Subscribe now

Humans

Why so many prehistoric monuments were painted red

Megaliths, or huge stones, were used for thousands of years to build monuments, and they were far more colourful than you might think – the most common pigments used to decorate them came from reddish cinnabar and ochre

By Michael Marshall

17 November 2023

Dolmen of menga, a megalithic burial mound in Spain

imageBROKER.com GmbH & Co. KG/Alamy

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox for free every month.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: ancient Greek statues weren’t always plain white marble. Many of these sculptures were actually painted in vivid colours. However, most of the pigments have either eroded away or been scraped off by overzealous museum curators, leaving us with just the underlying white stone.

For example,…

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

Sign up

To continue reading, subscribe today with our introductory offers

View introductory offers

No commitment, cancel anytime*

Offer ends 2nd of July 2024.

*Cancel anytime within 14 days of payment to receive a refund on unserved issues.

Inclusive of applicable taxes (VAT)

or

Existing subscribers

Sign in to your account