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Tuesday, August 14, 2007

CYCLOPEAN WALLS


Much of Kephalonia's ancient structures came a tumbling down in the 1953 earthquake as I mentioned before, but this wall may never come down.
I do like my ancient history, so made a point of leaving the main roads on an excursion one day to find this ancient site.
This vast wall was erected around 1200BC, a fortified ring of stones covering a huge area, and crossing hills and dales, to protect an ancient acropolis, remains of which have been found in the scrub covered plain below.
Rather like the pyramids, no-one is quite sure just how the ancients got these stones in place - they are VAST - some are 9 foot across and 3 foot high - incredible stuff.
Legend has it that the wall was erected by the race of one-eyed giants of mythological fame, The Cyclops (one of which was famously blinded by Odysseus on his way back to Ithaca which enraged Poseidon, 'The Earth-Shaker' so).
That, then, is how these walls (there are several over ancient Greece) became known as "Cyclopean Walls" - a great story.
We had to have our wits about us to locate these walls though, blink, and we'd have missed the narrow entranced long dirt track through rock and scrub to find them
Well worth the effort though.


Click on the photo to enlarge.

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