Salento: the Menhir, the Dolmens, the Specchie

THE MENHIR
The term "menhir" it originates from the Breton dialect and it means "long stone". monolithic parallelepipedis are long hammered in the rock, for this they call "pietrefitte" and you/they can be found isolated or gathered in alignments so that to form some complexes. The use and their destination it is not clear but you/he/she is held they were of the points of various reference, that signalled confinements or that they were tools of measurement of the time. The menhirs are tied to the cult of the sun and in general to the phallic cults. The menhirs salentini, around 80 they measure in average 4 meters and they are similar to the menhirs of the Corvaglia, of England and of the Balearic ones. Characteristic to almost all it is that the widest faces are directed by south north. The tallest menhir in Italy is St. Totano to Martano of meters 5,20.

THE DOLMEN
Close to the specchies, they are present also the dolmens, built for lasting in the time, they are the most ancient architectures in Europe: the so-called ones "stones without name", they represent in fact of the traces of a distant past and forgotten. The term "dolmen" it derives from the fusion of two Breton words: it deals with a monument megalitico generally constituted by a slab of stone vertically supported horizontally on stones infitte in the ground, so that to form an environment, for the mhours to sepulchral use. Very often covered by a tumult. Notable presences Sundays are present to Sweaters, Melendugno and Minervino.

THE SPECCHIE
Tumults of earth and stones, used by the sapiens-hunter as places of diurnal and night time sighting, in the Salento they still preserve twenty-six. To Taurisano, in the south of the Salento, there is Silvia the greatest specchia of the world.

Botanical garden:
Driven visit in a botanical garden been born in the stone with over 3000 kinds of collect fat plants and listed.