Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883-1959), the foremost Italian historian of religions, citing Aristotle and other classical authors, recalls a protosard legend where it was “narrated that in Sardinia there once lived powerful chiefs and the illustrious (Heraclids) and, after death, their bodies were preserved intact, and still offered the appearance of sleepers rather than of the deceased. Behind this legend we found the Sardinian rite of incubation at the tombs of the ancestral heroes, namely at the Tombe dei Giganti. Those Sardinians who performed the rite were freed from visions and night terrors; so much so that they could sleep for five days and as many nights in an uninterrupted slumber, without being aware of the passage of time” (R. Pettazzoni “la Religione Primitiva in Sardegna”).
Attached, the tombs of giants of: Iloi at Sedilo (ph. Bibi Pinna and Diversamente Sardi); Pascaredda at Calangianus (ph. Francesca Cossu); Su Niu ‘e su Crobu or Sa Corona ‘e Crabi at Sant’Antioco (ph: Andrea Mura-Nuragando Sardegna); Paule Luturru at Samugheo (ph. Marco Cocco); Osono at Triei (ph. Lucia Corda).
