Eternal Flow
Of all the times I’ve visited the Evora-Montemor megalithic axis, these last two weeks have been the most fruitful. Not only is the number of antas (ie. the slender dolmens that are scattered in massive numbers up and down Western Iberia) incredibly huge, but the effect it’s had on me has been life-trascending, to the extent that I would gladly move there tomorrow if I had the chance. A bright, deep and glamorous green clothes the rural rolling hills of the area, which is the most untouched part of Europe I may have visited. Few cars in very remote roads, most of the ones that lead to the most fantastic areas are merely npaved muddy country lanes, bumpy and hard to get along, very often flooded by rivers, with wonderfully all-dominant mother hills aplenty, kind farmers that let you in their farms in search of the lost standing stone and a total lack of modern infrastructure and stinky wanker-led corporations make this a very appealling region. In the areas which ‘smell’ of neolithic pastoral sacredness, I have literally stumbled upon some amazing intensely atmospheric sites, basically un-catalogued!!
Now there’s this groovy local archaeologist who finds all kinds of stuff from the air, while he’s up there ‘hanging’ in his glider. Recently, an untouched area near the famous cave of Escoural was found to contain yet another new cromlech / stone circle of fantastic beauty as well as a group of about a dozen antas. Every time I return to the area new megaliths are being found. I’ve seen plenty of gorgeous stuff elsewhere, but the beauty and atmosphere in these cromlechs is amazing. Precisely because, as they have been newly discovered, they are not yet subject to the bored tourist drone that the famous and fantastic megalithic circles of the Almendres have been subject to over the years. Also, this part has not been raped to the extent of other places, where, in order to get to a monument you get in the car, drive for miles, and park it beside it on parking space designed by some drunken council worker. Here you have to sweat, trample and crawl, AND the effect is all the more powerful, completely losing touch with snivilisation, literally shivering with excitement to the only sounds of birds, occasional sheep, brooks and your own steps.
And research has yielded some fantastic results. If this is true, it would be supposed that the menhirs and cromlechs / stone circles were built BEFORE the majority of megalithic burials. If you ‘ve never seen a Portuguese cromlech, the shape of the stones is very much like cosmic objects, shaped like elongated eggs, of amazing beauty, as if polished by the stars, and fallen big and upright inside the land. They are not like, say, a British circle. And, also, the dates of these cromlechs fall somewhere within the years 5,000 and 4,000 BCE. They were also built around areas of Ur-cult, i.e. worship of natural rock, brooks or caves, whilst the dolmen slabs, like in the UK, were transported from distant places.
I have always believed that once the late Bronze Age began in Europe (including Britain) due to a more intense arrival of Indoeuropean peoples from, possibly, the Caucasus, the ancient traditions had already begun to fade. Late Bronze Age Beaker burials attached to most megalithic monuments show a certain sense of ‘loss’, of ‘distance’, though still continue the tradition. It’s like the newcomers somehow knew that the locals considered these places sacred, but even they (the locals) had *already* forgotten all about their origin. We must remember we are dealing with, not centuries, but, millenia, of a slowburning process which, at the same time, paradoxically creates some sort of eternal continuum, some stability. These places were conceived as messages for the people at the time AND for future generations like us, most likely FOR EVER.
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