66 The Egyptian Journal Of Environmental Change Special Issue: 1 Volume1 Number 1, October 2009 Abstract: monuments, landformmorphology Key-words: de CiênciasLisboa,Ed.C6-4ºPiso.CampoGrande.1749- (1,2) e-mails: (1)[email protected]/(2)[email protected] magical places inPortugalandheir magical places CentrodeGeologia,DepartamentoFaculdade between scienceandparascience. bounding the for and science of envisagement new a for path a open to tries work This today. until them not accepted has community scientific the if even this for explanation complete a give can methods could be the real reasons for their choice? Radiesthesic which posed: was question another Then it. explain to enough strong reason any find not several did we sites, the of influence geomorphological features on the choice the of megalithic analysing After geology, lithology, andlandformdevelopment. including factors, in various of function a features as Portugal heritage and monuments megalithic some of distribution the explain to tries paper This condition theselectionofthesesites? of the respective sites? How did rocks and landscapes relationship to the landform morphology and lithology their is what and man early of lives the in represent The question is, what did these megalithic monuments interacted withtheirsurroundings. enigmatically they which in manner the and man, early of rituals the meanings, religious their enigma: an been always since have monuments historic pre These limestones. and sandstones shales, in built be also can they but hills, granitic on and rocks granitic of built all almost country, the of part eastern the in occurred preserved best the which from Portugal in - cromlechs and menhirs mounds, - passage dolmens, monuments megalithic of thousands are There Teresa A st Symposium onLiving with Landscapes rela The mythsofenvironmen: Portugal, archaeology, geology, pre-historic geology,archaeology, Portugal, tion wihgeomorphology zevêdo(1), ElisabeteNunes(2) 016 Lisboa,Portugal. soils, flora, fauna, in summary, the landscape understood water, (rocks, environment natural the and Portugal in these factorsandotherexplanationscanbegiven. by conditioned not were that monuments prehistoric are there However,origin. tectonic of are or rocks of nature often constitute reliefs, which are originated by the harder places these as role fundamental a play Geomorphology and Geology case, this In distance. a at enemy probable a of sight catch to allowing position topographic the by and via) fluvial of (proximity via communication and sources food the to regards settlement the of position the by conditioned essentially been always have towns and villages structures, defensive became later that nucleus The places where pre-historic populations erected the first 1. Introduction of 80 629km of territory,this largestin third one the area total a draining is basin its and Peninsula Iberian the in (1 100km) river longest the is Tagus The Palaeolithic. Lower the occupied since been has which plain, alluvial Tagus the is One of the oldest places of human occupation in Portugal 2. Pre-historicoccupationofTagus River (Strada’s Real). Cart-ruts even and script Ogham’s circles, Stone rock-art, Spiral of examples including structures recent more of range a contains also it addition, In BC. 7,000 before back dating mounds, Passage and Menhirs like structures Neolithic and Mesolithic European of period ofhumankind. longest the to relative know-how’s the through society the climatewaslessdrierthantoday; very flat and arid region even assuming that in that period has the biggest density of megalithic monuments as it is a as awholeinpermanentevolution); otgl osse sm o te alet examples earliest the of some possesses Portugal - - - The aimsofthisworkare: to find the link between Meso/Neolithic occupation o nih h udrtnig f h present-day the of understanding the enrich to Portugal, of east in Alentejo, why understand to 2 . Particularly rich in lithic artefacts is the is artefacts lithic in rich Particularly . 67 Middle Terrace Q3 in Almeirim region, where about 3000 Therefore, what did these megalithic monuments pieces dated from the Pleistocene (Micoquian – 120,000 represent to early man and how do they relate to the years) were found in only 20 m2. paleoenvironmental and paleoecological characteristics In the Upper Mesolithic, but before the beginning of the respective sites? We tried to answer some of these of the megalithic culture, the population lived mainly questions by attempting to find the influence of some on the banks of the Tagus River. The three Muge Shell geomorphological factors. Middens, are sites of incalculable value to the knowledge 2.2 Influence of Lithology and Relief of the everyday life of the populations that about 6000 2.2.a) distribution of dolmenic monuments in years inhabited these banks (8000 years cal BP to prior to relation with lithology and relief 6000 years cal BP) [1]. A primary reason for occupying Even if there is a perfect coincidence between granite and the Muge Valley must have been the abundance of quartz diorite outcrops and the occurrence of megaliths