | 0 M | ||
|
From
28
to
22
|
709 M | 0.7 KM | |
| Head southwest | 474 M | ||
| Keep left at the fork | 235 M | ||
| You are now at section 22 | 0 M | ||
|
From
22
to
17
|
2496 M | 2.5 KM | |
| Head west | 6 M | ||
| Continue straight | 343 M | ||
| Make a slight right | 2.1 KM | ||
| You are now at section 17 | 0 M | ||
|
From
17
to
93
|
3080 M | 3.1 KM | |
| Head northwest on Schoonloerstraat | 304 M | ||
| Turn right onto Ringveenweg | 719 M | ||
| Turn left onto Borgerveldweg | 955 M | ||
| Turn right onto Stroetendijk | 1.1 KM | ||
| You are now at section 93 | 0 M | ||
|
From
93
to
87
|
2516 M | 2.5 KM | |
| Head west on Oostermaatsweg | 1.3 KM | ||
| Turn right | 667 M | ||
| Turn left | 580 M | ||
| You are now at section 87 | 0 M |