Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Dear Gladman,

Sorry to be such a late night rambler!

This thread is about "sense of place." Moss says "No it is the natural world that invokes the sense of awe and wonderment, the perfection of the wing of a bird, the colour of a flower or the massivity of a great mountain and perhaps their interconnectivity to everything around them..."

tjj says, "it is flora/fauna and weather conditions, i.e. Nature, that make the experience memorable." ryaner quotes JM Synge: "The sense of solitude was immense." moss says "In the quest to understand why stone circles or neolithic barrows are placed where they are we have to resort to trying to interpret the landscape..."

You yourself say "the high places have always really 'done it' for me. Nothing but you and raw Nature."

I'm sorry to be banging this drum over and over, but I'll come out and say it again: In an attempt to be as explicit and unmistakeable as I can.

1. No one posting on this board has ever experienced "raw nature" or "the natural world." I know for a fact I never have. I say this mainly because there is almost no "raw nature" left on this planet. Perhaps in the highest latitudes, or the highest elevations, it might still exist. I know from my research, spurred by the quixotic desire to restore our nine acres, that "raw nature" emphatically does not exist anywhere on (at least 99.999999...% of) the North American continent.
The entire landscape/ecology/biosphere/etc. etc. of Europe and North America has been dicked with by human beings for at least hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of years, respectively.

2. When people built the European monuments, they built them in places they lived. Surrounded by hut villages, midden heaps, grazing meadows, fields of crops, etc. etc. Hardly "raw nature" or "wild places."

3. Some of these mouments concerned celestial phenomena. Solstices, moonrises, etc. Okay, good, but hardly an indication that their builders were ALSO or particularly INELUCTABLY concerned with their immediate natural landscape (wildflowers, birds, whatever.) And even so, it's difficult to prove even a majority of monuments have this aspect to them.

4. Admittedly, some few momuments seem to be sited in places that are near watercourses (Silbury Hill), have particular long views toward points on horizons (maybe Callanish), etc. But what percentage meet THESE requirements? Ten? Two? I'm no expert, but from what Loie and I have seen, a vanishingly small percentage seem to have some, I'll say, larger outlook. And in this case, again, that's no immediate proof their builders were concerned with some putative natural, wild, landscape.

5. So now, here's where I go out on a limb I can't prove will support me. I take the above statements, mull them over, throw in the incredibly limited range of subjects of prehistoric art, and conclude prehistoric people were'nt entranced by natural nature. They may have been scared by it, they certainly were trying to control it, but they weren't inspired by it.

Sorry to be an old curmudgeon posting yet another late night ramble! And thank you, Gladman, for continuing to read my muddleheadedness.