Absolutely beautiful photography, and most enjoyable discussion. I found this video fascinating. Thank you so much for your hard work in taking me there.
Thank you Jane. It isn’t really all that hard, I have done 400 videos so if there are no graphics I can edit and upload in an hour. It is graphics that take time.
As an archaeologist and prehistorian who has been thinking about henges for 30 years, my fundemental approach is to consider them as places intended to be a 'world-within-a-world' and the most fundemental comonality between them and stone circles is a concern with the cosmology of the circular 'year-wheel', the turning of seasons - emergence, growth, and return. Stories about the landscape, skyscape, animals, and origins of people are central to what made these places useful to society.
Your world within a world mirrors what I was saying about the circle being a horizon. Also stories about the skyscape and the turning of the year, yes certainly Stonehenge has alignments with the heavens and marks time passing but how do you evidence the animals and tribal origins? We have symbolic places in our time that are useful to people on an individual basis but have tiny uses when it comes to politics, economy and statehood. How can we be sure Avebury was useful to society and not just the ancient equivalent of the Millenium Dome?
An interesting theory, I had never thought to assign genders to the stones. Could that suggest it might have been something like a Neolithic wedding venue? Mike Parker Pearson and chums seem convinced that the stone circles were more for funerary rites, whereas the wood circles (Woodhenge near Stonehenge, with the Sanctuary being the equivalent near Avebury) were for rites of passages associated with the living - so presumably whatever the Neolithic equivalent of christenings and weddings...? I've still never heard a satisfactory rationale for why henges are "inside out" in terms of the positioning of their ditches and banks. One possible (and very banal) parallel I encountered during my time in the corporate world was that occasionally there would be an important and contentious issue that different factions within the company seemed to struggle to come to an agreement on. In extreme cases this would come to a head with a meeting where the doors to the meeting room were (metaphorically) locked, and nobody was allowed to leave until a consensus was reached.
I can only say what my observations are. We can’t say that the masculine and feminine symbols were thought of in sexual terms: think how we often refer to masculine and feminine “energies” in things with no hint that those things have anything to do with mating. I think Stonehenge is far more important for its summer sun alignment, not because we view it on those terms but because there are wacking great line-of-sight stones in the summer alignment direction. Not just that, the horseshoe stones form a cup in that direction “collecting” the sunlight. It is a mortuary site but so is nearly every religious site. I dislike a summer ceremony being a death event. As for stones being associated with death and wood with life, think long barrows as houses of the dead and wooden long houses as houses of the living. The problem is that many wooden death structures did exist, they just don’t exist anymore. We are seeing survivor bias. We think some long barrows instead of stone lintels and pillars had wooden ones instead, they just didn’t survive. Thanks for messaging and watching, your support is appreciated!
@@AllotmentFox In Japan, "Obon" - the time of year when the dead are remembered - is in the middle of August. I'm not sure what the exact rationale is for that timing but I can imagine a factor in it is a relative lull in the farming calendar. Japan is an interesting and fairly rare example of a highly developed country where arguably the major religion is still a form of animism. That said, perhaps it's lazy to assume the religion of Neolithic Britain was also a form of animism - and even lazier to assume these sites were religious in nature!
I have not encountered this idea before -have others proposed it or is it entirely from your head? It’s certainly interesting and I’m going to let it sink in. When I was young I just loved Avebury because of the Children of the Stones. It’s so much more complicated now. The concrete pillar rant was very relatable. Another brilliant video. You’re on fire right now.
Oh erse, just googled it, someone else has come up with the gendered stones theory. But it is obvious when you have some art training, I’ve always thought about it this way but the square slabs are a fly in my ointment. Even then I was in two minds about their fem8nine natures but I still think it is a third style. I’ve never had 1,000 views in part of one day, so I must’ve touched an interest for people.
