How much do we know about Stonehenge? Less than we think. And what has Stonehenge got to do with the Ice Age? More than we might think. This blog is mostly devoted to the problems of where the Stonehenge bluestones came from, and how they got from their source areas to the monument. Now and then I will muse on related Stonehenge topics which have an Ice Age dimension...
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Saturday, 4 September 2010
More on the Stonehenge Folly
Following my stream of consciousness, I'm led to a further thought. Many of the follies in the UK (we are much better folly builders here than they are elsewhere in the world) were actually built as "artificial ruins." We do seem to like our ruins. So the Victorians built ruinous medieval castles and tumbledown towers -- it appealed to their sense of grotesque grandeur, and in a weird way paid homage to their ancestors.
Might it not be that our Neolithic ancestors were the initiators of this grand tradition of building ruined follies? In other words, maybe the builders of Stonehenge NEVER INTENDED TO FINISH IT? If that was the case, then they completed their plans to perfection, and eventually moved on to other things, leaving behind them a job well done?
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