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| Stone Circles of Britain |  I suppose, like most sensible people, when you think of the ancient, mystical site of Stonehenge, the strange, captivating magical stone circles of stones built by the early Britons in Britain, and situated in Wiltshire, England, you conjure vivid images of how it used to be there about 4,000 years ago.
If the academics are to be believed, and there's many who don't believe them, then we see lurid pictures of ancient druids dressed in long cream coloured robes, ripe young virgins laid prone over the rocks being sacraficed with their throats cut, flaxon haired maidens weaving themselves naked between the stones in some primordial dance, their plump young breasts firm and erect, whilst perfectly formed young men copulate with other naked maidens among the tall grass, their nude bodies writhering in passion fueled ecstasy. Or at least we do if we believe what we're told by the bearded graduates and their peers from the Open University. And doesn't it all sound wonderful, a canvas of early Britain painted in lurid detail, where the residents at best, were no more than savage dogs salivating at the prospect of blood, feasting and humping themselves senseless.
Yet, if we cut away the pejudice, and preconceived notions of what early Britain might have been like, and look more laterally at the evidence, we see a totally different picture emerge. Not one of maddened sacrafice, people slitting each other's throats or this rampant out of controlled orgy. But more a peace loving farming community trying to get from one day to the next, the best they could. From the stones themselves, we see a society which struggled to work cohesively together, and shared what spare time they had working for the good of the tribe. Worse luck!
One of the things archeologists seem to have missed when they built a model of stonehenge, and the way it might have been, is the fact there are no engravings in the stones, no candid images of sacrafice, worship or any other pursuit which might indicate what actually took place all those years ago, or offer support to their theory. And that's important, because we view the stones today and naturally assume, this is the way things have always been. But have they? No one knows quite what might have happened between the erection of the stone circle and the present day? They take no account of vandalism - or the fact other cultures have occupied the United Kingdom: The Romans in particular who were noted for trampling all over other cultures, their artifacts, history and heritage.
When we look at other cultures around the world, be they the Egyptians, Incas, or any of the dozens other early civilisations, we see a descriptive record of what took place. It's not in question as the detailed markings in the stone leave us under no illusion about how life among their peoples unfurled in minute detail. So why nothing at stonehenge? Why no painstaking carving? Why no record of the major events? The chances are, because the circle of stones are not symbolic in any religious sense. These stones we see today, still standing in all their magnificent glory thousands of years after they were erected are functional and practical, no more, no less.
These are not sites dedicated to the Gods, or observatories to study the heavens as some suggest. For if they were, much more evidence would remain. It doesn't: Why?
I took a more pragmatic view of the problem, and deduced, because there is no carvings or record which took place, that the stones themselves are no more than a skeletal shell of a building: just like the steel structure of a modern building today. Imagine stonehenge with walls and a roof.
The chances are, stonehenge itself would have had a wooden exterior, whatle and daub walls and a large thatched roof. The drainage ditch around the periphery also offers evidence of a soak-away. If this site had been meant for sacrafice, then the chances are it would have been used seldomly, and thus no ditch would have been needed.
Therefore, we must ask ourselves a very serious question: if this was used as a grand house, what might its purpose have been? We might think it was a Royal house for a king maybe - or possibly, and my preferred option, an early parliament.
It might sound somewhat suspect, a parliament, but the evidence throws up some alarming questions. We know early Britons were not fighting each other, and that in its self raises some profound questions, for if these people weren't fighting, they must have been talking. Like any modern people, the coming together of the clans, either ancient or modern would have been a grand affair: banquet, feasting, music, probably even dancing girls. And this would have taken place in a special place, not some mud shack where the animals shit on the floor!
Therefore, what do we have? We have a building with no religious markings: Why? if this was a religious site. We know from any modern structure a skeletal frame must hold the main building. We see this at Stonehenge, plus the timber outer shell, thus in rhetrospect, I think we must conclude, something much more significant was going on, rather than the outdated vision archeology offers us. Their view is prejudiced by other cultures, other religions.
And it's this which led me to examine the evidence, or lack of it as the case may be, of a highly intellectual society based on mutal co-operation, not some savage drawling people howling at the moon.
Stone CirclesStonehenge the essay
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