It would be interesting to see opinions if topographical maps were overlaid with where water would or may have been. It may give ideas about how and why henges were built there but may reveal and encourage other theories
Have you read Lynne Kelly’s book ‘the memory code’? She speculates that the stones are a memory marker for a people who transitioned from walking their territory (like the Australian song lines and walk about tradition) to a more sedentary people who walk the stones who act as markers for complex knowledge systems. It’s a very interesting read.
I shall look out for that book. The problem with transplanting the songlines to Wiltshire in the Neolithic is that it is a very specific type of cultural, spiritual and social practice. We just don’t know what they worshipped, if anything. And if they did it could easily be as monotheistic as Christianity or not. There does also seem to be a sky thing going on rather than a land thing, that we can see from Stonehenge. Thanks for watching!
I've always wondered if the stone and wood henge's (rings) are a representation of the Sun and Moon on Earth?....the Sun being life and living represented by wood a living thing and the Moon being the death and the end of a persons journey represented by stone a cold and dormant thing?......water has been associated as a mirror to the spirit realm.....the ditch could be just to highlight the feature ....or the halo you see surrounding both the sun and moon, who knows great video i'll get back to me brew...
3 seems to be sacred to the neolithic , there are many examples of 3 henges and/or 3 circles together, as well as the triple spiral. the newgrange legend springs to mind , the father, the mother and the miraculous son
Thank you , just a thought the 3 brightest lights in the sky are pretty much regarded around the world as , sun- masculine Venus- feminine and moon as a conduit between both.In ancient texts the sun measures the 4 quarters of a year , the moon its months and Venus has a very accurate 8 year cycle.
I am aware of the solar and lunar aspects of Stonehenge but I am not aware of them with Avebury. Is this the case and how does it work with these stone alignments?
@AllotmentFox sorry it took a while to get back to you as I was taken ill .As far as I'm aware there are no known alignments at Avebury although some suggest a festival of samhian( excuse spelling ) or maybe it was beltain.So here is my journey, is it that much different from the past? I entered A&E along with many others, there assessed, taken down along corridor up in a lift into the cardiac department and from there to theatre and back again .Hopefully the journey home will be next.All these wards and corridors look the same but have different uses.
UhHmm. Perhaps I should roll off a sheet of drafting paper and, using my big handy fold-out Avebury map from the EH gift shop, draw a diagram of the circle using your reductive shapes. It would look almost like some strange mix of runic and cuneiform. Or like something engraved on the fringe of a flying saucer....ooohhh! Just kidding about the saucer bit. It would make for an interesting layout though. Like a Danish furniture version? Very minimalist, very post-modern.
So few thousand years of weathering altering stones, plus the medieval (discuss) years of lighting fires around a stone and throwing water on them to crack for building material. Not only a surprise there are any stones left, but that they resemble anything like a dressed stone. And add in the stone that fell on some poor guy sheltering in a thunderstorm. I have seen his spectacle frames. Of course we see patterns. It is what humans evolved to do. Because "patterns" could be the next meal for: us, or that tiger lurking! Or nothing.
Some interesting viewpoints and interpretations there. Would be curious to know the overall gender distributions and whether there are any patterns? I do feel slightly disappointed that we weren't able to experience the full wreath-on-a-concrete-block rant though 😮
Thanks Adept. Lots of the stones were destroyed in the 17th- and 18th-c so what information could be gleaned from the survivors I don’t know. But more citizen science! I shall pop by and do it. As for the rant, I promised my wife I would be a better person in middle age. She stood over my shoulder while I was editing this
Michael Dames goes into the significance of the stones' shapes in his excellent books The Avebury Cycle and The Silbury Treasure. I highly recommend a read, although you're probably already aware of them!
I wouldn’t think it was either. I suspect religion 5,000 years ago had the same soporific effect as it does now. The stones, though, were definitely carefully placed. It shouts deliberation. Thanks for watching
Yes it did plus neuter like German. We don’t know what language the Neolithic people spoke but the towards the end of Avebury and certainly when the round barrows are being raised around it the Archæologist Barry Cunliffe thinks they spoke a very early proto-Celtic language, and that judgment is good enough for me. That certainly had male and female genders.
