If they could talk they would tell everything, the destruction of the past and the abuses of the present. After all, an immense patrimony of an imposing civilization such as the nuragic one can be devastated with the fury of the "Damnatio memoriae" or with the sloth and neglect of modern times. We would have to narrate the violent advance of people who came from afar capable, without a legitimate reason, of crushing those "Kolossos", the symbol of Giants in Sardinian land. The history, that of three thousand years ago, however, has left nothing written on the massacre of Mont 'e Prama. No carved paper, if not those statues reduced to a thousand pieces scattered here and there in the hills and valleys of the Giants. Unwritten history, only decodable and interpretable, as archeology teaches. Instead, an innate science is not needed to read the modern cards, those of the state apparatuses that occupy like elephant carriages every draft of the culture and history of a land raped and, then, sedated, despite the most evil abuses and abuses towards its millenary civilization.

Wasteland

In that land of the Sinis, the sacrilege of memory is taking place for the umpteenth time, with proclamations that touch the sequence of a machine gun and the outcome of a requiem. Nine years after a georadar advancing on those hills, the moor on the Cabras Pond is still desolate, as never before. That scream outlined on the maps in the shape of foretold archaeological presences, detected by that device capable of listening and scrutinizing the bowels of the earth through geophysical reverberations, or electromagnetic waves, able to identify all the most evident "anomalies in the subsoil "Of the land. An unprecedented device in the land of the Nuraghi, capable of exploring at certain depths, for several meters, without the need to open trenches, dig or guess.

The modern "Damnatio"

For modern archeology, the most advanced, it means having an aid of extraordinary effectiveness, able to save time and money, concentrating the precious work of archaeologists almost without fail. The modern "Damnatio memoriae" here is outlined by a sequence of acts that leave even the most magnanimous supporters of state and bureaucratic power in the land of Giants astonished. Not only are attempts to cover up the crimes of the State with an abnormal use of ministerial propaganda, but finds are used, reported for years and in themselves for granted, as a screen for the management of the Mont 'e Prama site that does not need commentary to perceive their abandonment and management negligence. Thousands of euros are spent on glossy magazines, cheap propaganda is spent and spreads, functional only to new bandwidths, the emanation and synthesis of public institutions at all levels, unable, however, until proven otherwise, to target projects that go as well as the disposable of a few trips in a group to the land of the Tsar of Russia or of Biden's America.

Court of Auditors stuff

Yet what is taking place in Mont 'e Prama is more a matter for the Court of Auditors than for a journalistic investigation. For this reason, too, we limit ourselves only to the sequence of facts, complete with documents. It would be enough to take into consideration the urgent "jobs", cheap, entrusted to "direct" negotiation, always to the same companies, see that of Mr. Mirabelli of Cosenza, to understand the roughness with which it is held in total abandonment that ' Olympus of the Giants, the same one that experts define as "the most important in the history of Sardinia". It is the timing, the chronology of the facts, that make the Mont 'e Prama case a real crime in Sardinia. State writings indicate that for a year now the procedures for expropriation of those areas have been underway, previously declared insignificant on an archaeological level and now "ready" to be acquired, with serious tax responsibilities, at a high price by the public administration. It is since July 7 of last year, when the Ministry started the expropriation procedures, that those areas are still in the hands of the owners, without that expropriation decree being fully completed. Biblical times, for every minimal procedure, as if not enough time had already been lost. It is on that expropriation, on those “anomalous” assessments of the state, that the Mont 'e Prama affair takes on the connotations of a real case.

Rustic cavalry

The passages of this story are a "rustic chivalry" of underestimations, delays, errors and above all of authorizations issued to say the least "surprising" that will allow you to do everything and more precisely on that site, the same one that we would like today belatedly expropriate. The year of the Giants 2013 runs when Gaetano Ranieri, professor of Geophysics at the University of Cagliari together with Momo Zucca, professor of the University of Sassari, receive funding for a study as modern as it is innovative to be activated in the Giants arena. The title is explicit: «Geophysics as an essential tool for modern archeology, the case of Mont 'e Prama. When the four wheels drag the geophysical antennas in the area, the objective is clear, to understand the archaeological evolution outside that quadrilateral where excavations have been proceeding wearily for years. The georadar, we reproduce the layout from the official scientific documents, hits the south and north sides of the excavation area. In 2013 in the south there is a field of wheat, in the north only weeds. The data is compared, verified, reworked: the result is shocking. According to the geophysical surveys, the anomalies of the subsoil allow us to perceive the presence of a very large and very important settlement. The studies are officially communicated to the relevant bodies, only after a few years, in broad terms, will they be published in scientific journals of international level. One thing is certain, the team of the two universities does not stop at the surveys. Thanks to the help of the geophysical "ear", new and punctual excavations are opened, those that will reveal one of the most imposing giants among those of Mont 'and Prama. Since 2013, however, the data on anomalies have been running quietly. Those with the "stink in the nose", who look at archaeological innovations with deep disdain, have the approach of those who do not believe a single word of what those findings declare.

Cuttings & business

It is here that the Giants affair takes on the contours of a story that goes far beyond a journalistic investigation. In fact, between 2015 and 2016, in those exact points where the georadar had indicated the continuation of the archaeological site, a man from Santa Giusta buys all the surrounding land. From the notary to the plowing, the step is quick, certainly not like the affixing of a bond for the immediate protection of that area. Not many weeks pass from the plow to the planting of thousands of cuttings. In a moment the site of Mont 'e Prama is surrounded. When the vines are already climbing in the rows, the Superintendence arranges, on 4 July 2018, with a very serious delay, sampling-tests along the vine. The assignment to the company "Trowel" of Cagliari is lightning fast. Fifteen thousand euros to test above all the map 1586 of sheet 8 of the Municipality of Cabras. We publish the photos. They find exactly what the radar had indicated. The continuation of the archaeological site is without fear of denial exactly under the vineyard. Too bad that on June 8, 2016, ignoring the geophysical surveys, made known to the archaeological leaders of the State, the Superintendent had declared "the inexistence of problems concerning the surface processing and the completion of the planting".

"Poor and uncertain"

Moreover, the same superintendency on 20 October 2016 had written a report even defined as "Technical - Scientific" which stated without fear of denial: "The same poor and uncertain picture emerges from the results of the more systematic surface reconnaissance and geophysical investigations carried out in 2014 ". Nobody says it, but those who raise the latest find to the sky are the same who six years earlier had denigrated not only the work of the radar but had even declared that the picture in those areas was "poor" and "uncertain". Despite that substantial "denigration" of the geophysical indications, on November 29, 2016, a decree was carried out for the "indirect protection" of an area slightly larger than that of the initial excavation. Indirect protection, a rose water solution. For the "direct" one, it will be necessary to wait until July 2017. The vineyard, however, at that point will be in full production, systematically plowed and irrigated. It produces wine barrels, with the Giants underground.

"Champagne" of the Giants

Now, however, it is time for expropriation. Those lands in 2013, the year of the geophysical discovery, were uncultivated. Now, land registry and productively, they are vineyards. The Superintendency, the same that had declared that those lands could easily be planted, now expropriates them for "great archaeological interest". Too bad that those vineyards are now worth much more than uncultivated land. The expropriation decree speaks of a current value of 308 thousand euros for a few hectares of land, even if it has not yet declined the value of each individual plot. The Region showing itself magnanimous in terms of expropriations to be paid at a high price has chosen an appropriation "ad abundantiam" by providing an expense of half a million euros for those lands. The transition from uncultivated land to "champagne land" is just worth a distraction of State. The Giants can wait. Their hill is still occupied.

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