The Old World is a reference to those parts of Earth known to Europeans before the voyages of Christopher Columbus; it includes Europe, Asia and Africa.
Hardly. Time passes, and things change. Especially attitudes, assumptions and conventions.
A case in point : Gibbons. His Decline and Fall cast the Romans as 18th Century Englishmen in togas. Renaissance Biblical paintings are excellent records of the costumes of the specific time and place where said paintings were done.
Add : The assumption that you can cast yourself back in time (in imagination), understanding the thinking of people who were operating on different sets of assumptions isn't an informed one. As you can see when enough of their literature survives that you can read it with some empathy for the mentality that produced it.
Last edited by uniface on Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Digit wrote:When the last set of excavations were carried out George they had a problem with 'post holes', they were apparently unable to distinguish between man made holes and those from trees.
Having been born and lived for many years on the chalk downlands I am very aware of the lack of surface waters, but what puzzles me is the fact that the area has sustained a population for thousands of years.
The whole area is riddled with man made structures, as you'll know, where did they obtain their water from? Why would they have occupied an area with no water supplies available to them?
It doesn't make sense.
Roy.
Yep , one of the meso post holes could have been a tree throw .
Before the first phase of Stonehenge there were few other monuments in the area . Mike Parker Pearson described the area recently as empty or desert like can't quite remember the simile .It certainly soon became a monumnet rich landscape . It's possible that the immediate area was not settled and any settlement was to the east and south east i.e. Durrington and the river . If they did live there ,then ,wells ?
Very true George. Which raises an interesting scenario. I asked, why there? Currently the immediate area is devoid of surface water, I come from further north where a lot of the small villages have names such as 'Water End', where streams flow into pools and then vanish.
What more logical reason for building where they did than the fact that there was a ready supply of water?
Consider the alternative, a lot of people would have been occupied full time simply bringing water from the river, a time consuming, labour intensive task not directly contributing to the construction.
Roy.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
Digit wrote:Very true George. Which raises an interesting scenario. I asked, why there? Currently the immediate area is devoid of surface water, I come from further north where a lot of the small villages have names such as 'Water End', where streams flow into pools and then vanish.
What more logical reason for building where they did than the fact that there was a ready supply of water?
Consider the alternative, a lot of people would have been occupied full time simply bringing water from the river, a time consuming, labour intensive task not directly contributing to the construction.
Roy.
The astronomical suggestion of 90 degree betwen solstice and standstill is a favourite ,but it is misleading as the area is not ideal for it and there are plenty of other places throughout the UK where it will apply .
George
The question pre-supposes a plan for the final monument ,that included it's siting. If you apply the question to the Pentagon it's obvious that the original prehistoric settlers didn't have it in mind but without them ….. Stonehenge has only had something like a third of it's area excavated and my bet goes on on they will eventually find something older than the first phase of the bank and ditch possibly some cremation deposits or something simple like scoop of containing charcoal or even rubbish .As is often the case in Neolithic-Bronze Age monuments one small deposit led to another then they were encircled then covered in a mound . Similar small steps led to the Penatgon , Nelson's column ,Statue of Liberty etc .
George
