The menhir discovered in Monte do Trigo is of particular importance for the Sotavento region, but is also of regional interest.

The first archaeological work in São Brás de Alportel dates back to the 1870s and 1880s, when the municipality was still a parish of the municipality of Faro, and it was Estácio da Veiga, one of the pioneers of modern archaeology in the Algarve, who made the first inventory of finds.

A century and a half later, the first archaeological excavation in the history of the Municipality of São Brasense began on August 14. This was due to the discovery of a possible menhir in the summer of 2021 at the top of Monte do Trigo, in the Machados district, by a local resident looking for trilobites (fossils) on the ground.

The Regional Cultural Directorate of the Algarve collaborated with the City Council of São Brás de Alportel and the University of the Algarve, and "I immediately became 95 percent sure that we were facing a menhir," professor and archaeologist António Faustino Carvalho told reporters on Friday morning, August 18, during the presentation of the preliminary results of the fieldwork, which ended the same day.