Even so, the second burial yielded too little trustworthy DNA, leaving the monument itself to carry much of the story. An earlier paper showed the monument was an enormous engineering project long before these medieval burials arrived. Why Menga matteredAcross medieval Iberia, people sometimes reused prehistoric monuments as graves, shrines, or places charged with older meaning. North African threadsAnother genetic clue came from mitochondrial DNA, genetic material passed through mothers, which linked the man to lineages seen in North Africa. An older memoryMenga’s medieval burials show a monument still shaping human choices, while one damaged genome ties that choice to a mixed society.

Source: The North Africa Journal March 24, 2026 20:47 UTC