Torrean civilization

The Torrean civilization was a Bronze Age megalithic civilization that developed in Southern Corsica, mostly concentrated south of Ajaccio, during the second half of the second millennium BC. The characteristic buildings of this culture are the torri ("towers"), megalithic structures similar to the Sardinian nuraghes (although the torri were smaller and less impressive), from which the culture takes its name, and the castelli ("castles"), more complex buildings that include a wall, a tower and huts. According to preliminary investigations conducted during the 1950s by the French scholar Roger Grosjean, the Torrean civilization began when, at the end of the second millennium BC, the Sea People known as Sherden landed on the island from the Eastern Mediterranean, subduing the native megalithic population. The Sherden brought metallurgy to the island and built the torri, which Grosjean thought were temples dedicated to the worship of fire and the dead. They also erected statue menhir representing their leaders armed with swords and a horned helmet, similar to the Sherden immortalized in the temple of Medinet Habu in Egypt. Currently, the Torrean civilization is seen as an indigenous civilization, and the result of a local evolution started since the Neolithic with possible Sardinian (Bonnanaro culture), North Italian (Polada culture) and later Central Italian (Apennine culture) influences. In fact, according to modern dating, the first towers and castles were built a millennium earlier than Grosjean thought, at the end of the third millennium BC, at the same time or even before the appearance of the first protonuraghes in Sardinia. Also, contrary to what Grosjean thought, metallurgy had existed in Corsica for centuries before the supposed "arrival of the Sherden near Porto Vecchio." The Terrina site, near Aleria, shows that the processing of copper had spread on the island from the early centuries of the third millennium B.C.