It is scary to think that when lots of dementia's going on in many places, cars crashing in infested motorways and while ignorant sexless boring arseholes with nothing better to do keep thinking about the best way to look powerful in public by bombing other nations, there's a lonely shepherd lying in glorious peace on some grassy windswept mountain somewhere in the world. There's a funny dualism between the post-Mesolithic/pre-Neolithic community-based localism and the Copper/Bronze Age frantic search for metal by the ancient United Shames of Empires, travelling all over the world and changing huge seaside communities first, as everyone started to adopt the emblems of power and the funerary traditions of the new warrior-like gods.
I talked to this shepherd as I ended an intense and very steep climb up the hills that surround some sleepy village in the arid mountains called Gorafe, an evocative name if ever there was one. After a couple of questions about the area, I had to slow down. It's so usual to talk speedily, leaving no gaps in a conversation when talking to the 'civilized' people in society. I almost shudder to think that this guy cared nothing about 'getting bored' by my words about the amazing passage graves with perforated holes we were standing next to; in fact, it was the first time I've felt we had all the time in the world to talk to each other; and, anyway, I was so distracted by the anachronistic fact that this human anomaly, whose ancient language I hardly understood, was wearing an extremely cool psychedelic shirt, you know, like those worn by the 'paisly underground' fraternity back in the 80s. Truly we've lost it, and to recover the slow-evolving ancient muse of non-linear Time is harder than you think.
Gorafe is a fantastic discovery. 200 dolmens (some of them have already fallen over) lie precariously perched along very high cliffs in a long canyon created by a tiny but insistent stream, which is now usually dry (not last month though) due to the climate change of the last few hundred years. An amphitheatre of several snow-capped mountain ranges surround the uplands making it a beautiful place to stand on. To think of this area as fertile is scary, but megalithic evidence makes it the densest place you can think of, in terms of visits of dolmens per minute. Huge necropolis are easy to walk by, and their entrances at times play with the visitor, as they are orientated alternatively SE and SW, and always intervisible. Connections with the famous metal cultures of Millares are quite possible, and I am sure many locals then would be as revolted as most people today by the current despicable and, frankly very ugly bug-eyed, warmongering characters.
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