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DOCUMENTI
First
human settling down in Sardinia.
The first Sardinian man came from Africa, from Italian peninsula and from Iberia. The first traces left from man in the island are chipped stone tools found in Perfugas (SS) dated back to Inferior Palaeolithic (500.000-100.000 BC) and in Oliena (SS) dated back to Superior Palaeolithic (35.000-10.000 BC).
In the first two millennia of Neolithic (6000-2700 BC) the island begun to be firmly inhabited. The Sardinian men of that period lived in caves and shelters; ate molluscs and little animals and used pottery vessels; they had already developed a deep religiosity, witnessed by the womanly little statues of basalt representing the cult of Mother Goddess.
In medium Neolithic (4000-3500 BC) flourished the Bonu Inghinu culture. The men of this culture knew how to cultivate corn and how to domesticate animals. The dead were buried in little artificial caves, called Domus de Janas (Fair’s or Switch’s house), so frequent in Sardinian landscape.
The cult of Mother Goddess was still the central issue of their religiosity.
Cultural events of Old Neolithic (2700-2500BC) are not well defined. Two cultures developed and left a sign in that period; the culture of Filigosa (from the name of a site close to Osilo) and the Abealzu culture (from the name of a site close to Macomer). Concerning this two cultures, the archaeologists found an important monument of megalithic architectural, unique in the Occidental world: the terraces Temple of Accoddi Mountain, near to Sassari.
It is an artificial hill with quadrangular plant, ten metres tall, very similar to Mesopotamian ziggurat: it probably was a temple dedicated to a celestial God, maybe the Sun. Holy ritual were played at the top of the buildings, that was accessible by a steep slope. Besides the slope there was a big calcareous altar for sacrifices, still visible.
Monte
d’Accoddi
Another spectacular expressions of Neolithic culture are the menhir statues of Laconi (NU). They are not simple menhir: the stones are engraved with swords; taurine horns, eyes and they don’t represent gods but most likely heroes and mythical warriors.
To 2500BC are dated back the first findings that witnesses the birth of another prehistoric Sardinian civilization, the culture of Monte Claro, as the name of a mount of Cagliari.
In that period megalithic walls, still visible, were raised for the first time.
About 2000 BC Sardinia become interested by the bell-shaped cultural current that had wide diffusion throughout the Centre-Occidental Europe. At this stage the proto - Sardinian continued using the necropolis called Domus de janas for their burials. A hundred of dolmens that can be dated between the third and the second millennia before Christ were likely used for burials, too.
In the Old Bronze (1800-1600 BC) the Bonnannaro culture, precursory of nuraghe culture, started his development. The first true nuraghe were built about 1500 BC.
The
word “nuraghe” came from the old pre-Indo European root “nur”
that means hollow heap. The nuraghe are frustum of cone –shaped stoned
towers with circular basis, built by superimposition of big blocks. The inside
has a tholos structure: the tholos, or false dome, were built by superimposition
of circular rows of blocks the one upon the others, with the blocks of a rows
lightly protruding from the inside compared with the blocks of the row below.
The
nuraghe are very steady, and last since 3500 years, thanks to a well
calibrated distributions of the weights, without any trace of cementing stuff.
Most of the about 7000 nuraghe existing in Sardinia are simple, made of
one tower with one entry at the basis, one unique wide internal room, some
niches engraved in the interstice, and one stairway (in the interstice itself)
that take on the upper part of the tower.
There
are also more complicated nuraghe made by more towers connected to a
central tower; they have many rooms, more then a flat and passageways, stairways
and covered communication trenches.
There
are nuraghe fortresses of archaic beauty and of stately complexity.
Practically all the nuraghe are sited on the top of a hill at the margin
of a plateau, however in a position of domain as regards as the surroundings.
This element, with the fortress shape, leads the archaeologist to think that nuraghe
was fortified for defense.
Barumini
Santu Antine
But
Sardinia is a land enough far from continental lands, and from the others island
of Mediterranean Sea; so, from whom had to defend the nuraghe people, and
why built so many nuraghi?
It’s
hard to believe they had mainly a military function. Anyone visited them can
understand how, to shelter inside a nuraghe in case of enemy attack,
would had mean only die in a very sad way.
There’s
more. The nuraghe have generally one entrance only, and that, as resulted
from studies carried on about 107 nuraghe, have a precise orientation. In
many cases the entries are oriented to look at the direction where the stars
Sirius and Alpha Centauri had their heliacal rising, in the ages corresponding
to year 2000 and the year 1000 BC. It’s easy, at this point, to
connect the nuraghe to astral and solar cults. This conviction is made
even stronger if we consider the orientation of the different altars close to
the megalithic towers, some of which appears clearly oriented toward the point
of the rising Sun at the summer solstice.
The
nuraghe don’t exhaust the Sardinian megalithic buildings of Bronze Age.
The cult of the dead were essentially based upon the couple Mother Goddess and
God Taurus, and to this cult the nuraghe people gave form in the archaic
and solemn architecture of monumental tombs called Giant’s Tombs.
This
is the Sardinian name of monumental collective sepulchers, and it comes from the
belief that toms so big could serve only to bury gigantic men. The Giant’s
Tomb have a Taurus-horn-shaped semi-circular front, made by large slabs of
stone, flanked and driven vertically in the ground, or by a wall of big blocks.
At the center of the semi-circular front there is a great monolithic stele, with,
in its lower part, a little door to access to the tomb. Along the semicircle, on
the outer part, there are some stoned seats where the familiars of the dead
slept to communicate with their relatives by dreams: this was the practice of
incubation (from Latin: incubus = sleep).
Giant’s
tomb, Dorgali
Often in front of the Giant’s Tomb there is a little menhir, called, in Sardinian language, betile. The betile, phallic symbols of fertility, looks like a small cone of stone, which sometimes is engraved with little breasts, or with two eyes: the betile with breasts represent the union between the male and female divinities to light up again the life of dead; the ones with eyes represent a divinity to guard the dead.
Sanctuaries realized between 1300BC and 900BC are complex including different buildings, devoted to different goals: holy temples, great rotundas for assemblies, wide secluded spaces for business and negotiations. The most important building of the sanctuary is represented by the temple with the well where took place ceremonies connected with the cult of waters.
The nuraghe people had in fact a religiosity of naturalistic kind based on the adoration of the natural elements; object of cult were the stones, the trees and, in a special way, the water, rain water or spring water, very precious in a arid land like Sardinia.
The temples with well have a structure composed of three essential parts: the entry, at the ground level, the stairs that comes down in the ground, and the interred room, with the vault like a false dome. On the bottom of the interred room, at the feet of the stairs, there is the holy source. On the surface a fence delimits the holy area. There are about 40 wells throughout the island. Looking at them with attention, it’s evident their function of astronomical observatory.
S.
Cristina holy well Santa
Vittoria holy well
Another kind of cult was the cave, where a stalagmite was the altar and, not too far, there was the fire for sacrifices: probably they worshipped a subterranean divinity.
The Taurus God and the Mother Goddess, symbols of fecundity, represented for the nuraghe people, the essence of the becoming of their universe, the two strengths that joining together created life.
The nuraghe civilization was born for the meeting of different cultures, on the ground of the little Sardinian continent. It was born in Sardinia e not in another place, and was Sardinia to give an unmistakable shape to the fusion of those civilizations. Notwithstanding this, buildings looking precisely like Sardinian nuraghe have been found in places seemingly lacking in connections and very far.