A His-Story and Her-Story Ramble

The English School System is a complex subject, but in history studies, they begin with the invasion of the Romans in 43BC... having read, read, re-read 4 or 5 times in the past 6 months, Frances Pryor's books, Seahenge and Britain BC, I am amazed that it is left until college or university to teach people about the wealth of information that is there about the roots of British Culture and history... from the Earliest Stone age 400,000 years ago to the Bronze and Iron Ages... the British Museum has of it's displays, 2% in total for pre 43BC... that is like having 98% represent 0.004% of the time that man has been in these islands... a serious error I believe...

Pre-history is so much more important and rich than that... it was when the British Cultural Roots were being formed, something the Romans didn't create, they only tried to eradicate it, but ended up adding to it... even the roots of Camelot may be in the Bronze Age, with the sword from the stone being paralleled in the creation of swords through bronze casting... they didn't beat the metal like we do Iron, but they cast it in Clay Moulds... breaking the mould when it was cooled and the sword would come out of the stone, a one of a kind, to be named, having a personality of it's own... and the lady of the lake... well, the religion back then was one of appeasement of the ancestors and the spirits, by... wait for it-------------------placing offerings in the lakes and bogs... and many a sword and axe has been found in old lake and bog sites, along with other offerings...

I don't think that this takes away from the story, but adds to it... a recent show on a so called King of Stonehenge brought a real surprise... the person was not British, but from the area of Switzerland... he had been buried with very rich grave goods for the time... and as was pointed out, only the wealthy or strong were given burials, the common people ended up with probably much less... a cremation at best, the worst doesn't bear thinking about... and this King? They think was current when Stonehenge was being turned from wood to stone, the very beginning of the huge construction projects that would take millennium, and ultimately would end with what we see today... 4000 years ago... before bronze was first smelted, but when Gold was...

And before I forget, Stonehenge's ceremonial/special place in religion began almost 9,000 years ago... with 4 large poles being placed at separate times in the ground... which co-insides with another find in the year 2000 by Dr Clive Waddington... the first BRITISH house... he found the earliest one at the very edge of the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago... and it is the typical British Neolithic round house... not square corners, like on the continent, but round... which begs the question, why... other than they do well in very windy weather, from experimental reconstructions... one in the South East, did well in the face of a near hurricane back in the 80's, when modern buildings were being torn apart...

Oh, and before I forget, the 10,000 year old house was found in Scotland at Howick ;) and Britain at the time, was still connected to the continent by a land bridge which was inhabited by stone age family groups, from research done by a new branch of archaeology in the North Sea, underwater archaeology... which owes some of it's beginnings from the North Sea Oil and Gas Fields research...

And speaking of ICE AGES and WARMING TRENDS... the end of the last major period of ice did not end on a sharp note... no indeed... it warmed up for a bit, though cooler than today, then dipped right back down, before warming up in what archaeologists think was a 50 year period, about 3 generations, to warmer than it is today... before settling down again, and taking another 1300 years for the biggest part of the land bridge to be flooded...

Now I don't want to be taken as a nay-sayer about climate change... whatever the cause, be it human intervention or 'natural?' it doesn't matter, we face the same crises as our ancestors, with the rising of the waters, and flooding that created the North Sea... btw I can only imagine what they must have been thinking when they looked North to the Sea and saw the storms and the waters flooding their camps and settlements... I wonder if that is where they got their religious respect for water, and the offerings they made... one thing I do know... when it came to religion, it was like their version of the Credit Card, they never left home without it... it was always with them in every little detail of their lives... little wonder... and after the effect the flooding has had on England in 2007 and the major snow storms this year, and the lack of snow here in Canada, will we change as well????