Whether in the Risco Chico, in the Risco Grande, in the Tercer Risco, or in intermediate spaces, the Montaña Sagrada de Santa Cruz presents us with abundant and imposing megaliths: menhirs, pseudodolmen, triliths, anthropomorphs, zoomorphs… a spectacle for the senses.
As we climb the Sierra, the Sacred Mountain, we are no strangers to the imposing stone masses that accompany us on our ascent. These large lithos , ometimes radiant with meaning (funerary, astronomical, cult, initiation, protection…) and today fused with the landscape, whose rough shapes are mute witnesses of what they once represented, were described by Mario Roso de Luna, who in the early twentieth century already spoke of this megalithic culture in the Sierra de Santa Cruz, where he highlighted large stones that were not located naturally but clearly saw the intervention of the hand of man, judging by the arrangement they presented and that, today, we can fortunately witness.
Currently, there are other researchers who speak of the so-called Mother Civilization.The official version considers them to be the result of the erosion of the elements over the millennia, and that they were the ones who would mold the immense rocky masses that today we interpret as megaliths, anthropomorphs, zoomorphs and other related expressions.
Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures in stone, large monoliths with shoes to maintain their balance, triliths or stone masses oriented to the stars according to the movement of our planet, are some of the examples that are used to defend the thesis of human intervention as opposed to the work of the casual erosion of the rock.
Before reaching the Risco Chico, we find the Cancho de la Misa, an ancient prehistoric altar. And if we look up to the top we will see a kind of pseudocrómlech that crowns the Risco Chico, as well as a trilithon in its plain. In the path that joins the two cliffs there is a flat menhir worked by the Human, as well as zoomorphs with heads placed in pairs. In the Risco Grande we also have the large masses of its summit that, according to many researchers, denote having been rearranged by the hand of Man.
But it will be beyond the Pico de San Gregorio, on the path that goes south to the Tercer Risco, where we find the richest manifestations: a trilith and a pseudodolmen described and photographed in 1916 by the renowned archaeologist José Ramón Mélida. And further on a pareidolia that clearly shows the head of a turtle, a game for the senses once immersed in the sacred and magical landscape of this mountain.
And already in the Third Crag, we find the Sanctuary where we can see the stone heads (anthropomorphs), one of them being the so-called Samson of the Port (huge stone mass in the shape of a body with a head), as well as triliths and knightly stones in difficult balance. And descending towards Puerto de Santa Cruz, the Thinking Sage appears to us, an enormous figure that looks like a wise man in a meditative or thinking attitude.
Colossal stones that dazzle our imagination and are shown as a sign of identity of those first settlers who inhabited this Sacred Mountain.