estuarine molluscan found in salt marshes. However, (for example, in the Monsaraz region), there are, however, environmental conditions changed as an increase in aridity many built with other Hercinian materials, like shales. was accompanied by diminishing of tidal influence and In the hydrographic basin of Sever river, Alto Alentejo, higher salinity levels. These changes made Muge valley the concentration of monuments defines the boundary unattractive for Mesolithic populations that preferred between granites and shales. On the other hand , in the other areas such as the Tagus or Sado estuaries, Beiras upper part of the region the concentration of dolmens is (Central Portugal) or the adjacent uplands of Upper and related to the Tagus Valley occupation, in sedimentary Central Alentejo, almost uninhabited at the time. In the rocks, and with the big rock art complex of Foz Côa [1]. Upper Alentejo, there are very early dates associated Alentejo is an extensive province of Portugal with Megalithic monuments. occupying about 1/3 of the country. From the 2.1. Megalithic monuments - dolmens, geomorphological point of view, it is a peneplain, a wavy (antas), menhirs, and cromlechs surface with a median altitude of 240 m, dipping between The thousands of megaliths in Portugal are dispersed all 0 and 5%, only interrupted by some reliefs of tectonic or over the country but they concentrate specially in the residual origin and dominated by granites and shales of referred regions where there are several “complexes” the Hercinic Massif. It is now a very arid region even if as: Muge, Évora, Estremoz, Reguengos de Monsaraz, crossed by three important hydrographic basins: Tagus, Castelo de Vide, Orca, etc. Sado and Guadiana. It is wheat cultivated and only cork They are almost all built of granitic rocks and oak and olive trees can survive. stand preferentially on granitic sites, but they can also The “Anta Grande do Zambujeiro” near Évora, has be built in shale, greywacke, sandstone, and limestone. the largest stones of any passage mound in all Portugal, Many of them were converted into Christian temples and possibly one of the largest in all Europe. The granitic by the Christianisation of the territory, as the antas of stones extend over 7 m above ground and the whole Pavia and Arronches that are now in the middle of the construction was covered by a big mound. Research villages and converted into chapels. From the several supports the idea that there is a relationship between Cromlechs, Menhirs and Passage mounds, the Cromlech passage mounds and the astronomical orientation of their of Almendres, the passage-mound of Anta do Zambujeiro passages [2]. Nowadays people still celebrate the spring and the Menhir do Outeiro, a huge granite bulk reaching equinox with a Celtic Festival (Trás-os-Montes). to about 6 m in height, are the most impressive. 2.2.b) Distribution of chromlechs and menhirs in

Volume1 Number 1, October 2009 66 Special Issue: 1st Symposium on Living with Landscapes 67 68 The Egyptian Journal Of Environmental Change Special Issue: 1 Volume1 Number 1, October 2009 . t ufrd ifrn sae o cntuto oe the over construction of stages different suffered It W. E- oriented is axis Its 11%). dipping altitude, 400 m S, N- 30 m and W-E (60 m Europe in interesting most the of one and Peninsula Iberian the of menhirs structured of assemblage biggest the represents and menhirs nowadays 95 has place sacred ancient This impressive. pre-history. idea thattheÉvoraregionwasaveryimportantonein the support sites between alignments astronomical of discoveries Recent Iberia. in sites best the and biggest the of some offers Portugal of region This cromlechs. of variety huge a has Évora around countryside The relation withlithologyandrelief region. the cover trees chestnut and oaks, pines, of vegetation faults. of grid dense a and grabens Aarboreal dense very the Hercinian orogenic movements which created horsts and of result the as there) located is Estrela, da Serra mountain, Portuguese highest (the mountains morphology high with irregular very a shows region Beira the flat andinhospitableregion? Neolithic build more than one thousand megaliths in this of the6thtobeginning3rdmillennium. the Middle Neolithic to the Iron Age, that is, from the end social and ideological transformations that occurred from economic, particular the reflects it and power symbolic magical- strong with place cultual a been have to seems It axis. away,solstice the in cromlech the with aligned is 1.5 km menhir, Almendres The engraved. are - staff the rhythm andhumanoflife. Nature – Cosmo the unify to element an as calendar the fix to aiming observatory astronomic an as it functioned that believed is It monoliths. its of dozen one than more in engravings and reliefs are there and Neolithic Contrasting with the flat morphology of the Alentejo, Meso/ the of people did why is, question Another Near Évora, the Cromlech of Almendres is the most of the Cromlech is the Almendres Évora, Near In this entire region, over 400 megalithic monuments - symbols wise-snake 13 menhirs, the of one On st Symposium onLiving with