>>a fair analogy would be for me to liken the cistine chapel to the drawings of genitalia in the public lav<<
Hi MM,
Sorry, MM.
What I was saying was that these sites help me to remind me of the basic humanity in everything else. In a sense they help to drag everything else up a level.
To say that these are especially sacred above all other human constructions, in my mind, demeans the humanity of the builders. The builders of these places were not some mystical race of Atlanteans, but were just us, albeit a few thousand years ago, but just like us all the same. And like us, they were first and foremost pragmatists. They had to be, how else would they have been able to move 20ton sarcen stones?
Also, we should remember that the landscape has changed dramatically since their construction. What may seem like a location af solitary idyll today may have been the neolithic equivalent to a throbbing metropolis back then. Again, using Lewis as an example, 10-20ft of peat now covers a landscape that was pastoral farm land 3000 years ago.
The sense of sacredness or specialness can only be found when something is unfamiliar to you. Familiarity may not breed contempt but try living on a diet of champagne and oysters everyday and it will soon become mundane. Surely this would have been true to those who built and lived by these great constructions. The sense of wonder would have passed quickly and very soon they would have become just another part of the local environment.
Anyway, to get back to your analogy, if you think that's fair, then that's your perogative, however it does seem slightly sensationalist to me, but having never been to the Sistine Chapel and not frequenting public toilets I couldn't possibly comment!
Hope to see you in Callanish to continue this debate.
;-)
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