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So, we like to watch TV shows like Coast and Sacred Wonders of Britain and Ancient Weather - all interesting tidbits of information without the breathless hysteria of The! Monumnent! That! Killed!!!! 10,000! Men! and similar "everything is a blow-em-up-good scene in a cheesy movie" approaches to entertainment documentaries. At least with things like Edwardian Farm the silliness is from experts being genuinely excited about the true details of their speciality. (Gosh - I can just imagine a similar program being filmed in the states - they would probably have Ruth Goodman mud-wrestling her neighbour as they compete to get the best stall in the market - argh.)
Anyhoo. We have seen several episodes of Sacred Wonders of Britain
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03npt4m
And one of their theses, broadly, is that the first group of farmers were seen as visionaries which the next generation venerated, and so the next generation spent this huge amount of time building stone mounds (covered in dirt) and stone circles as a way to claim the landscape and venerate the visionary generation.
I am rather doubtful of the veneration bit, considering how the current young muscled generation thinks about its parent and grandparent generation. Also, for the young providing building power, farming wouldn't be novel - farming would have been all they'd ever known. Feature kids having never known a world without internet - are they busy venerating the creators?
Anyhoo again. One thing that big piles of rocks do, though, is stake your claim to this bit of dirt. If you tell the people sweating to shove the rocks across the ground that they are doing it for their god or gods, and that outsiders can contaminate their hard work, then it is probably much easier to convince them that outsiders need a good seeing to (still works today y/n?).
So, we'd reached this point in our cogitations, when Lorne said that it was easier for wolves, since they just run around peeing on the boundaries of their territories. And I said that probably explained all the stone circles because then groups could travel from afar so that their head pee-er (peer - hoho) could pee on the group's special rock in the circle. Or maybe everyone peed on all the rocks. And Lorne said that certainly explained the ditches that surround many of the stone circles.
So Stonehenge - a giant willy waving contest festival site. :)
Man - the pong would travel for *miles*. :)
Anyhoo. We have seen several episodes of Sacred Wonders of Britain
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03npt4m
And one of their theses, broadly, is that the first group of farmers were seen as visionaries which the next generation venerated, and so the next generation spent this huge amount of time building stone mounds (covered in dirt) and stone circles as a way to claim the landscape and venerate the visionary generation.
I am rather doubtful of the veneration bit, considering how the current young muscled generation thinks about its parent and grandparent generation. Also, for the young providing building power, farming wouldn't be novel - farming would have been all they'd ever known. Feature kids having never known a world without internet - are they busy venerating the creators?
Anyhoo again. One thing that big piles of rocks do, though, is stake your claim to this bit of dirt. If you tell the people sweating to shove the rocks across the ground that they are doing it for their god or gods, and that outsiders can contaminate their hard work, then it is probably much easier to convince them that outsiders need a good seeing to (still works today y/n?).
So, we'd reached this point in our cogitations, when Lorne said that it was easier for wolves, since they just run around peeing on the boundaries of their territories. And I said that probably explained all the stone circles because then groups could travel from afar so that their head pee-er (peer - hoho) could pee on the group's special rock in the circle. Or maybe everyone peed on all the rocks. And Lorne said that certainly explained the ditches that surround many of the stone circles.
So Stonehenge - a giant willy waving contest festival site. :)
Man - the pong would travel for *miles*. :)
