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This blog celebrates the singularities and unexpected revelations of the Balkans. That is on the good days. Other times there is just news from the 'industry' and my opinions on it.

Megalithic Macedonia: into the Unknown

October 20, 2008 • Comments Bulgaria

The weekend before last I had the opportunity of visiting Cacev Kamen, the lesser-known cousin of the Kokino Megalithic Observatory, supposedly one of the world's most important, with Dr. Dusko Aleksovski. This Macedonian archeologist has done more work than anyone on the Cacev Kamen site and firmly believes that, as megalithic observatories go, it far exceeds anything that Kokino has to offer.

At first I was a bit sceptical, I must say, considering the positive press Kokino has received over the last view years. I recall visiting it when it was first 'opened up' in 2002. But after seeing Cacev Kamen, I came away far more impressed with it than with its more famous cousin (which Dr Aleksovski does not even believe ever functioned as an astral observatory, but that's another story).

Just getting to Cacev Kamen, a giant elliptical rock stuck in the middle of fields near Kratovo, was challenging enough. It involved several backroads and a grassy track that ended in front of a thicket. After 30 minutes of walking through pricker bushes, thorny trees and other assorted bramble, we were at the foot of the rock. it was so steep that it had to be tackled from three sides.

The side that faces you when arriving is the one with tiny Neolithic paint (and this was deduced and scientifically tested, the good doctor assures, by a French archeological laboratory) inside a cave accessible only by tiny Neolithic stairs- tiny rounded indents in the rock barely big enough to put the front part of your foot.

The other sides were no different. All around it, there were regular holes in the rock walls and floors where Aleksovski told us beams and planks had once been placed. All manner of unknown rituals and prehistoric esoteria were said to have taken place there. In the central-back half, a sort of natural ampitheater fanned out over the valley. On the hill opposite, the archeologist pointed out viewing rocks through which the light passed on the solstices.

The stupendous views over the farmlands below, and the animated (if not necessarily provable) descriptions of just went on in this inscrutable stone outcropping made it all worth it. The only point where I had to give up was the final ascent to the uppermost reaches of the mount, as the neolithic stairs were pointing straight up and there was nothing to hold on to particularly (I entrusted the camera to the more fleet-footed young archeology student Seth Elder, who I can credit with taking the above photo of Neolithic pools and a post hole, also chosen as the Balkanalysis.com Photo of the Week).

BUT to my credit I did tackle some Neolithic stairs, most of them actually, and consider myself all the better for it. Hard to imagine walking (literally) in the footsteps of those enigmatic ancient people of the Balkans...

Cacev Kamen is clearly off-the-beaten-track stuff: hard to get to, hard to find, and hard to understand without a guide (of which there are about 2 in the world).
But hardest of all to understand is that the site is apparently on the private farmland of an old local villager; the state hasn't been able to - or hasn't tried sufficiently - to reclaim it. According to Dr Aleksovski, 'he wanted the equivalent of two Manhattan apartments for it' in cash, once he learned that it had some archeological significance.

Alas, with Kokino in the ascendent, the 'my Macedonian megalithic observatory is better than yours' thinking goes on, and the current powers-that-be have not expressed an interest in forcing a resolution here. For now, the site is sufficiently far-off and unvisited that no damage will come to it in the short-term.

However, as Dr Aleksovski noted, local peasants had already destroyed some sort of goddess statue clinging to the rock- thinking that behind it stood Turkish gold. Now, there is nothing to destroy, with most of the sall artefacts containing Neolithic inscriptions and rock art having been removed to the museum in Kratovo. Still, it is a shame that the state appears to be doing for Cacev Kamen.