A fingerprint looks like an island in Croatia, revealing a striking resemblance to something far more familiar—a human fingerprint.
There has been massive attention paid lately to this miniature island in the Adriatic Sea. There is a web of dry stone walls covering the entire island, located in the Sibenik archipelago off the Dalmatian coast.
There is something unique and mysterious about Baljenac, making it one of the most unique ones. Airborne, Baljenac (also spelled Bavljenac), with its long lines of low walls, looks like a giant fingerprint with ridges and grooves like the skin.
Croatia’s countryside and coastline are often surrounded by dry stone walls, similar to those found in Ireland, England, and Scotland. The dry-stone walls create a unique microhabitat for a variety of flora and fauna, adding to the island’s biodiversity.
Historical boundaries between adjacent agricultural lands were marked by these constructions dating back centuries. Baljenac Island is an excellent alternative for those looking for an off-the-beaten-path location that is also historically significant. Its distinctive fingerprint-like appearance, combined with its cultural and natural value, makes it one of Croatia’s hidden treasures.
It is not necessary to use mortar to hold the stones together in the walls. Stones are carefully selected and stacked like puzzle pieces rather than being tipped over. Over 105 properties are registered on the island, with most of them belonging to residents of a larger nearby island of Kaprije. Bavljenac does not have any piers or safe harbors.
There are karst topographies along much of Croatia’s coastline, meaning that it’s rocky. In some cases, farmers used rocks excavated from the soil to construct kilometer-long grids surrounding geometric plots, creating a grid that stretched for miles.
A wall of 23 kilometers stretches across Baljenac, an island just half a kilometer long. The Croatian government has petitioned UNESCO to place the island and its dry stone walls on their list of World Heritage Sites.
Apart from defining agricultural boundaries, the walls also prevent strong winds known as “bura” from blowing along the coast, allowing cultivation in exposed areas. Over a thousand kilometers of dry stone walls have been built in Pag, an elongated island with the longest coastline in the Adriatic Sea.
Unfortunately, the Croatian island does not have any vineyards today. Our ancestors made a living through hard work, and only the old stone walls remind us of that. The island is best explored by boat, such as with Archipelago Tours.
Due to the lack of piers or harbors on the island, these tours cannot dock on the island. The island’s maze of dry-stone walls creates a unique pattern that closely resembles the ridges and valleys found on a human finger, making it a must-see trip for people seeking both natural beauty and strange abnormalities. Aerial photography has helped popularize the island’s fingerprint-like appearance. When viewed from above, the intricate maze of dry-stone walls forms a pattern like the whorls and ridges of a human fingerprint.
Related Reading: Palmerston Island: The Remotest Place on Planet Earth
