Despite the windy day and the important football game at night, around 1500 people, mostly families with many children, took a 5000-year trip to this Saturday. to live an afternoon and a night in Prehistory, in the megalithic monuments of Alcalar, in the interior of the municipality of Portimão.
During the afternoon, participants were able to learn, in an interactive way, about the daily life of prehistoric populations, through a wide range of practical and didactic workshops representing hunting, pottery, weaving, tool making, carving processes, preparing and cooking food, brewing prehistoric beer, making agricultural tools and ornaments, transporting large monoliths and milling.
In the activities promoted by the Museum of Portimão team, with the support of the Group of Friends of the Museum and other volunteers, there were two novelties: an engraving workshop based on the graphic patterns of the schist plates, as well as a new workshop, exemplifying processes of copper smelting.
Experimental archeology, under the responsibility of Pedro Cura, was also present once again, showing how food was prepared, from the “slicing up” of a pig, to the use of all its meat and bones. The only thing missing was the fire to cook the meat…due to the Civil Protection warning of the high risk of fire, it was not possible to light the fire in Alcalar.
At night, astronomers from the Ciência Viva Centers of Lagos and Algarve (in Faro), as well as amateur astronomers and other volunteers, got everyone – literally – to see stars…and planets.
With the help of more or less sophisticated telescopes, some electronic, it was possible, for example, to peek at the distant planet Jupiter with its four moons.
In Prehistory, 5000 years ago, the sky that our Alcalaran ancestors would see would have been very similar…but because then there was no pollution caused by the thousands of electric lights lit everywhere, surely the sky they were looking at would seem to have many , many more stars.
This afternoon and evening in Prehistory was part of the program to commemorate the International Day of Monuments and Sites, promoted by the Museum of Portimão, and received financial support from the application made by the Group of Friends of the Museum of Portimão to the DiVaM program, the Regional Directorate for Culture of the Algarve, and with the help of a group of volunteers, who usually collaborate with the Museum team and contribute to streamlining the activities.
Highlight for the youngsters from the Theater Group of the Bemposta School of Arts, who, properly dressed "in the fashion of prehistory", recreated rituals, staged burials and even sang at night, accompanying themselves with instruments that could well be used five millennia ago. The songs were much more recent, but still entertained the kids and the mothers and fathers who, despite the appeal of the Sporting/Benfica game, had gone to Alcalar to peek at the stars.
See the video here:
See also the photographs:
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