The main reason for stopping at Porto Pollo was access to the extraordinary site at Filitosa. You can take a taxi there and back (30EU) easily, as (surprise!) there is no transport. Porto Pollo itself is quite sweet, though almost 100% a tourist resort. It has a spectacular beach. The village is thought to be named after the Corsican Porto Priddu, or 'ruined town' as it has been destroyed so many times in the centuries of war that have overcome the island.
Filitosa is a site that was first inhabited about 6500 years ago, by Neolithic villagers who lived in caves and rock shelters, and ate what they could pick, fish or hunt. Their remains, in pottery, spear heads and the foundations of some of their shelters are still there. It is the megalithic era about 3500 years before Christ, and the Bronze age around 1800 BC, however, that have made Filitosa famous.
In the late Neolithic, the inhabitants of the village, which stands on a granite outcrop above a well-stocked river which irrigates good farmland, began making menhirs. These started as simple upright slabs of stone, with little adornment, hewn from the abundant surrounding rocks. But in the Bronze Age, Corsica, almost uniquely, started turning its menhirs into anthropomorphic carvings. The statues gained faces, helmets, shapes and arms. They bear swords and daggers, drape cloaks from their shoulders, have definable and distinct expressions. These things are big: see the picture of one with Pip in the album. Made by chipping granite with stone.
After some 500 or 600 years, the statue-menhirs were torn down, and used in the building of torri, or towers. These round structures, which give the Toreen people their name, were probably used for some religious cult, but it's not known what. There are three of them at Filitosa, and it was in their walls that the wealth of statue menhirs were discovered - in the 1950's. They had lain undisturbed for over 3000 years.
The statue-menhirs are as inexplicable as the great stone carvings of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Here is a poor culture: despite the local wealth of resources, Corsica has always been made poorer by its insularity. It has primitive technology, but has learnt about stone. The people trade, certainly as far as Sardinia, as obsidian (unavailable on Corsica) has been used on this site for 1000 years. Accustomed to weave and spin, effective farmers, but with no metals, they start to make these sophisticated and demanding items. Nobody really knows why.
One of the theories is that they were representations of the invading Toreens, distinguished by their helmets and metal weapons. By making these statues and placing them around the village, they appropriate their strength. Then, when the invasion was complete, the Toreens took them down and de-powered them by using them for building material. One of the problems with this story is that so little is known about the Toreens anyway. Where did they come from? And why? One story is that they were driven west by Ramses III of Egypt. But no-one is sure.
It seems a lot of work, to make images of people you've killed, though we recalled the theory of cannibals that eating your enemy gives you their strength. Perhaps they worshipped these helmeted newcomers. Or intermarried with the. We just don't know.
We are left with these mysterious faces, staring from the rocks after thousands of years first of glorification, then ritual destruction followed by oblivion and neglect. They scowl out at us, urgent in their unknown story, still potent and moving, witnessing the passing of time.