7000 years of fundamental questions

The sound of footsteps on the earth marked a solemn rhythm. They were like seconds, like the clear awareness of time passing. The surrounding landscape was vast, composed of vastness: the fields, the sky. Within all of this, there were my footsteps. Each individual exists within the whole universe.

I was heading to the Almendres Cromlech, on the outskirts of the city of Évora, some 90 minutes east of Lisbon. It is estimated that the construction of this megalithic site took place when humans began to settle in the Iberian Peninsula, about seven thousand years ago. At that time, the planet witnessed the birth of agriculture and pastoralism. Populations began to have more lasting relationships with places and thus erected structures for more continuous use.

Seven thousand years. Facing each of the ninety-five monoliths that make up this site, there is always the moment when, with the intensity of that presence, we meet the awareness of a gesture that crossed seven thousand years of moments just like that one. This realization is like an invisible line between us and a person we can only imagine. Someone had the idea of building this structure, chose this location, and carved these low-relief inscriptions on the granite.

Today, we try to find meanings in these figures. When we question the people who drew them seven thousand years ago, how they lived, how they understood the world, it is inevitable that we question ourselves, our lives, and our understanding. There is an infinite universe outside from us, and in the same way, there is an infinite universe within us.

I was born not far from here. I spent my childhood and adolescence in fields not too different from these ones. As a baby, in my mother’s arms, I was offered to the Moon. During that pagan practice, created in times impossible to date, the child is raised to the full Moon, and among other words, it is said: “Oh Moon, oh moonlight,/ I made him born/ Help me to raise him.” At first, I wondered if these affinities contributed to what I felt when visiting the Almendres Cromlech. But soon I realized that it is the very circumstance of being there, with so many thousands of years of human experience, that triggers these existential questions.

Whoever thought and built this collection of menhirs decided to locate it on an east-facing slope. This choice was made based on astronomical criteria, due to solstices and equinoxes. In other words, in relation to the surrounding landscape. This was their way of establishing harmony with the entire universe. When we contemplate the sky that covers the Almendres Cromlech, that covers the Alentejo, we immediately recognize that this sky too is fascinating, it is synonymous with the great mysteries that follow each of our breaths.

The builders of this site were trying to answer questions that we probably still have today. Generations and generations descend from those people, they’re scattered around the world. Seven thousand years ago, the sound of those people’s footsteps was heard on this land, just as we hear ours now. Even then, that rhythm marked the passage of time.