On 2012-08-30 23:05, sem wrote:
Thanks Lintelman
I take that as a compliment, as I have spent many years trying to figure out the "mind-set" of prehistoric man.
You said:-
"What I have seen, Sem, is an uncanny intuitive ability of certain people to deal with numbers, others with the visualisation of shapes and yet others with materials. This is not necessarily connected with 'the scientific method' - that which is commonly referred to as science. It is more like the skill some people display with words, imagery and music."
This seems as close as I have come to it.
Sem

On 2012-08-31 21:57, Runemage wrote:
Francis Pryor refers to the Tyranny of Technology coming with the first metal smelting. I can certainly see the logic in this statement but wonder if it emerged from, not so much objective evidence, as a British 20th century paradigm where there is positivistic science on one side of the brain and poetic intuition on the other, and n'ere the twain shall meet.

I've just reviewed a book with this very theme, it will be live shortly. There's a society called the Starwatchers who live gently upon the earth and record their observations on the stones surrounding passage mounds From out of nowhere comes the Invaders, the first miners for metal and their smiths, plundering the landscape, hunting food animals to extinction, giving nothing back, leaving only wounds and scars and death. The book is not strictly fiction as it's based on archaeological evidence, or in view of your comment, should that be 21st century Man's interpretation of the archaeological evidence?

Rune

On 2012-09-07 19:57, SonofHerne wrote:
interesting conversation. I, too, have tried to get into a neolithic or bronze age mindset, but ultimately I never will be able to more than a certain degree because I know the sun will rise tomorrow and that there's not a spirit in the moon, or the chalk, and that if I walk out on the Stonehenge cursus the spirits of the ancient dead aren't there to grab me (I hope!)
Rune, I've read a few prehistoric based novels which have had exactly the same plot you described. TBH all the studies I've done haven't shown neolithic people as being all that peaceful. Look up Crickley Hill. Many bones from long barrows have been reassessed and have been found to have suffered cranial trauma, generally on the left side (so delivered by a right handed person wielding a weapon.) There is quite a disturbing trend of 'not normal' burials in the terminal ends of henges and 'cult barrows' as well. The people of the early bronze age may have looked more martial with their finery and barbed arrows but actually there is probably LESS evidence of out and out violence (it starts to heat up again the late bronze age, possibly due to deteriorating climate.)

On 2012-09-14 14:10, Lintelman wrote:
On the Eighth, Niel wrote (Previously (to my way of thinking) we see a religious-caste hierarchy calling most of the shots. They were 'in touch' with the Gods, so they were rightly in charge. ) I agree, so frequently we see a presumption that the Stonehengers were slaves to a dominant caste of priests.

Looking back over the history of the British Isles in the last thousand years, I see a brute struggle for power and wealth by the self-proclaimed leaders of society, I do not see an Amish style adherence to the teachings of Jesus Christ by committed followers. It seems to me that the vast majority of people take a skeptical and ambivalent view of the teachings of priests and trust rather to their own interpretations of the world and the deity that may or may not exist for them. When it suits them, they falsely wrap their dubious ethics in the colours of a religious belief. We are a whimsical species.

Bringing things up to date, we go to weddings and funerals and coronations and remembrance services. And it is reassuring to think that somewhere in the distant past our laws and ethics were based on some seriously committed and wise persons who went as far as getting themselves tortured to death to establish the basics for us. But we don't all spend our lives going through endless rituals and processions up and down the knave of Canterbury Cathedral, and we don't all believe everything our church leaders, politicians, (or scientists of the new religion) tell us. So why do we think the Stonehengers were any different?

Personally I don't buy the simple 'ritual for the sake of ritual' explanation for much that the archaeologists dig up. The ritual is surely an elaboration of a cultural belief that somewhere, deep down, has some practical, probably materialistic, function that is directly linked to survival. In the case of Stonehenge, there must have been some wonderful debates about its need. What would I not give to be there?