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endlessrarities - if you didn't see the History of Ancient Britain special report on the excavations on Orkney, and if you have a passing interest in awesome stuff like painted Neolithic walls and huge buildings with a fireplace mysteriously positioned in the middle of a doorway, and a monstrous era-ending 600-cow feast* for thousands of people, you should watch it!
And do so swiftly, for it will fall off the BBC Iplayer in 6 days.
It does also have a certain amount of Neil Oliver posing dramatically on random headlands with his hair whipping about in the breeze, but by NO standards the amount of posing per nugget of fascinating info dispensed is quite low.
* we really should work out a way to get Neolithic people to plan the upcoming Olympic opening ceremony. On this evidence, it would be epic.
endlessrarities - if you didn't see the History of Ancient Britain special report on the excavations on Orkney, and if you have a passing interest in awesome stuff like painted Neolithic walls and huge buildings with a fireplace mysteriously positioned in the middle of a doorway, and a monstrous era-ending 600-cow feast* for thousands of people, you should watch it! And do so swiftly, for it will fall off the BBC Iplayer in 6 days.
It does also have a certain amount of Neil Oliver posing dramatically on random headlands with his hair whipping about in the breeze, but by NO standards the amount of posing per nugget of fascinating info dispensed is quite low.
* we really should work out a way to get Neolithic people to plan the upcoming Olympic opening ceremony. On this evidence, it would be epic.
- Current Mood:
impressed
Comments
Having recently walked the Stonehenge Cursus I was very struck by its similarity to the long straight strip of land on which the temple complex was located. I wonder (I love rampant speculation!) whether the one was influenced by the other...
My moment of enlightenment came when I was an undergrad, and our lecturer (now a very eminent prehistorian) demonstrated that Neolithic chambered tombs functioned in the same way as medieval cathedrals: enclosed sacred space vs. communal areas; certain members of the community, call them an 'elite' if you will, who may interact with gods and ancestors, while the majority look on. And of course the idea of the procession, where the community is ranked and certain members marked out due to the presence of specific costume or regalia (we have the stone maceheads, but the costumes are, unfortunately gone...)
The concept was mind-blowing, and the more work I see being carried out on Neolithic and Early Bronze Age 'ritual landscapes', the more they seem to follow these principles. Simple, but so-o-o-o effective...
In fact, perhaps there's rites of passage stuff going on in Orkney. Boys and girls are removed into the temple complex to 'die', then they re-emerge as men and women.
Ah, the possibilities are endless...
I don't mind Neil Oliver's posing. Brian Cox, otoh, drives me crazy!
The two things that fascinated me most were the ending of it all, and the idea of its being catastrophically overtaken by bronze-based culture, and also that hearth in the doorway and the suggestion that only those with the nerve (?) to pass through the flames could advance to the next level of revelation...
I actually heard Brian Cox say something very interesting the other day, lol, about no two electrons being able to occupy the same level of energy (I've probably worded that wrong -- I'll have to watch it again ;-), so if you change the energy level of some electrons (he warmed a piece of diamond in his hands) every other election in the universe has to respond. It reminded me -- though this is a tangent -- of the pagan idea, presented in The Way of Wyrd, that all things sit upon a web, and a perturbation in one place will cause some reaction elsewhere (which a shaman, of course, can read).
But I fell out with Brian Cox when he started talking bollocks about ancient Egyptian religion.
What on earth did Brian Cox say about Egyptian religion that was so horribly wrong? Normally he seems to stick to the vaguest generalities.
He's not the only one, and I suppose it's part of being a card-carrying TV 'scientist', but he's so influential, he shouldn't be allowed to be so sloppy!
Also, the Beeb should really rethink it's not-letting-us-yanks-watch policy. Hmph.