Hows about male stone female stone and chunky stone the bull. bull wrestling as a spectator sport or pagan ritual. Pagan bull worship might of been a thing, it was on the Greek islands and Egypt, a fossil pagan myth to do with cattle still holds sway for Hindu's. its all guesswork but it does make some sense. Bullfighting in Spain might be older than we give them credit for, not so much a pound shop day at the gladiators of Rome but pre dating Romes games by centuries?. Just some thoughts as I contemplate the mystery of the stones.
There is something about bullfighting that stretches back-I agree by the way-to the Iron Age. There isn’t anything else like that apart from the transmission of Greek philosophy and the Old Testament. But neither of those last two are physical traditions
I never Really ever get into this but when people say our Ancestors couldn’t have built this i think 🤔💭 How stupid modern people are not even that our ancestors built this as an Architectural monumental and ecclesiastical sculptor and mason 😂 would like to give them a day in my shoes! 😂🎉
Absolutely beautiful photography, and most enjoyable discussion. I found this video fascinating. Thank you so much for your hard work in taking me there.
Thank you Jane. It isn’t really all that hard, I have done 400 videos so if there are no graphics I can edit and upload in an hour. It is graphics that take time.
Brilliant, just filmed from here yesterday! Insightful as always.
That’ll be interesting to see your thoughts on the henge. I don’t know why the area has caught my attention so much recently
As an archaeologist and prehistorian who has been thinking about henges for 30 years, my fundemental approach is to consider them as places intended to be a 'world-within-a-world' and the most fundemental comonality between them and stone circles is a concern with the cosmology of the circular 'year-wheel', the turning of seasons - emergence, growth, and return. Stories about the landscape, skyscape, animals, and origins of people are central to what made these places useful to society.
Your world within a world mirrors what I was saying about the circle being a horizon. Also stories about the skyscape and the turning of the year, yes certainly Stonehenge has alignments with the heavens and marks time passing but how do you evidence the animals and tribal origins? We have symbolic places in our time that are useful to people on an individual basis but have tiny uses when it comes to politics, economy and statehood. How can we be sure Avebury was useful to society and not just the ancient equivalent of the Millenium Dome?
come here from Paul Whitewick. Liking it. Thank you
Thank you, Helen. Sorry for not replying sooner, I'm a bit shell-shocked
An interesting theory, I had never thought to assign genders to the stones. Could that suggest it might have been something like a Neolithic wedding venue? Mike Parker Pearson and chums seem convinced that the stone circles were more for funerary rites, whereas the wood circles (Woodhenge near Stonehenge, with the Sanctuary being the equivalent near Avebury) were for rites of passages associated with the living - so presumably whatever the Neolithic equivalent of christenings and weddings...?
I've still never heard a satisfactory rationale for why henges are "inside out" in terms of the positioning of their ditches and banks. One possible (and very banal) parallel I encountered during my time in the corporate world was that occasionally there would be an important and contentious issue that different factions within the company seemed to struggle to come to an agreement on. In extreme cases this would come to a head with a meeting where the doors to the meeting room were (metaphorically) locked, and nobody was allowed to leave until a consensus was reached.
I can only say what my observations are. We can’t say that the masculine and feminine symbols were thought of in sexual terms: think how we often refer to masculine and feminine “energies” in things with no hint that those things have anything to do with mating.
I think Stonehenge is far more important for its summer sun alignment, not because we view it on those terms but because there are wacking great line-of-sight stones in the summer alignment direction. Not just that, the horseshoe stones form a cup in that direction “collecting” the sunlight. It is a mortuary site but so is nearly every religious site. I dislike a summer ceremony being a death event.
