The Stone City of Tiermes
The interest aroused by the town of Tiermes, in the north of Spain, comes from the fact that it was largely not built, but dug in the cliff. However, the rock was cut so skillfully and so unusually that one wonders if the civilizations to which the city is generally attributed are really at the origin of such works. Tiermes has been the subject of archaeological excavations since the 19th century.
History of Tiermes
It is not known exactly when and by whom this city, located in the province of Soria, in the heart of Old Castile, was built. The first mention of Tiermes is due to the mathematician and geographer Ptolemy (v. 100-v. 175), who designated it as the city of the Arévacas, an Ibero-Celtic people. Conquered by the Romans in 98 BC, the city developed throughout the first century of our era. During the 1st century AD, it became the center of a Roman administrative district and experienced a period of economic growth. It then included a market place, thermal baths and aqueducts. It was conquered in the 6th or 7th century by the Visigoths, then, in the 8th century, by the Moors. Its geographical location, on the border of Christian and Muslim territories, ends up causing the decline of local culture. From the 12th century at the latest, Tiermes no longer played any decisive role.
Although allusions to the site are found in various studies dating from the end of the 15th century, it was not until the end of the 19th century that Nicolas Rabal, a local historian, who had visited the city, began to study this architectural ensemble in a scientific way. The city of Tiermes was then largely intact due to the mild climate.
And its inhabitants
A number of constructions and fittings found in Tiermes are quite unusual for the time when it is estimated that it was built. This is the case, for example, with the piping system which served both to irrigate and to drain the land. Research shows that some sort of pump is absolutely essential for the system to work, but they have no idea what it might look like.
In many places, the walls and ceilings have an unusual thickness of 1.50 to 3 meters. In addition, many buildings or public places are equipped with ramps, on which we can distinguish a system of tracks, 1.40 meters wide. Finally, the entire plateau is crossed by narrow furrows, which sometimes lead to underground galleries.
In the 1960s, researchers found that these remains strongly resembled a modern air defense system, with a kind of bunker, in which civilian populations could take refuge in the event of attack, and a network of rails, which was used to transport heavy weapons.
Subsequent excavations then brought to light new elements, incompatible with what could have been a fortress of the time such as, for example, pits, which strangely reminded of World War II trenches and for which nobody proposed of satisfactory explanation. Furthermore, none of these developments could be attributed to any of the peoples established in Tiermes after the Roman conquest, and it was concluded that the site must be much older than previously thought. No doubt it had been inhabited by a people, for whom these arrangements met a specific purpose.
In the years 1980-1990, all kinds of speculations started appearing, according to which these vestiges were the work of prehistoric extraterrestrials seeking, by an adapted artillery, to protect themselves from attacks coming from space. More serious scientists point out, however, that such considerations are often contradicted by advances in science.
