Imagine an Art Gallery as big and important as the Louvre, only, 17.000 years old...

In the heart of Portugal, in the margins of the River Côa, an Art Sanctuary dating back to Man’s chidhood, is now in danger.

One day, about 17.000 years ago, men of some primitive tribe entered the mouth of a river on the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. For a moment, some of those men forgot the hunger, the cold and the beasts, the imperatives of survival and, as if they were moved by an obscure call, engraved and painted the rocks on the banks of a river.

In the eyes and movements of those men there was certainly that unspeakable something that already separated them from the other animal species.

It was the Man of the Paleolithic, who already questioned the great mistery of life and death.

17.000 years later, in 1983 A.C. some of those first engravings were submerged when the Man of the 20th century, the civilized Man, built the Dam of Pocinho in the River Douro.

Twelve years later, in 1995, a new Dam is under construction. At stake now is the group of the remaining rupestrine engravings, many of which are shown for the first time in this report, as well as rupestrine paintings dated back to the Neolithic, from 7.000 to 9.000 years old, only seen by the experts of UNESCO.

In the mouth of the Côa, far beyond the scum of the controversy where it seemed doomed to dry, a river starts to flow: a sacred river. Unless it is stopped, should the works in the Dam be carried on.

(Source: RTC)