Stand up comedy

The restoration of the menhir of Barrocal gave us some important lessons about megaliths and the people who erected them.

Admiration for the superb effort and skills needed to have success in such a task.

To achieve the objectif would have created a strong feeling of power and awareness, for people, of the advantages of working together.

Time has actually changed. The main reason why we have not been able of concluding all the operation, was the time we had available to do it. Neolithic people had no such kind of restriction.
We must remeber that the easiest and safest way to erect a menhir woud have been to build a solid platform close to the top of the stone and make it grow up as the menhir goes up. It should be large enough to allow the use of the levers and, in the end, it would be the same high of the menhir.
Of course, this method would implicate a considerable delay on the rithm of building, but anyway it would be needed, for the process, only some 50 individuals, using the levers, to achieve the task.

Working only four hours, in the Saturday afternoon, mainly with the levers (in the last movements, helped by the ropes), we erected the stone close to the 40 º;

On Sunday, we built a stone platform to allow a further use of the levers and we moved the stone some more degrees, though the platform was not large enough so tehat the operator could reach and use the levers.

Finnaly, on Monday, with to strong bulldosers we put the menhir in its original position, recreating a cultural landscape conceived some 7000 years ago.

The Alentejan cultural heritage is richer from now on.