With regard to the first step it is probable that in most cases the place chosen for a tomb or cemetery was one in which numbers of great stones lay on the surface ready to hand.  By this means labour was greatly economized.  On the other hand, there are certainly cases where the stones were brought long distances in order to be used.  Thus, in Charente in France there is at La Perotte a block weighing nearly 40 tons which must have travelled over 18 miles.  We have no evidence as to whether stones were ever actually quarried.  If they were, the means used must have been the stone axe, fire, and water.  It was not usual in the older and simpler dolmens to dress the stones in any way, though in the later and more complicated structures well-worked blocks were often used.

The required stones having been found it was now necessary to move them to the spot.  This could be done in two ways.  The first and simpler is that which we see pictured on Egyptian monuments, such as the tomb of Tahutihotep at El Bersheh.  A rough road of beams is laid in the required direction, and wooden rollers are placed under the stone on this road.  Large numbers of men or oxen then drag the stone along by means of ropes attached to it.  Other labourers assist the work from behind with levers, and replace the rollers in front of the stone as fast as they pass out behind.  Those who have seen the modern Arabs in excavation work move huge blocks with wooden levers and palm-leaf rope will realize that for the building of the dolmens little was needed except numbers and time.

The other method of moving the stones is as follows:  a gentle slope of hard earth covered with wet clay is built with its higher extremity close beside the block to be moved.  As many men as there is room for stand on each side of the block, and with levers resting on beams or stones as fulcra, raise the stone vertically as far as possible.  Other men then fill up the space beneath it with earth and stones.  The process is next repeated with higher fulcra, until the stone is level with the top of the clay slope, on to which it is then slipped.  With a little help it now slides down the inclined plane to the bottom.  Here a fresh slope is built, and the whole procedure is gone through again.  The method can even be used on a slight uphill gradient.  It requires less dragging and more vertical raising than the other, and would thus be more useful where oxen were unobtainable.

When the stones were once on the spot it is not hard to imagine how they were set upright with levers and ropes.  The placing of the cover-slab was, however, a more complicated matter.  The method employed was probably to build a slope of earth leading up from one side to the already erected uprights and almost covering them.  Up this the slab could be moved by means of rollers, ropes, and levers, until it was in position over the uprights.  The slope could then be removed.  If the dolmen was to be partly or wholly covered with a mound, as some certainly were, it would not even be necessary to remove the slope.