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Prehistoric stone row - or collapsed modern wall?
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Hob
Hob
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Re: a whinger writes
Mar 14, 2005, 21:59
Blarrrrrrrr…

Working out what's sacred and what isn't is largely dependant on the definition of the word itself. Chambers Dictionary sez:
"Consecrated; devoted; set apart or dedicated, esp. to God: holy proceeding from God: religious: entitled to veneration; not to be violated: accursed."

Can't say I agree with that, (though I do like the 'accursed' bit) but I'm not Chambers dictionary, so that's alright.

In terms of prehistoric people and what they thought to be sacred, whilst I agree we can't get into their heads to see what they thought about all these old rocks we go to look at, we can't get into anyone else's head other than our own, even if they are in the same room. The best we can manage is assumption that another person shares our view of the world, but we never know for sure, all we can do is make assumptions on the basis of the evidence that our senses have presented us with.

So the argument that a prehistoric site isn't sacred because we have no direct evidence that it was, is just as valid as saying everything had 'sacred' status to prehistoric people, because we have no evidence that it wasn't.

To waffle briefly about sacred landscape features, a cynical take on the scared hill idea is that these places were held as 'set apart; not to be violated; accursed' because a ruling elite didn't want the proles to get anywhere where they would have had a good view, so they couldn't see how much land was being farmed, or how many settlements there were, or even just the fact that the world didn't end at the edge of the valley. At this point, I shut me gob. Else I go on an extended splurb about all that electro-magnetic/temporal-lobe shite.

To me, sacred means 'A bit more special than the other special things'. My local pit-heap is sacred as far as I'm concerned. Really, it is, I'm not making that up, honest guv. It didn't even exist 100 years ago, but that doesn't stop it from being a sacred hill, but it does stop me from posting pictures of it here.
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