Apparently, as hunter gatherers we were camping, temporarily of course, near Zennor – and I had an idea, a purely artistic inspiration you understand, and said to my small group of skin-clad clansmen ‘why don’t we hack out four 20-ton slabs of granite, drag them up here on to this hill, put them upright in the ground, stick another 35-ton capstone on top, cover the whole thing in earth, and bury me underneath – when I’m dead of course’: I was feeling a bit coitish!
A few years later, as we moved around after the wildlife, gathering herbs and honing our survival skills, I had another inspiration. ‘I’ve heard a rumour’ I said to my clan ‘or it might have been a dream or a vision: this plateau we’re camping on looks a bit bare, and I think it could do with a cwmbrian update. In the mountains beyond theSevernSea, I’ve heard tell there is some quite lovely bluestone-granite. It’s only a little over 200 miles from there to here; let’s travel over and hack out a few lintels and uprights – needn’t be more than 30 or 40 tons each, and drag them back here, set them up on-end in a circle, and hang the rest around the top. We all know what can be done with a few flints, antler-heads and sledges; it will look incredibly impressive, particularly at the solstice. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit bored hanging around just hunting and gathering. You never know, such a ritualistic expression might catch on throughout these islands; our descendants could be inspired by our venture, and take a bit of time out from hunting and gathering, and meet up here for festivals.
About 1,500 years later, sitting around a camp fire, a man suddenly declared ‘I have a dream’. His clan listened awe-struck. ‘You see that great hill over there; just imagine it furrowed with trenches all around it, about 80 feet deep with stockades along the top, and a maze-like entrance. If our enemies threaten us, we could drive our sheep and cattle up there and barricade ourselves in. We could be safe.’ ‘But it’s over one kilometre long,’ (to use a later description of length) a young man gasped ‘and we are only a small tribe, and, ah, ah – what about water? And why would they attack us anyway? Many are still hunting and gathering, though some of us are growing a few crops and settling down a bit’! ‘Have you no imagination? We will not undertake this work just for ourselves, but for our descendants, who will have multiplied in number and maybe attacked by bigger hordes of warriors; as for water, we will dig out dew-ponds so we and our animals can drink. Maybe those who come after us will want to dig a deep shaft down to the water table.’
And so it was done. Such is the power of imagination. And it did catch on; hundreds of menhirs/quoits and stone circles were erected by hunter-gatherers, and later at least 900 hill forts were constructed inBritainby primitive agriculturalists.
And even later, the BBC made various re-enactments to demonstrate how our ancestors lived – – because now with our greater scientific understanding we can actually look back in time with all our accumulated wisdom and demonstrate how these primitive people evolve from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists to modern, sophisticated entertainment addicts. So, they constructed their idea of a bronze-age village, and invited several ‘battery -henned brains’ to leave their living units for a week or so and try and become hunter-gatherers, living off the land (with not a little help from a survival expert)! Apart from a minor escape to buy a Mars Bar, they existed on the presumed diet of their ancestors – rabbit, nuts, seeds and berries etc.
Strangely, no-one thought of hacking out, shaping, moving and erecting 20-40 ton blocks of granite, and digging out hillsides with flint and antler.
For today, we know we are far more evolved, rational, sophisticated and non-superstitious as we blissfully look forward to our own significant solstice.