RIDING HIGH ON THE ALTO ALENTEJO
The decision to establish the kingdom’s Coudelaria Real stud farm in Alter do Chão was by no means a matter of chance. Unique geographical features of the location explain its selection and have ensured its uninterrupted use since 1748. But the story doesn’t begin there. The special conditions that persuaded king Dom João V’s court to choose the Coutada do Arneiro area as the ideal location for the royal stud farm also serve to explain why more than seven thousand years ago our predecessors chose this same locale to first try their hand at farming, thus establishing one of the oldest settlements of uninterrupted human inhabitation known in western Europe.
Recent archaeological excavations in the Coudelaria de Alter area confirm that the locale has been inhabited without interruption since the end of the last ice age, if not, in fact even longer. Here, huts were built, protected from the strong north winds by the massive granite outcroppings. The dead were buried in monumental funeral mounds. Thoughts, fears and aspirations were given expression on painted rocks. Stone megaliths were erected to celebrate fertility and fecundity. And even more tellingly, among the first efforts to domesticate animals, one finds proof that these included the horse. That proof takes the form of a horse tooth found in an early Neolithic habitat near the Coudelaria Real and confirms that as early as six millennia before Christ horses, arguably domesticated, or perhaps still wild, were already grazing on the area’s pastures. The tooth today on display in the Alter Real Foundation’s museum exhibit bears telling witness to the millennia-old relationship in these lands between man and horse. The museum also presents historical and archaeological evidence of a significant and one-of-a-kind collection of Neolithic mother-god symbols, which were buried in those dolmens deemed worthy of the honour. The first human populations that took root here etched messages into the granite rock faces, which though ravaged with time, have survived the following eons. One finds representations of the sun and the moon, enshrouded in the enigmatic depressions in the land that afford sanctuary in the region of the farm. The astral cycles which have since time immemorial marked the rhythms of life and death are another reminder of this rich history to be found in the Coudelaria de Alter.
Through the years the name given to these lands has changed. Once called the Coutada do Arneiro, then the Coudelaria Real de Alter and it is now known as the Fundação Alter Real. But then as now, it is the sandy and well-drained, western-facing and sloping soils that have contributed to making this land well suited to breeding and pasturing, as well as small-scale agriculture. This fertile heritage is well documented in archaeological records. These lands are indeed best suited for animal production. So with the arrival of the Romans, for whom the priority was decidedly on intensive farming of crops, they thus tended to be somewhat neglected in favour of other terrains. Records of the Roman period can indeed be found in the Alter do Chão area, but these are less numerous than in the surrounding concelhos, or counties, especially that of Marvão, the areas around the city of Ammaia, and at Monforte in the Torre de Palma ruins. And yet, it is at this last site, in its sumptuous floor mosaics in the opulent rooms of the Torre de Palma rural manor that equestrian depictions return to the fore. The owner of this substantial farm is seen commissioning an artist, most likely a Greek, for five medallions in iron honouring horses assumed to have been champions.
With the coming of the Islamic invasion, the horse in this region of the Alentejo was given renewed attention, this time with the accent placed on the arts of war. Ibn Maruán, the founder de Badajoz and Marvão, who roamed these lands in the IXth century, relied on swift horses for his successes on the battlefield. In the algazarras or Moorish battlefield, as in the common graves, the horse is always present. The subsequent Christian Reconquista placed its faith in the promise of success that the horse embodied as a weapon of war. The castles of the Alentejo are full of examples that bear witness to never-ending episodes of conflict in which the horse played an important role. Of note are the horse bones unearthed in the excavations at the Praça d’Armas, or main square of the Vide Castle. In the Alentejo, so long the stage and victim of so much war making through out the history of Portugal, no battle was fought without horses playing their part. And even when, as times slowly changed and the horse was eventually replaced by newer weapons, with gunpowder becoming dominant, the horse, or perhaps rather the spirit of the horse lived on, a reminder of a bond of respect and mutual dependence stretching back thousands of years, through times of both war and peace.
Jorge de Oliveira
