So some stones may not have been raised in celebration of agriculture, of newly-found control over nature, after all. Doesn't this rather undermine one of Mr. Cope's central arguments, in the Modern Antiquarian? Namely, that as monuments celebrating agriculture megaliths symbolise the beginning of the error that is currently destroying the world. I suppose that in as much as they are the first permanent human marks on the land this argument can still be made, but with considerably less force, no?
The other question that this begs, for me, is just what it was that inspired the building of megalithic structures. What changed people, giving them monumentality, if it wasn't agriculture?
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