Aug 11 2010
And now for something completely different.
I was reading an article today on the BBC website about the oldest house yet discovered in Britain. It is described like this:
“It was a round house – a smaller version of iron age round houses – with a circle of timber posts around a sunken circular floor area, which could have been covered by reeds.”
And that caused me to think about Woodhenge and then about Stonehenge. Wouldn’t it be ironic if these places were nothing more than very large “round houses” erected by the rather “well to do” class of the time? So image if at that time when round houses were the way things were done, someone had the resources to build a very large one. So maybe it isn’t any ancient religious site at all. Maybe it is simply someone’s house. A very special house, to be sure, but maybe simply a house nevertheless.
We so often read into things what we want to believe. An academic might make an entire career out of “researching” something like Stonehenge. What interest would there be in financing such study if it turned out to be nothing more than a large round house where someone substituted rocks for timbers?
I suppose my point is … just because some academic dreams something up and just because a few more agree, doesn’t mean it is true.
What if Stonehenge were simply covered with animal skins to create a house for a very wealthy or influential person who could employ a lot of labor in order to build it. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best one.
Just a thought. Now back to politics as usual.
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I love reading articles like the one you found. Your interpretation is really interesting and actually, I find it to be something that scholars should consider. Or – what if it was the equivalent of the ancients YMCA? Fun thoughts during yucky times. Thanks for the links.
Interesting thought – you remind me that the most ancient houses in the American Southwest, those of the Basketweaver peoples, were small round pit houses with round, sunken floors. The Kiva in the Anasazi, Hopi, and Zuni culture is thought by some to be a distant memory of this. (ancient cultural traditions often get frozen in religion, as in priests wearing robes)
On the other hand, the biggest house in any sociey is just about always God’s house – the cathedrals of France, the Parthenon, the Egyptian temples (Pharaoh was a god) And you can flip this observation on it’s head – the easiest way to learn what a society truly worships is to observe who gets the biggest house.
Our gods are obviously government and football.
[…] free. It’s a song with a lover’s lament for its refrain: I’m a more… And now for something completely different. – strata-sphere.com 08/11/2010 I was reading an article today on the BBC website about the […]