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The Trail Reveals Its Secrets |
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Written by Sayli Sosa Barceló|
Thursday, 03 May 2012 07:37
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 The eagerness of young Avilanian archaeologist Roberto Álvarez Pereira is back to the news these days. He is the hand behind new findings in the Júcaro-Morón Trail that reveal more about this important military construction built in the late 19th century in Cuba.
This time Álvarez Pereira was aided by the free version of Google Earth, a software that allowed him to access satellite images of the Júcaro area in the municipality of Venezuela located in the central Cuban province of Ciego de Ávila.
There he observed mounds on the ground, extending for about 800 meters, lined up in a very particular way that led him to suppose that these were the possible sites of the defense spots of second and third order of the Júcaro-Morón Trail, declared national monument.
With these suspicions, the Directorate of Heritage and its Monuments Office authorized the study of the archaeological potential of the area, which is almost inaccessible and swampy.
In Júcaro there were two forts identified so far, of which some ruins remain, but the rest of the structures were unknown.
With the mud to the waist, Robert and two other enthusiastic men found roundwood remains that could belong to tracks, and other findings lead them to suppose that this type of construction was very close to a kind of toilet and to the forts, but this has not yet been referenced.
In addition, the young specialist supposes that some kind of filling was used to build the mounds and the forts since the soil of those areas, located in the middle of a swamp, is very compact
"The next step-said Roberto Álvarez-would be to request permission from the National Archaeological Subcommittee to conduct research in place. Several entities would take part of that scientific activity, among them, the Provincial Directorate of Heritage and the Local Office of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (CITMA) in Ciego de Ávila.
This discovery of young Avilanian Álvarez Pereira joins the hundreds of locations made by satellites, radar and sensor, allowing scholars from around the world make their contributions from the computer, which has been called remote sensing or high tech archeology.
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| Google Earth image showing, with yellow signs, the possible locations of the sites between two forts. The red strip covers the 800 meters of mounds found |
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