Landscapes or limestone,dependingonthelocalrocksource. (the most abundant), gneiss, shale, greywacke, sandstone, granite in built monuments are there fundamental: not also is rocks of nature Lithologic ones. arid in or regions in or relief vegetated in vigorous them, from far or rivers besides peneplains, of regions in indistinctively localized are they as environment the by influenced be to not appear monuments megalithic that concluded we After analysing the influence of geomorphologic factors, 3. Theinfluenceofenvironment with therocksourceofMesozoicmaterials[1,3]. monuments are built in limestone or in greywacke according “Circuito Pré-HistóricodeFiais”. the form to together combine that structures other and dolmens several with and interesting most the of one is are described in literature. In particular, the Orca Complex lbl rd o Hrmn Gi o Nt cmrsd of comprised Net, or Grid First Hartmann or the Grid, called Global is important most The pattern. grid electromagnetic own its with body electromagnetic an is Earth the them, to According Currents. Telluric of Hans – occurrence the in based doctors – Curry Manfred and Hartman German two by discovered whole the earth, covers the that grid on energetic based an of questions existence these answers that theory 4. HartmanandCurryGrids the implantationsitesofmegalithicmonuments. of selection the for reasons other for looked we results, inconclusive these Regarding aims. astronomic have could they that and rituals ceremony and funerary for served they that in agree only They archaeologists. the of the given archaeological explanations can satisfy, even none that consider to us allow megalithism about works parascientific and scientific of dozens of searching and reading The questions. previous the answer to centuries, In the Algarve region, South of Portugal, almost all the In the literature on this theme, there is a complete a is there theme, this on literature the In last the over tried, archaeologists of Hundreds 69 parallel energy waves rising vertically from the ground, the addition of the other two. The cosmic flow carries described as alternatively positive and negative, forming the vital energy and the water transmits the memory of a grid across the earths surface with a distance of circa the energy and life of the earth to the telluric current. 2 meters in the N-S direction and 2.5 meters in the E-W Water memory has been proved through the work of the direction (the distances differ from area to area). Curry Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto [5] and his conferences lines (Curry Grid), are understood to be circa 3 meters all over the world. Therefore, explanations that account to apart (with variations), diagonally to the poles, E-W. Hartmann and Curry Currents can satisfy all the observed Curry and Hartman consider the existence of the earth phenomena and give logical and useful purposes to the radiation a theoretical geophysical phenomenon and colossal work represented by megalithic culture. describe it as a mystic force field that supposedly covers the earth at regular intervals and may be detected and flawlessly measurable through non-scientific equipment 5. Methodology used by radiesthesists. 5.1 Magnetometer measures Menhirs are known to stand always in the crossing In a first approach to measure this energy with scientific (knots) of two or more Hartman and Curry lines (as well equipment, we started by searching for magnetic as underground water) just as dolmens are always in their anomalies near the menhirs and we selected the main centre (figure 1). The first are points of strong emission menhirs of two cromlechs, both in granite: Vale Maria of energy that can be felt by humans and animals, while do Meio and Portela de Mogos some 6 km distant from the latter are complete neutral places and, therefore, of each other. Four ground magnetic stations were carried serenity and tranquillity. This characteristic explains out in these two areas, from about 35 m to 5 m distance their choice for funerary places. from the menhirs and just beside them at each 5 m. The surveys were carried out using a proton magnetometer of 0.02 nT sensitivity and the magnetic measurements were corrected for diurnal variations. The corrected values of the total magnetic field are in figure 2. In the first site - Vale Maria do Meio - the resulting pattern of the magnetic field indicates an increase of the values in the proximity of the menhir. This behavior is Figure 1 – An example of a dolmen inside the Hartman Grid [4]. not observed in the second site (Portela de Mogos) where Radiesthesists state that telluric energies are more stable values are noted. Nevertheless, the observed negatively polarised and that the cosmic flow is positive. small variability (< 30 nT) of the magnetic field can be The negative energy flows along the stone and escapes to due to the geological variability. These results are not the sky attracted by the cosmic “plus”. This ascendant conclusive once they are quite homogeneous and the blow induces acceleration, like a vortex of cosmic detected anomalies can be attributed to the granite itself. positive flow around the menhir, which attracts the negatively polarised telluric current, probably through the channel opened by the ascendant energy. Both energies, one coming from the sky and the other from the earth, connect to create a third energy that will surpass

