L A M E S A

ANOTHER STONEHENGE TO BE DISCOVERED

            A. Geographical Description

Lamesa is a mountain barangay that is located northeast of Balamban. It has a total land area of 1,563 hectares. It is bounded by Biasong, Liki, Cabagdalan, Luca, Matun-og, Bayong, Vito, and Hingatmonan.

It was politically subdivided into eight (8) sitios, namely: Bonbon, Kantipuhan, Ipil, Sauron, Oyong, Lamesa Proper, Checkpoint, and Gaang. It basically depended on its agriculture as a main source of income and livelihood.

            B. Historical Background

NAME-ORIGIN OF THE BARANGAY

According to oral history, in the past Lamesa was a dense forest and jungle. Hunters came to the area to hunt wild animals especially the monitor lizard, wild pig, wild chicken, monkey, palm civet, leopard cat, and the Philippine eagles. One day as the hunters went inward to the jungle they had discovered a circle of stones very similar to the Stonehenge. The hunters believed that those stones where created by either Nature or by the enchanted beings led by their queen, T’ang An. As time went by the place became the rendezvous of hunters. They often used the stone in the middle of the circle as table for eating. Hence during the Spanish period the place was called “Lamesa” which meant “table” in both French and Portuguese.

WHAT IS A STONEHENGE?

Stonehenge is a prehistoric site two miles (3.2km) north of Salisbury in Wiltshire in England. It is made of a henge with standing stones in circles.

There were three main building phases, each between about 3100 BC and 1950 BC. The first circle, ~3000 BC, was made of timber. The post holes for the timber have been found. Around 2600 BC, the builders gave up timber in favour of stone. Most of the construction took place between 2640 and 2480 BC.

The first stone circle was a set of 'bluestones'. The holes held up to 80 standing stones (shown blue on the plan), only 43 of which can be traced today. The bluestones (some of which are made of dolerite, an igneous rock), were thought for much of the 20th century to have been brought from the Preseli Hills, 160 miles (250km) away in modern-day Pembrokeshire, Wales. Another theory is that they were brought much nearer to the site as glacial erratics by the Irish Sea Glacier.

Later, ~2400 BC, 30 huge grey sarsen stones were brought to the site. They were erected in a circle 33 metres in diameter, with lintels on top of the standing stones. The remaining blue circles were placed as an inner circle. The site was in use until the Bronze Age. The modern Stonehenge consists entirely of original stones, some of which have been replaced in upright position.

There are also several passage tombs and many tumuli nearby.

No one knows who built Stonehenge or why they built it. During the summer solstice, the sunrise lines up with some of the stones in a particular way. This suggests that the arrangement of stones may work as a calendar. In Egypt and South America, similar ancient buildings can be found. They also show the time of the solstice.

RELATIONSHIP OF THE STONEHENGE TO DRUIDISM & TO LAMESA

There are many symbols related to Druidism and to the Ancient Druids. They did not use symbols for worship such as idols, nor did they meet in churches or temples of any sort while performing sacred rituals. The sacred places were mostly associated with groves and streams. Circled stones, usually of vast size, enclosing an area of about thirty feet in diameter, formed their sacred ground when not in a grove of trees. Ireland and Great Britain have vast amounts of ancient Druid altars, beds, rings, cairnes, stones, and stone circles. The most common site recognized today is Stonehenge at Salisbury Plain, England. 

There is a great similarity between the Stonehenge and the Druid symbols to the circle of stones in Lamesa, namely:

CAIRNS
	These were either large stones or a pile of stones that were placed on high ground, such as a hill, and used to worship their deity.

CROMLECH
	This is a large stone placed upon two upright stones to make a table or altar. It was always placed in the center of the circle.

DOLMEN
	Also called Portal Tombs, they consisted of three or more standing stones capped typically by a large monolith and the dead would be buried under an earthen mound. Erosion over the millenia caused these structures which were built between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago to appear like an altar or table, hence the term dolmen.

According to common belief, it was Merlin who built the Stonehenge with the help of a giant to build a monument in honor of the people who fought to defend the country. In Lamesa, the local Stonehenge was built by the enchanted who used the circle of stones as their convention center or a place of rituals. Possibly the ancient people of the barangay were either practicing Druidism or worshiping the animistic spirits of the place.

At present, in sitio Gaang a circle of stones very similar to the Stonehenge could still be seen. Though, the said historical landmark is in ruin due to the Americans and other treasure hunters who had blasted it in the 1930’s for the belief that there was gold buried underneath. Not very far from the ruins of the local “Stonehenge” is a cave which if one would focused on its stone structure he could conclude that the cave is not really a natural cave but a dolmen.

During the Spanish period around the middle of the 19^th century A.D., people from the town began cutting down trees for the lumbers needed to construct the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi. The forests and jungles began to disappear. A lot of the places were named due to this migration like: Bonbon was named after the large amount of sandy soil in the river where those lumberjacks used to catch shrimps before going to the jungle; Kantipuhan was named after the large number of kantipo or atipo trees found in the area; Ipil was named after the biggest tree that existed in Lamesa at that time; Sauron was derived from the word “sawron” which means catching gushing or dropping water since people would fetch drinking water  from a cliff within the area; Oyong like the Kabungkalo hill was named after a man named Oyong whose house was used to be a resting place for soldiers who would pass by searching for gold where the bamboo trees would bend since accordingly the bamboo trees found in that sitio were planted there as markers of the gold that were buried in the past; and Hingatmonan which was named after the abundance of catmon trees around the area ("hingatmonan" means literally as "a habitat of catmon trees").

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BARANGAY

In 1918, during the American period, Lamesa was established as a barrio. Its first leader was Simeon Ripdos, followed by Eslao Baynas, then by Juan Napoles as tenientes del barrio. Afterwards as the tenientes were replaced by capitanes, Erminiano Ongban, Sabilo Pacquiao, and Sariaco Ripdos became capitanes del barrio. The longest to serve as barangay captain was Daniel Eway Sr. who served from 1972 until 2007.

In the 1950’s, influx of migrants from different directions came to settle near the said circle of stones. They planted camote (sweet potato), banana, coconut, and vegetables.

In 1965, Hingatmonan was separated from Lamesa after it was turned into a barrio due to the imposition of the Barrio Charter or Republic Act 3590 by Pres. Ferdinand Marcos.

In the early part of 1983, a lot of people became interested in the circle of stones at sitio Gaang. The big tree that once grew near the stone that served as the cromlech was cut down which caused the latter to erode and totally collapse. They began testing the stones for stonecraft. It was also within this decade that sitio Sauron had opened to mining.

As electrification had reached Lamesa on July 29, 1983, the New People’s Army also penetrated the area and continued until in 1986. The local people were terrified and shocked about this. Coping with the situation, the people formed Civilian Home Defense in 1985 which after a year transformed into CAFGO.

 In 2003, a large portion of land near Lamesa National High School was made into a dump site for Balamban’s (especially coming from Buanoy shipyard) solid waste. Following that, the Balamban branch of Cebu Normal University was established there at Lamesa with two school building constructed and donated by Tuneishi Heavy Industries. But CNU did not last long at Lamesa since it transferred downtown.