The aqueduct, paved roads and hot springs of Augustubriga were sacrificed to the dam, but the temple known as Los Marmoles (Marble), built in the 2nd century AD, was dismantled stone by stone and stretched for 4 miles (4 miles). miles) was rebuilt on higher ground. His 20th-century inhabitants of the settlement also moved.
Since it resurfaced in the summer of 2019, Guadalperal’s dolmen reappears every July and is swallowed by the lake again each September. Castaño and his organization, his Raíces de Peraleda (Roots of Peraleda), are supporting a petition asking the government to move the cracked and collapsed megaliths to new locations on permanently dry land. “The combination of climate change and new power policies is very bad news for dolmen conservation, as environmental changes will rapidly weaken the stone,” Castagno said.
Exposed monuments are at risk of many tourists brandishing smartphones and selfie sticks arriving at the site on boats operated by private companies. “Having people on site is very harmful,” Dr. Bueno said. “Our last measurement confirmed that the constant trampling of visitors in 2019-2021 reduced the sediment due to its plasticity, leaving the dolmen support almost without foundation. Did.”
With so much traffic on the unsupervised monument, Castagno worries that the finger-like menhirs at the entrance to the burial chamber could be damaged. The slab is engraved with vaguely anthropomorphic shapes on one side and wavy lines on the other. Castaño believes the wavy line represents the outline of the Tagus River before the dam was built. The bend in the squiggle, he said, corresponds to a “strange bend” in old maps of the river. “If the curve represents the ancient course of the Tagus, then the Menhir may be the world’s oldest photorealistic map,” he said.
Dr. Bueno objected. “The map hypothesis is based on pareidolia,” she said. This implies a tendency to impose meaningful interpretations on visual patterns that are perceptually ambiguous. Dr. Bueno noted that the wavy lines are geometric and resemble the twisted patterns found in megalithic art throughout Europe.
Her conclusion: it’s a snake.