Head To Head
Log In
Register
The Modern Antiquarian Forum »
Sense of Place
Log In to post a reply

92 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
moss
moss
2897 posts

Re: Sense of Place
Jun 01, 2012, 12:38
BuckyE wrote:
No, sorry, the Indian gentleman was wrong. By the time the megaliths were being erected, civilization had been firmly and ineluctably entrenched for, how long? Gobekli Tepe 12,000 years back. Cave and mobile art 20,000 years old. Bone flutes 40,000 years old. Shell paint palettes in Blombos Cave 100,000 years ago. Civilization, Ho!

The western European megaliths are a fascinating but minor way point on a journey begun when the first protohumans banged the rocks together a million years ago. A journey we're still on.

Apparently the megaliths have a power to fascinate, to draw us out into what wasn't then, but now has reverted to wilderness, albeit one that bears no ecological relationship whatsoever to the "wilderness" the megalith builders experienced. So more power to the sites that give us a sense of place.

Moss was right. "...that is what draws people to seek prehistory out." Cool.


Well what the thread did draw out was our subjective view to the nature of the world around us. Prehistory for me is the page in the book of human history that has no words written upon it, if that makes sense, so we fill the gap with our own interpretations.
I think some people have dwelt on that 'space of loneliness' that megaliths can bring, or at least the ability to dwell in solitude for a short time within the immensity of time. Someone once wrote of the long barrows that they are making a 'place in space', like leaving your permanent mark on the earth. Though of course it could be interpreted as a territorial space.....
Topic Outline:

The Modern Antiquarian Forum Index