Porto Badisco (Puglia – Italy)
small town near Otranto. It is said that the first Adriatic shore touched by Aeneas in his flight from Troy, landing in Italy, was this one. Here lies the famous Grotta dei Cervi, which as many as six millennia ago, according to archaeological reconstructions made with extreme accuracy, welcomed the first inhabitants of the area.
The cave was discovered in February 1970 by Severino Albertini, Enzo Evangelisti, Isidoro Mattioli, Remo Mazzotta and Daniele Rizzo, all members of the Pasquale De Laurentiis speleological group from Maglie. After the cave's discovery, Professor Paolo Graziosi, Italy's leading scholar of prehistoric art, initiated a series of research campaigns that lasted more than 10 years, the results of which were published in a volume, The Prehistoric Paintings of the Cave of Porto Badisco.
Here, he describes the paintings found as “the most important and qualitatively impressive complex of post-Paleolithic parietal pictorial art known in Europe, as all its manifestations are found enclosed in the same cave.” Inside the cave are black and red paintings depicting hunting scenes, deer and signs that are difficult to interpret. The place is not open to the public because human presence could alter its microclimate.
Among the pictographs featured is one that depicts a cruciform celestial body with a sort of cockpit in the center. Also in the same pictograph are depicted hominids destroying villages with their weapons, kidnapping their inhabitants.
Mystery within a mystery
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Could this be the real reason why Deer Cave is closed to the public?
To hide a remote alien presence from people?
Supporting this question is the account of speleologist Mattioli, one of the five discoverers of Deer Cave, who, in the 1970s, during one of his many explorations, startled on hearing a rumbling of rolling stones and a sound of drums, decided to move away from the site.
After a few years, Mattioli organized a new expedition. Not only did he return to listen to the previous strange noises, but he caught a glimpse a short distance away of himself of a figure about eighty centimeters tall, human-like, with two fiery eyes. Needless to say, this was the last time the man went to the cave.
Would this unconfirmed ”alien” presence in Deer Cave explain the existence within it of prehistoric carvings depicting figures in which so many have seen representations of extraterrestrials?
The pictographs depict mystical figures, human figures, hands, animals. There is even a pictograph depicting a man with webbed feet. And then, there is a cycle depicting deer hunting, hence the name of the cave, formerly called the cave of Aeneas. Many of them were executed using bat guano as “ink.”
A cook … a scientist
A focus on its importance
But what's so special about Deer Cave? Inside it in the 1970s, a number of pictographs were discovered dating back to the Neolithic period, dated between 3,000 and 4,000 BC.
The discovery, as often happens, was accidental and was made by five members of the Salento “P. de Lorentiis” speleological group from Maglie, near Lecce. Accompanying the few insiders inside the cave is still Nini Ciccarese, scientific director of the speleological group.
There are approximately 3,000 pictographs depicting humans, animals, as well as small handprints and mystical figures that may be between 5,000 and 8,000 years old. Some depict deer hunting scenes, hence the name of the cave. It was formerly called Aeneas' Cave, as Porto Badisco was identified as the mythological site of Aeneas' landing narrated in Virgil's Aeneid. But let's go in order.
There are three corridors for about 2km. One of the corridors, however, has a separate entrance.
The pictograph of God dancing
One of the best-known pictographs of the Grotta dei Cervi is the Dancing God, which has become somewhat of a symbol of Salento, often depicted in tshirts for sale in tourist resorts. In reality, it appears to be a depiction of a shaman.
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