Original subtitles

Back then,

snow and wind

were purer.

The stars were closer to us.

Under our mother's sight,

the nature

continuously shrank

to the invisible.

[mumbles children's song]

The mother and the child are going to sleep now.

It's dark already, and now, it's colder out there.

It sounds like someone is arriving.

No... It's just the rain that falls.

I need you to get some milk for tonight, son.

- Where's the girl? - I couldn't find her.

I've searched near the river until darkness started to take place.

So I thought she took another route.

You ought to go look for her tomorrow, before sunrise.

[mumbles children's song]

Ilda, take the girl home, now.

Mom, the nurse haven't arrived yet.

Antônio found nothing near the river.

Maybe she'll come back tomorrow morning.

Go to my room and get some dry clothes.

Get the boy now.

I pulled my sleeves, I felt the freshness.

And I pulled with strenght the pockets of my apron.

I leaned against his legs,

I got distracted by them,

it almost made me fall.

In March, the herbs pierced the grasslands

like millions of small, fragile spears.

We sit here again, Ana,

by the sun which still warms us...

Before the night falls

and above us shine the stars

so long extinct.

One day,

I came home after distributing bread in the villages...

I put the grains in the mill,

baked the bread in the oven,

it was years ago.

You weren't even born, Ana.

I was coming on my donkey called Setembro.

She was galloping quickly,

the village was almost at sight.

The path was buried in cistus flowers,

near the big lagoon.

Suddenly everything was darker than the night.

All of the lake birds and frogs were silent.

The world was coming to an end.

I got off the donkey, who stopped moving.

I thought of my children there in the village.

It was cold

All of the silence fell to the earth.

I could feel the donkey's heart beating fast,

and her warmth.

I didn't know how much time we were there, static.

And then, the sun suddenly reappeared

right up in the sky.

It was an eclipse, Ana.

There were people outside and the children ran towards me.

Someone was telling what had happened,

calmly.

But I wasn't calm.

I knew the night,

but that immense darkness,

the sudden coldness heavy on my chest...

Did you have a good trip?

Look at the sunlight.

It's like a flame of many colors.

How does the sunlight has so many colors?

The sunlight is called white light.

The sunbeam passes through the prism,

the prism separates all of those colors...

Later I could explain you why,

maybe when we go to a lake,

for example.

There were groups of people here

who lived from livestock.

Therefore, in principle, with animal skins,

they could aswell have invented

a form which is very simple and rudimentary.

It could have been invented locally.

But if you think there were people

directly linked to Mesopotamia,

or at least the area next to the Middle East,

who came here to explore all of this from the time of minerals,

like bronze for example... - Tin...

Yes ... In fact I am referring only to the Phoenicians.

Because before the Phoenicians,

the Tartessians have controlled the Tin Road near Gibraltar,

which was an emporium

clearly influenced by Crete,

and Crete evidently

received a lot from Mesopotamia

through these ports near the Middle East...

Evidently we have a series of hypothesis

about the possibility of the introduction by foreigners,

but we can't disregard the hypothesis of a local invention.

Now, it's not safe to claim one of them with certainty.

Speaking of Mesopotamia is interesting,

but it's a vast subject.

It would be too much to talk about.

What is Mesopotamia?

Listen, Alexandre, Mesopotamia is a place very far from here,

to the East.

Have you ever heard of Egypt and Babylonia?

It's around there, next to Babylonia.

It's a land with a lot of rivers, water, canals,

an ancient place.

Older than our Lusitania.

To cross these rivers, this water,

they needed to invent things

like these bottles, wineskin bottles..

André, maybe he'll understand better...

Mesopotamia... "Meso" means middle

and "Potamus" means river.

So, it's a land between two rivers,

a very fertile valley

on the Arabian peninsula,

therefore it flows through the Indian Ocean.

This is an area between two rivers

that is very fertile.

It's a place where a lot of important facts for the civilization happened.

I think for now

any other explanation would be excessive.

Listen, Otávio, one of the things I wanted to talk about

that doesn't seem quite documented

is the problem with our rafts,

after the drawing of the work of Ornwell

in the rafts of the Cours Supérieur du Gange.

These are the issues I'm pointing out: the problem with security, stability

and the other is their relationship with shells skins.

You write here "correspondent perhaps in its primary forms,

an evolutionary and technological stage

prior to the documents available."

Technologically, did it advance in terms of stability,

forms of navigation?

You know that.., I didn't have these elements about our rafts.

Elements that were documented, directly.

Therefore, they are being made only now.

They disappeared what, 20, 30 years ago?

And now they are going to be reproduced exactly like they used to be

So, in this work, I had to document, to exemplify

with an Indian model,

but similar to the description I have,

a raft that corresponds to our model.

I have a description here

of how my friend made this raft.

In this letter, my friend told me

Following your request, here is the information you wanted:

In this kind of raft

there is a pair of ropes attached and

a few pieces of wood placed above them.

As this kind of transportation involves a lot of danger

since the raft can easily lose stability and turn,

we transported from 4 to 6 people only.

That's one of my doubts about it.

How could 4 or 6 people be sustained by 4 goatskins...

But this is the kind of thing we only see in Bemposta.

Various accidents happened due to the low safety

this kind of transportation offered.

The bottles were made of goatskin.

The skin was removed entirely.

They'd only cut the legs and head.

You see?

Here is the description you asked for earlier...

Then the skin would be all covered with pitch

and turned upside down,

but before, we cut all the hair off of it,

sew the ends of the legs

and only leaving an opening in the neck to fill it with air.

The same bottles used to make the rafts

were used aswell to transport wine and olive oil,

being of great utilization.