As for stones being associated with death and wood with life, think long barrows as houses of the dead and wooden long houses as houses of the living. The problem is that many wooden death structures did exist, they just don’t exist anymore. We are seeing survivor bias. We think some long barrows instead of stone lintels and pillars had wooden ones instead, they just didn’t survive.
Thanks for messaging and watching, your support is appreciated!
@@AllotmentFox In Japan, "Obon" - the time of year when the dead are remembered - is in the middle of August. I'm not sure what the exact rationale is for that timing but I can imagine a factor in it is a relative lull in the farming calendar. Japan is an interesting and fairly rare example of a highly developed country where arguably the major religion is still a form of animism.
That said, perhaps it's lazy to assume the religion of Neolithic Britain was also a form of animism - and even lazier to assume these sites were religious in nature!
I love seeing it surrounded by water the Way it was meant to be seen if the spring didn’t Dry up 😢 😂 👍
I have not encountered this idea before -have others proposed it or is it entirely from your head?
It’s certainly interesting and I’m going to let it sink in. When I was young I just loved Avebury because of the Children of the Stones. It’s so much more complicated now.
The concrete pillar rant was very relatable.
Another brilliant video. You’re on fire right now.
Oh erse, just googled it, someone else has come up with the gendered stones theory. But it is obvious when you have some art training, I’ve always thought about it this way but the square slabs are a fly in my ointment. Even then I was in two minds about their fem8nine natures but I still think it is a third style. I’ve never had 1,000 views in part of one day, so I must’ve touched an interest for people.
@@AllotmentFox first time I had that was when I had "phallus" in a video title. I've never understood what that tells me.
@@WC21UKProductionsLtd oh God this one is about p****** and v******!
@@AllotmentFox it's a weird coincidence!
It would be interesting to see opinions if topographical maps were overlaid with where water would or may have been. It may give ideas about how and why henges were built there but may reveal and encourage other theories
My mind goes along similar lines. Avebury just strikes one as theatre.
Have you read Lynne Kelly’s book ‘the memory code’? She speculates that the stones are a memory marker for a people who transitioned from walking their territory (like the Australian song lines and walk about tradition) to a more sedentary people who walk the stones who act as markers for complex knowledge systems. It’s a very interesting read.
I shall look out for that book. The problem with transplanting the songlines to Wiltshire in the Neolithic is that it is a very specific type of cultural, spiritual and social practice. We just don’t know what they worshipped, if anything. And if they did it could easily be as monotheistic as Christianity or not. There does also seem to be a sky thing going on rather than a land thing, that we can see from Stonehenge. Thanks for watching!
I've always wondered if the stone and wood henge's (rings) are a representation of the Sun and Moon on Earth?....the Sun being life and living represented by wood a living thing and the Moon being the death and the end of a persons journey represented by stone a cold and dormant thing?......water has been associated as a mirror to the spirit realm.....the ditch could be just to highlight the feature ....or the halo you see surrounding both the sun and moon, who knows great video i'll get back to me brew...
Phil 'the hat' off Time Team has discovered a 'twin circles' henge near stone henge, at a place called Bullsford.
3 seems to be sacred to the neolithic , there are many examples of 3 henges and/or 3 circles together, as well as the triple spiral. the newgrange legend springs to mind , the father, the mother and the miraculous son
And incestual royalty too. Thanks Louis
I learn something new from you thanks
Thanks Stephen
3 broadly similar shapes in Lancashire. I see them as human,landscape features,and geometric.
The big square ones would strike me as "possibility" undecided potential. Like the state of pregnancy.
Thank you , just a thought the 3 brightest lights in the sky are pretty much regarded around the world as , sun- masculine Venus- feminine and moon as a conduit between both.In ancient texts the sun measures the 4 quarters of a year , the moon its months and Venus has a very accurate 8 year cycle.
I am aware of the solar and lunar aspects of Stonehenge but I am not aware of them with Avebury. Is this the case and how does it work with these stone alignments?
