http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== < Main Page Chapter 12 Wider Contacts At about 3000BC, signs of stress were showing in the British neolithic economy. Defensive enclosures appear like the one that succeeded the causewayed camp on Hambledon Hill, or the fortified site at Carn Brea in Cornwall or the example at Crickley Hill in Gloucestershire. All produced evidence of conflict and large-scale destruction together with scatters of leaf-shaped arrowheads. These arrowheads have been identified as the cause of death in over a dozen excavated skeletons from various sites. By this time most of the land that could be farmed by the available technology had been cleared and cultivated. Large areas whose fertility had declined in the process and had been abandoned were beginning to regenerate and becoming overgrown. In the Windmill Hill/Avebury area of Salisbury Plain where soils had become exhausted, the removal of the natural vegetation had caused soil erosion with consequent hillwash from the cleared slopes into the valleys and the regenerated land became infested with hawthorn scrub and bracken. Bracken is poisonous to cattle and sheep so their numbers declined while pigs, which are immune, began to increase in numbers. The early clearings having now merged, the landscape of the area was becoming more that of today although there was a great deal more marshland in the valleys and the woodland was more impressive in terms of extent and the majesty of the trees. We can only guess that the cereal crop yield was much lower as were the numbers of grazing animals and, on the slender evidence of a higher percentage of arrowheads in the later Neolithic period, it has been suggested that hunting was more common. Monuments of the later Neolithic period include henges which are banked-and-ditched enclosures. They are classified into Class I henges with one entrance and Class II with more than one. Henges range in diameter from 45 to 518 metres, the larger ones clearly the work of highly-organized groups able to support a considerable number of building labourers over many years. Smaller henges like Arminghall in Norfolk and Stonehenge, constructed around 3000BC, in Wiltshire are usually earlier than the larger ones. Unlike causewayed camps in which no structures have so far been recognized, both large and small henges can enclose stone or timber structures, the latter most commonly interpreted, as at Woodhenge and Durrington Walls in Wiltshire, as marquee-sized thatched circular buildings or similarly-sized timber rings. Unusually, one large timber building not set inside a henge has been located on Overton Hill in Wiltshire. This structure was supplanted by a stone circle on the same spot c2000BC when it was linked to the stone circle inside the henge at Avebury by a double row of stones 2.4 km long known as the West Kennet Avenue. Archaeologists regard henges as ritual monuments, a view reinforced in respect of some henges by the later addition of stone circles or stone settings like coves and avenues. Pottery associated with the henge construction period in Wiltshire is Grooved Ware where the henges appear as the causewayed camps fall out of use and probably replaced them as central places of assembly and ritual. Another enclosure, the cursus, also appears in the landscape. This ridiculous name which means 'racetrack' is used for one of the most enigmatic of all neolithic monuments, consisting of avenues with closed ends outlined by banks and ditches. From the air they look like enormously elongated rectangles. An example in Dorset runs for over six miles and is aligned on the winter solstice. Difficult to examine properly, because of their great size, they are provisionally dated to the half millenia from 3500 to 3000BC. The pottery of the later Neolithic period is decorated and the first flat-bottomed wares appear. Most of the earlier pottery of the period is known collectively as the Peterborough series. From 3350BC Ebbsfleet bowls are found, Mortlake bowls started from 2500BC when the first flat-bottomed Beaker and Grooved Ware types appear and Fengate Ware became common from c2000BC. During this period long barrows were falling out of use, being sealed, and in some places in Europe being superseded by passage graves. In the Avebury/Windmill Hill area these do not exist and it is one of the local difficulties of the period to understand this lack of evidence for the disposal of bodies. Analysis of the scale of the early and later Neolithic monuments in Wessex has been done in terms of labourer hours needed for their building. This has been estimated as 10,000 man-hours for a long barrow (20 people working for 50 hours), 100,000 man-hours for a causewayed camp (20 people working for 500 hours), one million man-hours for a large henge like Avebury or Durrington Walls (300 people working for at least a year), for Silbury Hill about 18 million man-hours (2,700 people working for ten years) and for the Stonehenge final phase 30 million man-hours (5,000 people