Why would you want to build a henge? Michael Flanders, above had an idea but really, can we say for sure what drove our ancestors to take time out from their busy schedules, to down tools, fold away the sheepskin troos and join the Masons at the Chip and Chisel for a little communal sarsen stoning?
No. Someone lost the planning permission and Wiltshire County Council is notoriously bad at paperwork.
But there are these bright coves who go around Britain and Ireland and the rest of Northern Europe comparing and contrasting the various henges and other monumental structures and drawing some tentative conclusions. These they laid out for punters like me to browse at the British Museum. At least with Stonehenge I don’t have to feel guilty that we nabbed these rocks from lands far and foreign when the locals weren’t paying attention.
And in truth those ideas are fascinating. Still, it boggles my mind that at a time when it was pretty much subsistence living, a significant cohort was given time off to drag some bloody huge lumps of rock from where the earth and glaciers and what have yous had dumped them and bring them to what is after all a pretty unprepossessing part of Wiltshire. There was a fair bit about flint which, while I think it’s amazing what the managed to make with a rock chisel bit pall a little…
Yet for a long time this whole drag, chisel, erect, repeat process was the equivalent of going to the footie or church: some act of apparently pointless devotion. Without the meat pie. But probably with a sermon.
In time, the introduction of metal working, the portability of votives and so forth meant the guys with their fixation on priapic rocks began to look less like, well, rock stars. They’d had their time.
Though quite why they were displaced by chaps with beakers defeats me. I suppose it’s not how big your beaker is but what’s in it that counts…
Do go and see this exhibition if you get the chance. It’s grand speculation of the mind-widening kind. With flint.
Oh, and a sea henge. Only in Norfolk are they sufficiently daft to build a wooden henge in the sea.
TanGental 
Ah but they left stone thingies lying about that anyone can stumble over, examine and wonder, “what were they thinking ?”
We, instead are leaving behind huge collection of woven-words that require a world-wide-web, some kind of screen and the presumption that our articles are out there – somewhere – floating loose & rarely read in the binary ether of virtual history & thought.
In 50 or 100 years, what will they conclude of our stories if some digital archeologist happens to find and wonder – “what the _____ were this guy thinking?”
Perhaps it’s best we won’t be around to answer . . .
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I think I’ll leave history to judge the quality…
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I’m hoping to go with a friend in the next few weeks so it was good to see a review, thanks.
Heaven knows what future archaeologists will think when they come across our landfills full of plastic lateral flow test strips and associated plastic bags and tubes …
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They look a lot like arrowheads – which you can find in the deserts of the West.
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They are. V beautiful. Did your guys get them on Amazon??
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It boggles the mind that these so-called ‘primitive’ people could make such impressive monuments and various bits and bobbles of amazing artwork. I do wish we could time travel to find out why the heck those stones were so important. Assuming humanity is still around millennia from now, I think the archeologists of those days will NOT be impressed with what we leave behind.
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It will be interesting to speculate on what we do leave.
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Bloomin’ litter louts. Leaving all their rubbish around like nobody’s business!
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Quite. Should be stoned…
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Perhaps that’s what the builders were!
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I imagine they understood what herbs were available for such purposes..!
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It was along thyme ago!
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Sounds like an exhibition worth seeing, Geoff.
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I enjoyed it though it does seem to be based on a lot of speculation. Though what do I know…!
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I wish every museum left visitors learning and thinking, like you did.
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They do these things very well. My dad preferred crowded glass cases full of stuff but the modern way is my preference esp as my back and legs can only take so much slow pondering…
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Good point!
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I remember an assignment in oratory class in 8th grade(yes they still taught oratory in public school) when we were handed an ordinary object and were to speak extemporaneously as if we had found said object hundreds of years in the future. It was great fun. I was handed a church key(punch can opener) and got to invent what it was for. I figure the scientists are having just as much fun.
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