The Quesera de Zonzamas and the Quesera de Bravo are strange structures made up of longitudinal channels carved into large blocks of basalt, some four meters long. They are in Lanzarote. There is no similar archaeological record in the Canary Islands or in Spain. Not even in North Africa, the place of origin of the ancient Canaries. Only in Palestine, near Jerusalem, is there a similar structure, while in Malta there are canals but they look like cart tracks fossilized in the rock. What are they for? Do they have any domestic utility? What do astronomers who have made measurements from these enigmatic sites say? There are no convincing answers, only speculations. What there is no doubt about, after asking dozens of professionals from the scientific community of the Archipelago, is that we are facing “one of the great archaeological mysteries of the Islands,” says Juan Antonio Belmonte, astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands ( IAC).
Belmonte and his IAC colleague César Esteban were the first Spanish astrophysicists to open a new line of astral research linked to archeology: cultural astronomy. They have worked in numerous sites around the world but their debut in this discipline was in the Canary Islands, where they carried out their doctoral theses in the field of astrophysics. “I have no idea,” is the sincere response of Belmonte, a Canary Islander who was born in Murcia in 1962, when we asked him what the Quesera de Zonzamas is.
The deputy editor of Journal for the History of Astronomy and co-editor of Archaeoastronomy: the Journal for Astronomy in Culturethe reference magazines in archaeoastronomy, has made numerous trips to Lanzarote in search of answers. He knows perfectly well the two cheese factories on the Island – there are references to another one but it was destroyed by a construction project – but it is the Zonzamas one – declared a historical-artistic and archaeological monument 45 years ago – in which he has invested the most time. His conclusion is forceful: “Astronomically there is absolutely nothing.” The cheese maker has six channels; “If you point to each one of them, there will be some astronomical phenomenon, such as the appearance of a star at some point during the year, but is it relevant, is it important?” It is “one of the great archaeological mysteries of the Islands,” says the researcher during one of the interviews with Canary Islands Now-elDiario.es to carry out this journalistic investigation on the archaeoastronomy of the Canary Islands.
Belmonte did not give up when his first mediations did not provide irrefutable astral connections. On one occasion, he visited the site with two astronomers specialized in archaeoastronomy. “One of them was Stanislaw Iwaniszewski, the inventor of the term cultural astronomy,” Belmonte tells us. “After observing the structure in silence for several minutes,” the IAC scientist recalls, he said, “Sympathetic magic.” But sympathetic magic of what? Belmonte asked him. “The chronicles say that they spilled milk in their rituals, well that could be what it was for,” responded the Polish-Mexican astronomer. “And what do you think the moon represents? Would you dare to put it in writing?” the Spaniard asked him again. “His answer was a resounding no.”
César Esteban has also visited the Zonzamas Cheese Factory. The first time he had a problem with the instruments “and the measure was of no use.” However, the IAC astronomer continues, “the cheese mills have many grooves, they are very thick and some are roughened.” With that width, “you can adjust whatever you want because you can fit a good part of the sky.” The two Spanish pioneers in cultural astronomy agree that an astronomical connection cannot be certified.
The Zonzamas Cheese Factory, located less than a kilometer from the main nucleus of the Zonzamas site – see chapter 1 of this trilogy on the archaeoastronomy of Lanzarote – is called that because it resembles a gigantic mold for making cheese, although it has nothing What to do with said work and its usefulness and meaning remain a mystery. The cheese factories are characterized by having longitudinal and approximately parallel channels carved into large stone slabs.
The interpretations that have been given to these rock manifestations, as stated Biospheredigital“they are varied and range from religious rites to milling, through mere devices for collecting and storing water.” There is another theory that maintains that it is a lunisolar calendar, and consequently it would have an astral connection. It is defended by the geneticist Antonio Arnaiz Villena in an article, published in SCIEPublish Nature Anthropologyin which he relates the cheese factory to a structure with a certain similarity that appeared in Palestine. The author states that “the calendar of megalithic rocks in Jerusalem is identical to that found in Lanzarote.”
To begin with, unlike the scientific articles consulted to carry out this journalistic investigation on the archaeoastronomy of each of the Canary Islands – only the trilogies that we will soon dedicate to La Gomera and Fuerteventura remain -, the geneticist’s article does not provide mathematical and astrophysical calculations to demonstrate measurements.
There is more data that questions whether the cheese makers are solar calendars: as can be seen in the image preceding this paragraph, the Israeli cheese maker is in a hole. Therefore, as astronomer César Esteban observes, “what sense does something with an astronomical orientation have for so many things if it has no horizon? How can you mount such a complex speculation with so many interdependent elements based on such imprecise “evidence?” reasons the IAC scientist. “It’s pure imagination,” says Esteban, about the doctor’s work.
