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Re: Woodentop
Feb 17, 2002, 10:05
As said, wood does not pre-date stone. It's always been used in conjunction with stone from times immemorial. In fact, areas where there are (no) megaliths today were rife with wooden constructions, eg East Anglia. But then there's also places like Stanton Drew where woodrings were common too alongside bronze age stone ones. Dwellings from those times have hardly been found because they consisted of wooden huts and houses, that's why it's been called the civilization of the dead. Plus, they used to be quite frugal constructions, since many communities were still semi-nomadic, and roamed the land once a year at least (as some still do today, following summer and escaping winter).

Still, there's the Ur-Stonehenge, ie. the triple amazingly huge wooden solstice posts that used to stand where the car park is today, dating from the Mesolithic and predating everything we see today, as a sign of man's spiritual continuum until christianity. At that time, it is possible that wood was used in a unique way (see Starcarr too) whilst the sacredness of stone was entirely *natural*, resident in the most incredible gorsedds and natural outcrops that you can still admire today (though few in fact bother to). The spiritual tradition that lasted 30,000 years slowly gave way to the Neolithics who finally began to tame nature, the buildings in stone (and wood) also taking over the natural ones.

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