nix
|
Sacred?
May 22, 2023, 20:29
|
What do people understand by this?
We regularly talk about sacred sites - often assuming the meaning that they were sacred to those who made them.
But we don't know what sacred would have meant to them - if anything.
They may not have even distinguished the sacred from the profane in the way we do
So do we mean sacred to us?
|
GLADMAN
|
Re: Sacred?
May 23, 2023, 20:57
|
To put it in words; to write it down; that is walking on hallowed ground.
Although I do think it's unwise to try and place yourself 'in the heads' of people who lived millennia ago.... fundamentally speaking, we share the same biology so I think it's not unreasonable to suppose that our predecessors would've reacted in a similar instinctive manner to common base stimuli (such as dramatic weather conditions, peer pressure etc), particularly when such events were stage-managed/manipulated by priests with a power base to maintain. It's my view, for what it's worth, that many prehistoric sites were located for that theatrical 'wow' factor so as to lower the cognitive defences of the contemporary visitor. So people would be caught up in the melodrama without even thinking, be scared of offending the supernatural, or even not wish to be seen as 'different'. Sure, we've all learned a lot about the world/universe that prehistoric people didn't know. But when all that is forgotten 'in the moment', were we really that different?
|
thesweetcheat
|
Re: Sacred?
May 23, 2023, 22:46
|
I guess we know that the monuments that are left performed more than simple functions.
I'm reluctant to use words like "ritual" because they're meaningless, but I think it's pretty clear that the communal tombs of the Neolithic were more than simple repositories of bodies; similarly the upland cairns of the Bronze Age are located in ways that are self-evidently more than simply a convenient place to bury someone important; and stone circles have so many possibilities that we could be here all night. Even "hillforts" is overly simplistic, and in many cases overlaid earlier sites anyway.
Not sure where I'm going with this, other than that these sites had a meaning to their builders that goes beyond simple functional necessity.
I share Gladman's views about the placement of monuments being absolutely fundamental. What you can see from them, where you can see them from, how they appear (or disappear) when approaching on foot from other points in the surrounding landscape, how they relate to natural features such as watercourses and rocky outcrops, all these things have the ability to make our "modern" brains stop and wonder, so they must have done the same to the builders and the people who lived in those communities.
But who knows how widely the "secrets" were shared - did a priesthood jealously guard the mysteries, or did everyone in the community have a share understanding of the purposes of these sites? We'll never know that.
|
tjj
|
Edited May 31, 2023, 23:00
Re: Sacred?
May 24, 2023, 14:26
|
|
Deleted.
|
Vybik Jon
|
Re: Sacred?
May 24, 2023, 16:40
|
I don't know, but I do enjoy the thought of antiquarians in the far future finding the remains of telegraph poles.
"There are lines of postholes stretching for sometimes hundreds of miles and one can only assume that they must have some sacred or ritual purpose."
|
nix
|
Re: Sacred?
May 29, 2023, 11:14
|
|
thesweetcheat wrote: What you can see from them, where you can see them from, how they appear (or disappear) when approaching on foot from other points in the surrounding landscape, how they relate to natural features such as watercourses and rocky outcrops.
I so relate to this
|
nix
|
Re: Sacred?
May 29, 2023, 11:16
|
|
hahaha
|
nix
|
Re: Sacred?
May 29, 2023, 11:16
|
|
hahaha
|
nix
|
Re: Sacred?
May 29, 2023, 11:19
|
Yes -and perhaps sometimes just places where something special happened - a birth, a death, a marriage, a victory, a defeat
I think I refer 'significant' to 'sacred'
|
