Anywhere else in the world the access roads would have been clogged with miles of cars. Not here, in this mysterious and secret casket, there is almost cosmic silence. The breeze is stardust, wet with water dust pushed with difficulty by an overcast sky. In the entrance square, darkness dominates without reflections. When we leave the Calvary of the Carlo Felice, just before Abbasanta, we know where we're going, but not what we'll find. The arrow indicates Santa Cristina, nothing more. Yet the fifth night of the new year could once again let the moon enter the heart of the Sacred Well, in one of the most fascinating places of the great and unexplored Civilization of the Sardinian People, the Nuragic one. The steps are wet, the gates ajar, in the distance you can glimpse a constellation of red lights scattered among the sparse grass and millenary stones. Star trap

Like a star trap, stretched out towards the sky, ready to chain the moment in which the big moon wedges itself into the ancient land of Sardinia. Every 28 days for three thousand years in this exclusive proscenium of history and stars there hasn't been a single time that the appointment has failed. After all, the moon, the earth and the sun have continued undaunted to rotate in a precise and perfect manner in that mechanism which makes the universe the first port of call of science, the one which reaches infinite and still unexplored horizons.

The pioneers of the stars

Among those pulsating lights hidden in the heart of Santa Cristina, sitting on rocks burned by time, almost in contemplation, when midnight still has an hour ahead of it, there are three of the protagonists of this story. It is they who for years have been telling around the world that Sardinia is a sacred land and not a land of war, it is they who, amidst widespread disinterest and ostentatious academic superiority, make an effort to ask anyone to touch, to see with their eyes, what happens in this land dotted with the signs of a "superior" civilization that has sighted the stars like no other.

The Farmer at Cambridge

There is Mauro Peppino Zedda. They call him the Farmer, but in reality he is an agricultural expert with the wisdom of someone who knows how to use numbers and topography. Since the eighties he has been around with theodolites and triangulations to record orientations and inclinations. It is he who overwhelmed all the others. Here, in Sardinia, no one listened to him. Until he flew to Cambridge, Department of history and philosophy of science. To receive it Michael Hoskin, the number one in the world of ancient science and astronomy and the history of astronomy. When the expert "Farmer", who speaks like an archaeo-astronomer, shows him the topographical surveys, the maps, the temporal measurements, he immediately understands that we are talking about something unique and extraordinary.

Engineer & Professor

In the land of Sardinia, three thousand years ago, a people considered rustic and not inclined to science, had, however, not only based their lives on a profound sacredness, but had hinged it on one of the most complex and fascinating mysteries, that of astronomy and the universe. It was Hoskin, who became President of the Commission on the history of astronomy of the International Astronomical Union, who cleared the studies of the "Farmer", promoted in the field to the rank of archaeo-astronomer.

Insanity to ignore

The writings and evaluations of the illustrious scientist leave no room for doubt: it would be madness not to study and not investigate this extraordinary scientific variable of the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia. With him in the presence of this hermitage strewn with darkness and silence, there is Paolo Littarru, the engineer who by day investigates the environmental devastation in Sardinia and by night triangulates the stars on the archaeological monuments of the island. When you ask him about the suggestion of the stars on the Nuragic civilization, he replies with a hard face: I'm not passionate about suggestions, I prefer exact science. It is he who, more than others, considers it a mistake not to invest in a new horizon based on archaeo-astronomy in the land of the Nuraghi. As an engineer on earth and in the sky he never stopped, not even in the face of denunciation or denigration. With them, on this night still covered by a pall of clouds that come between the big moon and the earth, is Arnold Lebeuf, scientist by profession, nationality straddling France and Poland, declared residence in Sardinia.

From Krakow to Paulilatino

He, a luminary of cultural anthropology, archaeoastronomy and cultural astronomy, professor at the University of Krakow, preferred to move forever to the land of stars and nuraghes to study this fantastic world of the Nuragic civilization more closely. In Paulilatino they even gave him honorary citizenship, for having opened the eyes of those who had closed them.

A Nuragic masterpiece

He too, to tell the truth, like many others, had arrived at it wary, but first Zedda and then Littarru had convinced him to study the Sardinian-astronomical mystery. And he did. Its multilingual publication travels the world: «The Nuragic well of Santa Cristina, a lunar observatory». For them, the Farmer, the Engineer and the Professor, one thesis holds true above all: we can discuss the function, but not the exact science of astronomy. And this night, waiting for the Epiphany, counts as the umpteenth proof queen of their theses. To approach the cosmic theater we are distrusted from looking at the sky, to observe rigorously, first of all, there is that imposing nocturnal recording machine that Lebeuf's team had placed in what he considers «a masterpiece, which unites a 'unusual sobriety with incredible architectural complexity". He explains it in the enchanted darkness of this exclusive proscenium, unique in the world: «Unlike other buildings of the same type, each successive layer is slightly set back from the one below, leaving a space at each level, a narrow margin of about two centimeters» . The professor looks at the sky and hopes for the passage of the clouds, but does not shy away from the night lesson: «It is impossible that the ancient Sardinians wanted to complicate the construction of this monument in such a dramatic way if not for a precise reason: its function astronomical. Of the almost one hundred Nuragic wells known on the island, almost all are built with rough stones: only three are of carved stones, and only Santa Cristina has been preserved in its integrity».

The astronomical intuition

The astronomical intuition was born in 1972, Carlo Maxia and Lello Fadda, on the proposal of Eduardo Proverbio, measure the inclinations of the monument. The results are astounding: the value obtained is approximately the lunar declination at the time of the Greater Northern Lunistice. The measurement, however, would not be very precise. It was in 2005 that the French-Polish teacher decided to land in Sardinia to touch and see Santa Cristina in person. For him that visit will be a life changer. Years of surveys begin, more and more in-depth. The topographical crossings, the flow of news that reaches him from Mauro Zedda and Paolo Littarru, on other Nuragic examples, are every day a decisive test. His conclusions are objective: «The analysis of these measurements clearly shows that it is not possible to suppose for a single instant that such a unique, precise and effective construction could derive from chance, luck or accident. We are facing the most advanced astronomical instrument ever seen, dating back three thousand years. Made by ancient Sardinians".

Lunar midnight

It is midnight. The silence is broken only by the irrepressible clicks of the modern Reflex that immortalizes the story. A light gap, for a single moment, opens up in the clouds. The lunar reflection, which is recorded every 28 days, enters the heart of the oldest and most sophisticated astronomical instrument of the Nuragic civilization, that of the engineers of the sky and the farmers of the earth.

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