working for two years). These figures, if relevant, suggest that during the later Neolithic period, numbers of people were being organised for long periods of time to carry out immense construction tasks. It could only happen if there were larger groupings of people than appear to have existed during earlier Neolithic times. Perhaps it is permissible to describe these later groupings as tribes with leaders who combined both secular and religious powers and the period as a time of `conspicuous construction.' The alignment of the passage grave at Newgrange in Ireland towards the midwinter sunrise is matched by similar entrance-passage alignment at Maes Howe in Orkney. This preoccupation with the movements of heavenly bodies may be derived from an ancestral tradition relating to the sky dating back to the megalithic and earthen long barrows of the earlier neolithic whose broad ends all face towards the eastern horizon and seem, in the Avebury region anyway, to be connected to movements of the moon. Whether their alignments reflect a winter construction date like Newgrange or suggest construction at some other time of the year can only be ascertained by further observation. The winter would certainly have been a suitable 'window' in the farming calendar when time could be spared for tasks like constructing barrows and henges. Another site where an interest in the movements of the sun is evident is the Ballochroy stone alignment in Argyle where the central standing stone defines the locations of both the midwinter and midsummer sunsets on the skyline. Religion in prehistoric times was an integral part of the way of life in the same way as science is today. The very basis of existence - hunting/farming - depended for its operation on mankind's relationship with the gods (i.e. natural forces or whatever it was that controlled these natural forces) and it required enormous effort on people's part to forge and cement a successful relationship. Evidence for this goes back into the past to neolithic structures like Silbury Hill and Avebury in southern Britain which required immense labour and time to put up. This effort seems totally out of proportion to the level of prosperity that the subsistence farming of the time could provide. Whether we shall ever be able to understand the functions of these monuments is a moot point but perhaps we can make an effort to understand the belief which prompted their appearance. It can be suggested that it contained two elements: 1. A contract with the gods (i.e. the powers that controlled the world). 2. A method or methods of interpreting the messages from the gods. The first element would have involved sacrifices or deposits by the worshipper accompanied probably by some form of ritual. Perhaps the monuments themselves would have provided the sacrifice of time and labour as well providing a setting for the ceremonies. This would be in exchange for the benefits the gods could bestow such as success in hunting or prosperous harvests. In the same way, sacrifices at sacred wells or similar shrines in Iron Age or Roman times could well have been in exchange for more personal favours. The second element would be achieved in a variety of ways. Interpretation of the appearance of rainbows and other natural phenomena, the examination of the entrails of sacrifices seem to have been common methods but of course the intervention of a priest or shaman would have been necessary. They could best understand the purposes of the gods as well as design the shrines and monuments that needed to be constructed. In Iron Age times, at least, Druids became the guardians of this wisdom, possessing detailed knowledge of the traditions and history of the tribe and acting as judges in legal cases. Recent research suggests that there were three forms of ritualism or religion in Neolithic Europe. One is that represented by the megalithic tombs and earthen long barrows of western Europe and is associated with ancestral rights to land ownership as well as veneration of the ancestors. The second, occurring only in Italy and Sicily, seems to have been a secret activity, restricted perhaps to certain individuals and restricted also to caves where wall paintings, cave burial and the collection of 'holy' water from stalactites are characteristic. In this latter regard it is interesting to note that in the Upper Palaeolithic painted caves of the Ural mountains in Russia, local people still place pots beneath stalactities to collect the drips for a ritual purpose. In villages further east in south-eastern Europe a third ritualism was practised. Figurines and domestic shrines in places like Vinça identify the religion while the occurrence of clay models of cattle heads are a reminder of the bucrania at Çatel Hüyük across the Aegean Sea. Later on, some gods became identified with particular peoples. Jehovah and the Jews is an obvious example and in Britain the Iron Age tribe of the Brigantes took the name of their goddess Brigantia. 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