Menir da Abelhoa

The Menhir of Bulhoa, in Portuguese Menir da Bulhoa and also known as the Menhir of Abelhoa, is a granite megalithic standing stone near the parish of Monsaraz, in the municipality of Reguengos de Monsaraz, Évora district, in the Alentejo region of Portugal. The Government of Portugal classified it as a National Monument in 1971. It is thought to date back to between 3500 and 2500 BCE, while an atlas estimate based on typology allows a wider span, from 4000 to 1000 BCE.

The stone was overlooked for a long time and was identified in 1970. It then lay flat on the ground, with its upper part separated from its base, which had been used in a nearby grape press. It was restored to its original shape soon after discovery, and the fracture remains very noticeable.

It stands on a flat area at the base of Monsaraz hill, on the road between the villages of Outeiro and Telheiro. It is part of a megalithic nucleus that includes the menhirs of Monte da Ribeira and Outeiro and the Xerez Cromlech. The menhir has a phallic appearance and is about four meters high and one meter in diameter.

The stone is decorated with engravings depicting the sun's rays, a staff, and wavy and zigzagging lines. Having lain on the ground for so long has contributed to the erosion of the carvings. It is not known whether the carvings date back to the origin of the menhir or were added later, although the motifs resemble others from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras.

Portugal's highest concentration of menhirs is in the Alentejo, where the Menhir of Meada is the largest on the Iberian Peninsula and the Menhir of Outeiro, near Reguengos de Monsaraz, is the second largest in Portugal. Menhirs of this western European megalithic type are usually not associated with burials, and most appear to date back to the Stone Age.

The summary at the top of this page was written by Claude Sonnet 5.5 (2026-11-06) from the cited Wikipedia article “Menhir of Bulhoa”. The numbers in it were checked automatically against the source text. The rest of the page is the article itself, the structured records and computed distances.