Manuel Ruiz

Recently there has announced a discovery that has caused commotion between the lovers of the Jaén , heritage, and that we bring to the section of “Scientific News” of our Bulletin, before it takes place in the academic world, since it is dependent on his publication in a scientific magazine.
There treats itself about the finding about what seems to be a solar calendar of 4500 years ago, and that has been realized by the archeologists Narciso Zafra, Francisco Gómez and Manuel Serrano, of the University of Jaén, and the archaeo astronomer César Esteban, of the University of La Laguna.

This solar calendar is in a rocky coat, named cave of Toril, in Otiñar’s valley, to approximately thirteen kilometres to the south of the city of Jaén. This coat is situated in an almost vertical wall, to the beginning of a ravine, and in his walls there are in a more or less eminent way dozens of circles and concentric semicircles, carved in the rock.

The finding of the scientists has consisted of discovering the relation of some of these petroglifos with the lights and shades that are projected in the cave of Toril in the equinoxes and solstices, and especially, in the shade that is projected in the Winter solstice on a set of five concentric semicircles. The scientists think that this engraving allows to identify, not only the most short day of the year, but it allows to be following the proximity of this date with up to ten days of anticipation.

Provided that the cave of Toril contains numerous circular petroglifos, and that had numerous estalagtitas and stalagmites (already lost), is not disheveled to think that we can be before a place that it was allowing to determine singular days along all the year round.

It is known that a population sheltered Otiñar’s valley in the neolithic one, with a strongly walled settlement, dolmens, and points of extraction of sílex. What function might have this system of calendar? The investigators have not clarified it, and it will be necessary to wait to the scientific publication to know if they say something in the matter, though Manuel Serrano, in the day in which it announced the finding in situ, on the same December 21, already advanced intentions on having referred to a search of synchrony between the cycles of the human being and those of the sky.

What is undoubted is that we are before a singular discovery, surely related to the sacred universe of this people, understanding for sacred that one that provides sense. Everything charges felt when we are aware. During thousands of years, the shade of the Winter solstice has crossed the walls of the cave of the Bullpen, ignored by all. But last December 21 it returned to be interpreted, at least with the heart. Several hundreds of persons we could (there we were the collaborators of the Institute M ª Dolores Fernandez-Fígares and the one who writes these lines) to spend the sight for the Toril Cave with a different imagination. And it is that the important thing is not what the eye sees, but the door that opens in the imagination.

The major enemy of the human being is the time that passes, before which one can fight, or hide, or the most civilized thing, become his ally by means of the calendar. To put name a days. In the bottom, there is no difference between the human beings. And again the calendar activated several times millenium, because interpreting is to give sense.