[Transcript]
This is Cromlech dos Almendres. It’s very close to Évora, which is a town in the central area of Alentejo, in Portugal. It’s one of the oldest and one of the largest that you can find. Approximately 7,000 years old, this cromlech predates Stonehenge by 2,000 years.
I’ll tell you two kinds of things about this place: the things that we know for sure and the things that we think we know. Because when it comes to pre-history, there are no writings. So we don’t have any authors to tell you if you’re wrong or right.
They are aligned in a rough ellipse. They started being built on top of this hill and then it went down the slope that’s facing the east, the horizon in the east. This cromlech is precisely aligned towards the equinoxes. There’s another menhir around two kilometers away from here, and that provides an extra point of observation. It kind of makes sense that in order to create the center of the horizon with the equinox, you would have the solstices also observed and represented.
We have people that associate these mega stones with the Moors. They believed that the Moors were giants. Today, there is still this connection with naturalist religions or pagan religions. So there are celebrations happening especially during the equinoxes. Sometimes we see remains of fires in the area.
This cromlech could only have been built in the Neolithic period. Because we are now farmers and shepherds. And to create this level of precision when it comes to orientation, you need to be sedentary. You need to be observing the rising of the Sun and of the Moon in one single place.
Another thing is that our population started growing, and we have more people to create something like this. This is not built fast. This takes a lot of time just to transport each stone. They don’t have wheels. But they have logs; they are cylindrical, they roll. Add that with ropes and levers, and you can move a stone around very easily, but you need a lot of people.
They have to create a hole that has this kind of a slope on one side, so they slide the menhir in, and then with ropes, you just pull it in the opposite direction. And once it’s up, you just fill what’s left of that part of the hole with dirt and stones, and that’s how it stays up.
People gathered here during the equinoxes not just to celebrate them but also to exchange products and animals. You know, equinoxes are all about spring and fall, so planting and harvesting. So this is important for agricultural communities of the Neolithic period.
This cromlech is the only one I can think of that’s still encased in its natural landscape. This ecosystem is called ‘montado’ and it consists basically of two kinds of oaks: you’ve got the holm oak and the cork oak. The kind of vegetation you see here today is the same they saw here 7,000 years ago. This ecosystem is the oldest man-made ecosystem in the world.
This is very, very different than what we’ve just seen at the cromlech. First, it happens 2,000 years later. So when this is being built, the pyramids in Egypt are being built. It is our kind of pyramid. It’s to bury important people inside. So this means that there are leaders. We see here also, besides the social stratification, the clear belief in life after death. These people are buried with everything they need to survive: pots, their utensils, their tools.
Some people associate that shape with the female reproductive system. You’ve got a chamber, which is the uterus, and you’ve got a birth canal. And then on top of it, you’ve got a hill that looks like a pregnant belly. It’s like going back to the womb for a time and then you come back to life.
This is a high relief, so you have negative lines here, parallel. They create like a banana-shaped thing. Up here, you’ve got a rectangular shape that is rounded up at the bottom. What do we have that is banana-shaped and what do we have that is rectangular and rounded at the bottom? So this is a face. And this is one of the indications that every menhir should represent a person or a community. Even if they’re not as clear as faces, that’s androcentric; we expected every other symbol to represent something that has to do with humans.
The Pope wears one. Pharaohs in Egypt, they wore the whip and the shepherd’s crook. So this is a symbol of power associated with humans since the Neolithic period.
These cup marks we call them ‘covinhas’ in Portuguese. They are found everywhere. We just don’t know what they mean. The most accepted theory today is that they represent constellations. I have a little bit of a problem with that theory. It’s because we can’t find patterns. You have to try to think like they do, but maybe you’ll never be able to do it. And that’s why you have mysteries!
Video by Izabela Cardoso & Fernando Teixeira | Executive Producer: Camelia Sadeghzadeh
