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Luigi Lineri

the schoolkids

I invite you to go for a long run backwards, in past times. There are no banks, there are no villages. Adige river chooses its route every year as it likes best. An Adige quite different from today one. With so much water that scatters in a thousand rivulets. Animal flocks live near water and follow it in flood and dry periods. Fish. Birds. Herbivors. Predatories. Everyone needs other. Everyone needs water. All of them meet at the watering. Among predators there’s a terrible animal, extremely cunning, who managed building a weapon, a STONE cudgel and is prevailing on all others.

Let’s go two thousands years forward. We arrive to METALS. Breeding. Agriculture, “Casotti” (Big houses). Roads. Rome. Alphabet. Christianity. The stone age finishes. Nomadism finishes too. Stone civilization places are abandoned. Willingly forgotten since they were witness to many sufferings, tragedies, incredible efforts. Adige river is step by step canalized. Water carries away the soil and leaves in the lowering bed huge gravel expanses. Man, this strange predatory, needs water too, so the great Adige river, in Zevio at least, is died, dried.

Luigi Lineri - a beautiful journey among the stones of the river Adige between history and myth - www.luigilineri.it - 2006