Take a look at this photo. Well, definitely a fingerprint. How did it happen? What are those stripes?
Now I will tell you …
This tiny island of Ballenac in the Adriatic Sea is located just off the coast of Croatia. He found himself under close public scrutiny quite recently. Located in the Šibenik archipelago on the Dalmatian coast, this 1.4 square kilometer islet is entirely covered in cobwebs of stone walls. From a bird's eye view, the oval Ballenac Island looks like a giant fingerprint with long lines of low walls that resemble depressions in skin.
Like many Western European countries, including Ireland, England and Scotland, much of Croatia's countryside and coastline is covered with stone walls. They were built centuries ago and have historically been used to mark boundaries between adjacent croplands. The walls were built without the use of cement. Instead, the builders carefully selected the stones and carefully matched them together.
Most of the Croatian coastline is characterized by karst topography, i.e. is rocky. To cultivate this rocky landscape, farmers painstakingly selected stones from the soil, from which the walls were then built. Ballenac Island is only half a kilometer in length, but the total length of its walls is as much as 23 kilometers. The Croatian government asked UNESCO to include its stone walls in the list of World Heritage Sites and the request was granted.
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In addition to defining agricultural boundaries, the walls also protect crops from strong winds, making agriculture possible along the coastline. On the island of Pag, with the longest coastline in the Adriatic, farmers have built an aggregate length of more than a thousand kilometers. Islands like this are the true wonders of Croatia that make the country so popular.
It reminded me of the stone fences of Ireland - remember those?
And then there is the Great Croatian Wall.