A very rich historical past

The Salento area’s link with prehistory is a feminine one: on one side of the peninsular are the splendid and fertile Veneri di Parabita (Parabita Venuses), the big mother figures with pronounced maternal attributes, carved in bone, dating back 15,000 years and currently preserved (mould) in Maglie’s Civic Museum of Palaeontology e Palaeo-ethnology, together with an extraordinary repertoire of fossil remains representative of Salento’s prehistoric fauna; on the other, the Adriatic side, the Neolithic Grotta dei Cervi (Deer Cave) at Porto Badisco is one of the most impressive examples of rupestrian (rock) painting in Europe, with more than 3,000 pictograms in okra and bat’s guano, characterised by the intense movement in the narrative: dances, deer-hunting scenes, geometric and shaman figures. Beneath the cliffs of Castro is Grotta Romanelli (Romanelli Cave), home of Palaeolithic Man in Italy, it has what must be the first Puglian graffiti revealing a mythology based on sexual symbolism, and Grotta Zinzulusa, with its fantastic spectacle of stalactites and stalagmites, accessible from a steep path (that has been cordoned-off for ease of use) or from the sea. Further South, at Capo di Leuca, the Southernmost point there are antelucan caves: Grotta Tre Porte (Three Door Cave), Grotta dell’Elefante and Grotta dei Giganti (The Giants’ Cave), where pachydermic (belonging to thick-skinned, four-legged animals i.e. an elephant or a rhinoceros) bones and teeth have been found, and Grotta del Diavolo (Devil’s Cave), which has brought to light hearthstones, utensils and pottery from the Neolithic period. There are also other sea caves which can often be reached by land and provide the ancestral memory of this outermost strip of the peninsular, also undisputed home of the rare Salentine lily and of Pellegrino hawks.
From Punta Ristola up to the  Bay of Uluzzo on the Ionian side the coast is wild and studded with dozens of caves, unique in its colours, reflections and play of light. Near Porto Selvaggio Nature Park two caves, Grotta del Cavallo (Horse Cave) and Grotta di Uluzzo, open on to the sea, these caves have revealed Palaeolithic deposits, handmade objects and large mammal remains, exceptional fossil finds here have provided palaeontologists from all over the world with new keys and directions for reading and research, the seal on the Salento’s qualification as a an invaluable open-air Prehistoric and Protostoric mine of inestimable documentary value in Europe.
The first Salentine Totem, the «Venus» discovered thirty years ago in Parabita is said to be a harbourer of good fortune, a masterly essence of femininity and fertility on a par with the most famous Austrian Venus in Willendorf. If the totem is propitious the Salentine Megaliths are enigmatic both in themselves and in their final destination.
The megaliths are spread all over the province and can probably be dated back to the Bronze Age, they are therefore chronologically later than the analogous and impressive megalith phenomenon which developed along the Atlantic coasts of Europe. Menhir, dolmen and specchie (mounds) represent one of the most spectacular and also most mysterious moments of old Salentine history, placed as they are between legend and supposition, in the mortifying absence of certainty.
As the first civilised and organised inhabitants of the area now occupied by the provinces of Lecce, Brindisi and Taranto, the Messapians created a civilisation that was very advanced for its time, evidence of which, sometimes very impressive evidence, has come to light in recent years, during the numerous excavations that have taken and are taking place all over the area.
If the memory of the old sites has been destroyed beneath the modern town plans of Lecce, Torre San Giovanni, Porto Cesareo, Otranto and Santa Maria di Leuca, the fate of other Messapian centres is very different and archaeological surveys have had more luck in: Rudiae, with the remains of a nymphaeum and an amphitheatre; Cavallino, with its miles of walls and five entrances; Roca Vecchia (Melendugno), with its craters and the Grotta della Poesia (Cave of Poetry), a splendid natural temple for Mediterranean navigators; Muro Leccese and Vaste (part of Poggiardo’s territory) with burial sites, silver treasures and Greek-made objects.
Archaeological and epigraphical heritage of great interest can be admired at Lecce’s Provincial Museum (the oldest in the region), Gallipolli’s Civic Museum, Alezio’s Archaeological Park, Ugento’s Civic Museum, and for an overall picture in Taranto’s National Museum, full of statues, Messapian vases, fibulas, craters, painted and glazed pottery, lamps, imported and local terracotta. These are the careful custodians of an original and tapestried past which was alive a long time before the Greek colonisation of the power and inspiration of this people of two seas.