>Yes, I know it look like a face in this photo, with a mouth full of pine needles, but that’s a trick of the shadows. There are at least a dozen cup marks in this stone, and they most certainly date back to the Bronze Age. There are various theories floating around as to what purpose these cup marks had. Maybe for ritual offerings, maybe for astronomical purposes or as pre-historic sign posts. Everyone has a theory, no one really knows. There is supposedly another stone nearby, one hill over from the altar mound at Goldbichl. For me it’s fascinating to think that these markings are from modern humans, with just as much intelligence potential as we have today, who lived here in these hills 6000 years ago, probably right where villages still exist today. And that this practice had spread all over Europe, from Merano to Northumberland. What was going on?
Further up the hill, the Lanser Moor, or Lans Marsh, a nature reserve.
Nearby, the Lanser See, a popular swimming hole, deserted already. There’s a chill in the air now, even on sunny days, and swimming season is vorbei. A legend tells of a rich man who envied a farmer’s grove of trees, and took him to court to obtain it. The judge was unfair and the farmer lost his land, but not before he cursed it to sink under water. Which it did, and now we have the Lanser See to swim in.