Menir de Aspradantes

The Menir de Aspradantes, also called the Padrão menhir, is a prehistoric monument in the parish of Vila do Bispo e Raposeira, in the municipality of Vila do Bispo, in the Algarve region of southern Portugal. It was classified as a Property of Public Interest in 1992. It stands near the village of Hortas do Tabual, on a fold of land at a height of about 95 m, beside the Ribeira de Vale Pocilgão and about two kilometres from the coast.

The monument is an upright, roughly cylindrical menhir carved from the local white limestone. It measures about two metres above ground, but it was originally taller, because its upper part was cut off. Its two thickest axes measure about 1.25 by 0.63 m, and it is very fractured in its middle and far portions.

It belongs to an alignment running from northwest to southeast, together with three monoliths each about one metre high. The first is 7.25 m from the menhir and is of flattened globular shape, with small hollows on its upper surface. The second lies about 4.20 m from the first, and the third at a similar distance.

The menhir was probably raised about five thousand years ago, in the Neo-Chalcolithic period, although some researchers have proposed a much older date, which could make it one of the first structures of this type on the European continent. It was studied archaeologically in 1987 and in 1989, and again between June and July 2025 as part of the international programme Megalithic Origins: the emergence of monumentality in Neolithic Western Europe, led by Marta Diaz-Guardamino of Durham University, with the Portuguese team coordinated by Mário Varela Gomes.

The 2025 work aimed to investigate the structure in which the menhir was set, the cause of its deep cutting, and to sample sediments for luminescence dating of its foundation and its partial destruction. Two other monoliths on a nearby ridge were identified as fragments of a second menhir that was destroyed and moved, probably associated with this one. Preliminary results were described as very positive and promising.

Menir de Aspradantes is a menhir (standing stone) in Vila do Bispo e Raposeira, Portugal. Wikidata describes it as: standing stone in Vila do Bispo, Portugal. A typological estimate: 2800 BCE to 1800 BCE. Material: calcite. No English Wikipedia article exists for it; the full text below is the Portuguese article "Menir de Aspradantes", shown in the original language.