@AllotmentFox sorry it took a while to get back to you as I was taken ill .As far as I'm aware there are no known alignments at Avebury although some suggest a festival of samhian( excuse spelling ) or maybe it was beltain.So here is my journey, is it that much different from the past? I entered A&E along with many others, there assessed, taken down along corridor up in a lift into the cardiac department and from there to theatre and back again .Hopefully the journey home will be next.All these wards and corridors look the same but have different uses.
UhHmm. Perhaps I should roll off a sheet of drafting paper and, using my big handy fold-out Avebury map from the EH gift shop, draw a diagram of the circle using your reductive shapes. It would look almost like some strange mix of runic and cuneiform. Or like something engraved on the fringe of a flying saucer....ooohhh! Just kidding about the saucer bit. It would make for an interesting layout though. Like a Danish furniture version? Very minimalist, very post-modern.
So few thousand years of weathering altering stones, plus the medieval (discuss) years of lighting fires around a stone and throwing water on them to crack for building material. Not only a surprise there are any stones left, but that they resemble anything like a dressed stone. And add in the stone that fell on some poor guy sheltering in a thunderstorm. I have seen his spectacle frames. Of course we see patterns. It is what humans evolved to do. Because "patterns" could be the next meal for: us, or that tiger lurking! Or nothing.
There is a pattern there but we don’t know what it means. Thanks for watching!
Superb yet again
Thank you
The Cows 🐄 are just Cows love it 😂
Some interesting viewpoints and interpretations there. Would be curious to know the overall gender distributions and whether there are any patterns?
I do feel slightly disappointed that we weren't able to experience the full wreath-on-a-concrete-block rant though 😮
Thanks Adept. Lots of the stones were destroyed in the 17th- and 18th-c so what information could be gleaned from the survivors I don’t know. But more citizen science! I shall pop by and do it. As for the rant, I promised my wife I would be a better person in middle age. She stood over my shoulder while I was editing this
@AllotmentFox I'm with you on that my friend 🤣
Michael Dames goes into the significance of the stones' shapes in his excellent books The Avebury Cycle and The Silbury Treasure. I highly recommend a read, although you're probably already aware of them!
I will look this up, I am curious. Thanks for letting me know
It's all so mystical😳...or just a few glacial erratic boulders placed in a not very round circle? 🤔
I wouldn’t think it was either. I suspect religion 5,000 years ago had the same soporific effect as it does now. The stones, though, were definitely carefully placed. It shouts deliberation. Thanks for watching
Maybe there is much to be learned by accepting ambiguity in language and art.
I think english used to have M and F. and back in the days of Avebury, who knows.
Yes it did plus neuter like German. We don’t know what language the Neolithic people spoke but the towards the end of Avebury and certainly when the round barrows are being raised around it the Archæologist Barry Cunliffe thinks they spoke a very early proto-Celtic language, and that judgment is good enough for me. That certainly had male and female genders.
Hows about male stone female stone and chunky stone the bull. bull wrestling as a spectator sport or pagan ritual.
Pagan bull worship might of been a thing, it was on the Greek islands and Egypt, a fossil pagan myth to do with cattle still holds sway for Hindu's.
its all guesswork but it does make some sense.
Bullfighting in Spain might be older than we give them credit for, not so much a pound shop day at the gladiators of Rome but pre dating Romes games by centuries?.
Just some thoughts as I contemplate the mystery of the stones.
There is something about bullfighting that stretches back-I agree by the way-to the Iron Age. There isn’t anything else like that apart from the transmission of Greek philosophy and the Old Testament. But neither of those last two are physical traditions
I never Really ever get into this but when people say our Ancestors couldn’t have built this i think 🤔💭 How stupid modern people are not even that our ancestors built this as an Architectural monumental and ecclesiastical sculptor and mason 😂 would like to give them a day in my shoes! 😂🎉
Yes I’ve had that conversation!
And white of Course! 😂
more guesswork (we have no clue, lets be honest)