Juan Antonio Belmonte, Dr. Esteban’s colleague at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, does not want to express his opinion to dismantle Arnaiz’s approach. The reason?: “There is nothing to contradict, the foundation is simply null.”
Arnaiz’s proposal is based on a theory by Marcial Medina, co-signer of the article and retired port worker from Lanzarote, in which he relates the six blocks of Zonzamas and its six furrows to the twelve months. Medina’s measurements, an enthusiast of pre-Hispanic culture, are the product of observation, with the support of computer applications and a theodolite. The only graphic evidence that Medina has provided to the author of this report about a possible astronomical connection is the photograph that is just below this paragraph.
As soon as he saw the photo, Belmonte recognized its authorship because he has maintained contacts with Medina. “The problem,” the astronomer reasons, “is that you cannot see the profile of the solar disk and it is difficult to determine where it came from. “1,000 years ago, it would be a little further to the left.” Would it mark the summer solstice approximately? “It could be, but if you look at the photo, none of the channels in the cheese factory face the sun.” The scientist concludes with a double question: “Does this mean that the Quesera outcrop was chosen deliberately for astronomical reasons or because it was a good surface to carve the rock?” The answer: “I don’t know.”
César Esteban “finds it significant” that the Sun rises on a special day like the summer solstice, but “he lacks knowledge of the real angular diameter of the solar disk.” For the IAC astronomer, the image raises some doubts because “I don’t know if it is saturated and appears larger or a semi-transparent circle has been included indicating the real size” of the star. It must be taken into account that from the Zonzamas Palace, the solar sunrise of the equinoxes or middle day occurs right over Tahiche Mountain.” That research, recalls Esteban, a Canary Islander who was born in Elda in 1964, “was already published by Juan and I many years ago.”
Antonio Arnaiz has little standing within the scientific community of the Canary Islands after stating, in a professional forum, that Guanche and Basque are related. He came to genetics through the study of histocompatibility systems (HLA) for transplants. He studied in the US and “he is very good at what he does,” Dr. Jorge Onrubia, the Canarian archaeologist with the most experience in North Africa, tells this Editorial Staff. “The problem,” he indicates, “is when it addresses other disciplinary fields that require expert knowledge that it manifestly does not possess. It is not about defending what I call the tyranny of experts, but about recognizing that there is scientific knowledge and practices that can only be acquired at the price of years of study and work and that, consequently, cannot be improvised.”
Professors from the History faculties of the ULPGC and the ULL agree in questioning the credibility of the magazine in which this theory that links the Holy Land with the Canary Islands has been published, which cites “lost languages, such as talking about Iberian writing in the Sahara and in Lanzarote.” Unlike scientific journals, in which peer review is essential, what specialists have reviewed this work?
Debates aside, the purpose of these structures is a mystery that will probably last decades; perhaps centuries. If the Zonzamas Quesera is linked to the archaeological complex of the old town of Zonzamas, the Bravo Quesera – owes its name to its discoverer, the prestigious naturalist and geologist Telesforo Bravo (Tenerife, 1913-2002) – is not in any archaeological zone. It was built on the lava flow of the Corona Volcano, in the north of the Island. In addition to being somewhat smaller, its orientations are different.
If science has not been able to certify a precise astronomical connection, at least until today, its relationship with the beliefs of the majos – a gentry of the Guanches of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura – is plausible because the worldview – the set of opinions and beliefs that make up the image of the world that a person, era or culture has – is a concept, by definition, ethereal.
Probably for this reason, very few archaeologists or historians delve into the quicksand of beliefs. One of them is Professor Miguel Ángel Martín, author of several books; latest, The memory of the sacred, ancient canaries (Bilenio, 2024), dedicates a section to the Bravo and Zonzamas cheese factories.
Unlike Martín’s other research, more limited by his astronomical knowledge and the support of applications such as Stellarium, In the six pages dedicated to the cheese factories mentioned, he does not reach any concrete deduction; refers to rites to ask for water and good crops, as the chronicles point out, questions Arnaiz’s theory and gives more weight to “stellar observation”, since “some stars and constellations, during their sunrises and sunsets, have a coincident cycle in certain months, covering precisely the six months of the barley cycle.” To support this theory, it does not provide mathematical or astronomical calculations.
His final conclusion is that “it must have been a ritual setting to control the cycles of nature, a kind of conceptual symbolic revolution that allowed the Majos to imagine that forces and gods existed on a different plane from the physical world, being agriculture, among them.” other issues, which prompted them to seek shelter and security in the spiritual world.”
What there is no doubt is that these are sacred places, and even more so in the Zonzamas Cheese Factory, with podomorphic engravings in its surroundings. The possible relationship with the stars Vega, Capella, Sirius and the Pleiades, which Martín points out, could be a starting point for specialists in cultural astronomy to direct another look towards the stellar horizon of the Quesera de Zonzamas, the greatest mystery of archeology of the Canary Islands.
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