Even today, there are those who use them for this purpose.

Once filled, they are loaded on animals

who transport those to the desired place. Etc, etc.

Therefore, if you ask me about the stability problem,

analyzing the subject leads to this conclusion:

Let's assume we have here 4 bottles.

These things are a bit heavy

and usually are completely immerse,

but is the water line really relevant here?

No, because effectively the height is very small,

and as the bottles float,

they do it necessarily,

specially when there's load.

So, as we see, this aspect isn't relevant.

The important thing is width and the raft's own weight.

I see.

Which is the case, for example, when we have a canoe's core made of wood,

something that happens in the Pacific.

These canoes acquired great stability

when the pendulum was invented,

because the arm increases the width,

giving it more stability,

independent of weight,

which is much higher than the bottles',

made only of skin and air.

As we see, regarding stability, this is what I can tell you about.

Still, we don't know how 4 pieces of skin

could transport 4 to 6 people, this is what we're gonna see.

Going back to the technologic progress issue,

this is another aspect, clearly.

It regards two different concepts.

The skin shells are sort of a box,

made of a wooden frame made ​​of tent pegs.

- They can be round too, right?

- In general, those used in America

(it seems they have been transported from the Peninsula)

consisted of a rectangular frame,

gaining advantage mainly

because they used sheep skin

and clean wooden stakes,

in a way that it could be used to make a tent,

This way, it could be organized

in order to make a box lined with skin.

Moreover, in Tibet, there are forms of this kind.

This concept as a form of navigation

is quite different from a raft.

A raft is a floater

in which water could raise its height and even reach the load.

A skin shell is a watercraft

in which the water can't get in.

That said, when it comes to the raft, the problem with stability

may be less serious than with the shell.

Because if the shell doesn't have at least enough stability to keep the water out,

it drowns.

While the raft doesn't drown, it can turn upside down,

a certain danger to the people on it and the raft itself.

But when it comes to state which model is more evolved,

it seems to be a difficult subject.

Because it's evident that, in one hand,

building a rectangular vessel like a box made of skin

is an easier option.

As a form of navigation,

it's clear that a vessel is more evolved than a raft.

Therefore, to the cultural process of a determined society,

we could say it's a subject to be dealt with case by case.

The subject of Mesopotamia is of great interest to me.

There is another fundamental element:

the big resemblance or the perfect identity

between a family of Portugal vessels like Aveiro and Figueira da Foz

and the votive boats of the Royal Tombs, from the first dynasty.

These trips were related

with the worship of stars, deities.

In Egypt, for example, there were boats related to the sun,

boats related to the moon.

And both sun and moon were god's representation.

Some of them were masculine, some feminine.

These boats traveled depending on the specialty

of the gods to which they were dedicated.

Of course, later, this sort of belief

was widely spread,

they reached other people

and found, for example, in Northern Europe,

boats that served as tombs to people.

It was as if suddenly,

these people found the origin of life,

therefore their own mother...

Some sort of re-encounter with the origin.

And in reality, I don't know if poetically,

that boat represents the origin of life itself...

They had their servants, their meals,

their tables, their chairs.

In short, a different way of living.

But apart from these utilitary equipments,

everything they used

as if they were the same as when they were alive,

there was something else much more important,

the possibility of their souls

to navigate in those ships, those sacred ships,

to join the deities they believed in.

Therefore, the boats corresponded, primarily,

to the identification of people, deities,

Erstwhile,

when these vessels were the main transportation facilities,

there was also a strong identification

between the people and the vessels they used,

which reached a high degree of intimacy...

because the water was considered a sacred element aswell,

the element that originated life, the source of life,

therefore, they believed that when someone died,

their soul would go to their boat

in order to meet the deities.

This way, the offer of a boat

was no longer a question of giving an object they used

in the same way as food or something else.

It was a vehicle

their soul used to survive...

Be careful.

Well kept, reserved, it seemed,

but, inside himself, who could defend him?

Who, in its interior,

could hold the growing waves of its origins?

Not a worrie could reach him in his sleep.

But in his dreams, he struggled.

He was febrile.

Oh, he was all alone.

He, young, fearful yet,

was imprisoned and tangled

to the countless vines of his interior life,

Captive already of existence's first signs,

submerged by the exuberant vegetation,

so close to the animal life.

Oh, how he let himself be seduced...

He loved.

Loved everything he brought within himself.

And the inner confusion, the ancient jungle,

mutely collapsing,

above which raised, like a greenish light,

his own heart.

Followed his roots to the immense strength of the origins,

there, where his little birth had taken place.

He went down to the oldest blood.

To the abyss.

There, where the terrible lays.

Saturated of his ancestors,

like vestiges of dissolved cordilleras, and quiescent,

riverbeds, already dry, from the old mothers.

The magician Nery!

Jewels of rye and straw.

Jewels of tortured insects.

Where rests at night

the birds departing.

Fields of snow.

Branches of snow.

Birds of snow.

You bring on your neck a trickle of water.

Brings on its neck a trickle of water.

Miranda!

Miranda!

Miranda...

Miranda...

Mother! Mother Ana!

You can go now, my daughter.

She bleeds incessantly through her mouth.

I don't know if I can stop the bleeding.

It would be better to warn her son still today.

She is very aware of the gravity of her state.

She is very calm, apparently,

perhaps she doesn't want to frighten the children.

Ana! Mom's in danger.

Call your dad and tell him to come immediately.

Where's the boy?

Don't forget to feed Miranda.

Give her hay and a handful of rye.

I'll go right away, mother.

Alexandre!

Alexandre!