A story half a million years old...
- Fiona McCready
- Jan 3
- 2 min read
Our local town of Mação is an important centre for prehistoric art and archaeological research, not just in Iberia but across the whole of Europe. The area is famous for its rock art (arte rupestre) that goes back thousands of years, between the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. In fact, the view from the back of the windmill captures the old castle (Castelo Velho - see our blog post here) where important artefacts such as the one below, were found.
So, what is known about the humans that inhabited this area? For around half a million years, groups of humans have lived here. Our earliest ancestors made instruments, they hunted, they collected fruits, vegetables and roots, they constructed cabins to live in. But they didn't change the landscape to any great extent. It was little more than 20,000 years ago that humans in this region started to carve figures of animals and other motifs into the rocks around the Rio Tejo and its tributaries. And these engravings were lost to time, until recently.
Early discoveries were led by a local man, Dr. João Calado Rodrigues, and inquisitive people of Mação (Maçaenses) in the 1940s, but the discovery of much of the complex rock art in the Tejo valley occured in 1972. During this time, construction of a large dam began and was going to submerge huge areas of the river basin - and with it the rock art that locals knew existed there. Before the flooding of the dam, excavations were carried out and moulds were made of many of the engravings, enabling them to be preserved. These are now in the Mação museum . Further pieces in the Vale de Ocreza were unearthed and moulds made in the year 2000, during construction of the A23 motorway. The most famous of these is the Ocreza Horse (Cavalo de Ocreza).
Nowadays, you can visit the museum to learn more, and to view their collection of artefacts discovered in the area, including some of the moulds. The museum staff are always on hand to give explanation and colour to a tour of the collection.
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