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Sense of Place
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BuckyE
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Re: Sense of Place
Jun 02, 2012, 04:25
moss wrote:
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.....



Oh my gosh! Lord ha' mercy! This is so totally cool. Moss, your words "...the page in the book of human history that has no words written upon it..." suddenly gave me a major mega-ultra-flash. Ah...

No --and excuse me for being peremptory-- actually most of prehistory HAS left us written words. So to speak, of course. Every prehistoric culture Loie and I have been to visit has had representational, or at least weirdly abstract, artworks associated with it. Petroglyphs, cave paintings, sculptured objects, etc. etc. The walls of the houses at Catal Hoyuk were covered with paintings. Everywhere, things we would recognize as "art."

EXCEPT the era of the Western European megaliths. Even the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe, thousands of years earlier than than the WEmegalithic culture, were covered with representational artworks. This is fantastically weird.

It's as if the WEmegalith builders deliberately eschewed representational art --of which they could not have been unaware-- and substituted these grand, or in many cases tiny, public spaces instead.

So of course when we visit the megalithic places, we are seeing the "artworks" of a people who devoted their time and energy to "... leaving [their] permanent mark on the earth." Oh, totally cool. Totally cool. So of course what we feel when we are at these places is SOME KIND OF, hmmm, I don't know exactly how to say this, but, impulse to relate to the earth/landscape/going-out-on-a-limb Nature.

Totally cool. All falling into place. Thank you, thank you!
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Re: Sense of Place (moss)
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