Volume1 Number 1, October 2009 68 Special Issue: 1st Symposium on Living with Landscapes 69 70 The Egyptian Journal Of Environmental Change Special Issue: 1 Volume1 Number 1, October 2009 higher than20000B.U. the Templevalues gave places Hathor,Both of Egypt. in in also and Pyramid Giza the in Chamber King’s the in experiments same the out carried we Later, [6]. [4]; [7]; places sacred to attributed usually, are which values, B.U., 18000 the to up went values respective the and menhirs previous the measured we Then (B.U.). Units Bovis 7500 and 6000 between fell values obtained The [4]. Cossec, Le and [6], Bonvin, Bovis, of works the to according megaliths, the of those with compare to value flowers, chairs, stones, etc) in order to have a background trees, (like objects several of energy the measuring by began We Bovis. of abacus universal a the and like Pendle equipment, radiesthesic simpler used the universally with now and experiments same the deciding try and to results inconclusive also these to Due Portela deMogos. Valeand at Meio measures do Magnetometer Maria - 2 Figure 5.2 Radiesthesicmeasures st Symposium onLiving with Landscapes n aray nw peoea ht vrbd can everybody observe and prove or that it is also those ones phenomena that science does known already and visible, real, the it Is science? in true it is What of science: epistemology the with or parascience and science be necessary todevelopspecialmeasuringequipments. will It events. usual the from frequency different exceedingly its to due it reach/measure to equipment anomalies but it may be that there is presently no adequate result from variations in the electromagnetic field or other can It [8]. with deal we energy of kind what understand to trying also are that scientists other of that to research our add to is purpose our subject, the to approach first a only been has this Although equipment. non-scientific by measured be can it that and world the over all spots some in energy special a is there that us for clear is It 6. Interpretation they are supposedly undetectable by common scientific common by undetectable supposedly if are they even teams, radiestesy the by known only are that resistivity meters, voltmeters, to compare with the values - use other scientific equipment, such as oscilloscopes, current andfutureworkconcernsthefollowingpoints: and our conviction that there must be a way to read it, our experiment first this of results inconclusive the to Due a magnetometer. we tried to measure it with scientific equipment by using selection, their explain can that points, those in energy isaspecial there that to prove attempt first a In sites. these for selection the explain to reason enough strong any find not did we Portugal, in implanted are Megaliths of geological thousands the where and regions the of characteristics geomorphological the Analysing 7. Conclusions yet not corroborated andmeasured? is it because only subject unknown an study not we Should discovered? be ever it will scientists for not yet know? If unknown phenomena are not interesting hs ujc hs o o ih h budn between bounding the with do to has subject This 71 instruments; References - develop an adequate instrument if the previous ones 1 - J.L. Cardoso, Pré-história de Portugal, Ed. Verbo, are not able to detect the energy values; Lisboa, 2002, p. 456. 2 - J.F. Santucci, G.Thury-Bouvet, A. Ottavi & K. El -prove to the scientific community that unknown and Hadi, Astronomical Orientations of Neolithic Tombs in invisible phenomena can be studied and brought to the Monte Revincu, in A. Aiello, J.F. Santucci (ed.), Congrès light of science; International Environnement et identité en Méditerranée, - change the concept that the Planetary Energy Grid (2005), 8 p. Theory falls under the heading of pseudoscience and let 3 - J.L. Cardoso, J.C., Caninas, A., Gradim, A.N. Joaquim, it be accepted by the scientific community. Menires do Alto Algarve Oriental: Lavajo I e Lavajo II Its time to admit that there are still many unknown (Alcoutim), Ver. Portuguesa de Arqueologia, Vol. 5, Nº. 2., events and that we must find other paths to envisage their (2002), p. 99-133. 4 - G. Le Cossec, Le Souffle du Menhir, Ed. Dervy, Paris, origin! 1998, p. 166. Acknowledgements 5 - M. Emoto, The Message from Water, Hado Kyoiku Sha Publishers, Japan, 1999, p. 145. We thank our colleague Fernando Monteiro of the 6 - J. Bonvin, Mégalithes - Lieux d’énergie, Ed. Mosaique, Department of Physics of the FCUL for helping with the France, 1995, p. 283. measurements of the magnetic anomalies. 7 - B. Mertz, Hauts Lieux Cosmo-Telluriques, Georg Editeur, France, 1990, p 199. 8 - H-D. Langer, A first consistent physical model of radiestesy?, The Sixteenth Seminar of BDA, Druskininkai, Lithuania, 2008, p.75-86.

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