Coming back to Columbus after a day on St Mary's, Scilly Isles.
A floating moving city that the Neolithics wouldn't even be able to imagine!
A floating moving city that the Neolithics wouldn't even be able to imagine!
See here for part 1
Several weeks after our circumnavigation of the British Isles in CMV's luxury ship Columbus, it dawned on me how difficult it was in Europe to get away from the history of Christianity. Perhaps the reason why I didn't immediately notice the pervasive historical presence of Christianity is because it is still part of the furniture of our surroundings and therefore never being alien enough to alert one to its presence. The pervasive tends to merge into the backdrop; if this mental selecting-out effect didn't happen then the act of noticing the always-present would consume too much cognitive resource! But when I decided to give it my attention the Christian theme cropped up in all the places we visited.
There was the wooden cathedral in Honflure, the cathedral in Bayeux and the Christian spin implicit in the Bayeux tapestry justifying the battle of Hastings. There was the small quaint church on the Scilly island of St Mary's where UK ex-prime-minister Harold Wilson is buried. There was the cathedral in Dublin. In Northern Ireland's Belfast the Christian sectarian "troubles" are still fresh in many people's memory, also bringing to mind the 500 year struggle between Catholic and Protestant. There was the small church on the front at Tobermory on the Isle of Mull where we attended a Sunday Service and not far away was Iona, home of Celtic Christianity. And then finally at our last port of call we visited the cathedral of Kirkwall, Orkney, with its warm red stone walls and the story of St Magnus, the founding Saint of Christianity on this Viking Island.
If there was any other theme to our cruise then it was probably that of war, violence and strive: Viz: The battle of Hastings, the German war time naval signals bunker in Guernsey*1, the struggle the Irish had with British rule, Northern Ireland's sectarian violence and the martyrdom of St Magnus, the Viking saint. All these struggles had their Christian dimension.
On Columbus' itinerary some site-seeing tours were offered that for us were a must-do; in particular the Bayeux tapestry, Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and on Orkney, the Ring of Brodgar & Skara Brae. Both Giant's causeway and Skara Brae take the would-be time traveller way beyond the relatively well documented history of Judaeo-Christianity into far more ancient times. Giant's causeway speaks for itself of huge tracts of time: The causeway started its history when magma intruded into chalk beds, beds themselves an even more ancient phenomenon involving the gradual deposition of countless minute calcite shells. The magma intrusion was followed by a gentle uniform cooling that in itself would, in the most probable scenario, require millennia. This cooling caused hexagonal cracks to develop as the basalt contracted. Following this, there was the slow erosion of the ancient upper chalk & marble (metamorphosized chalk) beds and then the erosion of the fine grained basalt of the causeway leaving it as we it see today. The causeway basalt is dated to the early Cenozoic era.In geological time scales Skara Brae, as a Neolithic village, was effectively only abandoned yesterday. But even so a 5000 year old prehistoric neolithic site in many ways holds far greater secrets than a much older geological site like Giant's Causeway. For in human prehistoric archaeology we are always faced with the conundrum of the human meaning and purpose of what we are looking at. Mystery in general arouses curiosity and in many ways I find this kind of site even more interesting than well known historic sites of which historians may already know an awful lot.
Unfortunately our visit to Orkney was marred by high winds and rain. Unlike the peaceful ambiance at Duddo Stone Circle in Northumberland my survey of the ring of Brodgar was therefore all too brief (The wife refused to get out of the coach!). The blasting rain hampered my concentration as I tried to do what archaeologists tell us we should do; that is, to use our imaginations to get into the minds of the ancient people who made and frequented these stone circles. I did manage to take a video of the circle which I can play back in the comfort of my study. But it is not the same as being there, needless to say:
Apart from being fairly sure that these stone circles are what archaeologists vaguely refer to as "ritual enclosures" with apparent alignments to their contexts (both celestial and terrestrial), little is known about their original purpose. There has been much speculation as to what these structures meant to the cultures that created and used them. I don't suppose I'll make any new progress on that score myself but I always welcome a walk round a stone circle in the remote chance that some new thought as to their meaning might come to me as I savor the atmosphere and attempt to connect with those people of long ago; after all, they weren't alien life forms and we share a common humanity with them. In the absence of an historical record this shared humanity is the only key we have to understanding these enigmatic constructions.
Although the bad weather prevented me walking round the site, as it turned out the concepts of "weather" and "round", which were for obvious reasons upper most in my mind, eventually gave me a new lateral-thinking slant on the subject. In fact "circles" and "weather" were to become the themes of that inclement day.
Neolithic farmers were governed by both the weather and the cycles of the seasons. These cycles were echoed in the circular motions of the lights in the celestial vault; sun. moon, planets and stars. Naturally enough the neolithic architects of Brodgar may well have imbued these motions, which so strongly correlate with the seasons, with life giving and life destroying powers. Moreover, there was the repeated terrestrial pattern of birth and death and beyond their houses the landscape surrounded these neolithic people with a 360 degree aspect. Circles and cycles were every where to be seen, not least the farming cycles which were so obviously a matter of life and death for these people. Of course, this cycle is a matter of life and death for us too but modern farming is a little more resilient than neolithic farming and the superstructure of industrial society is now so high that few of us are conscious of the cyclic agricultural base on which it all rests. In contrast Neolithic people who were close to the land were no doubt all too aware of the life sustaining nature of cyclic agriculture and knew the consequences of its cycles faltering; they knew that nature (if indeed they had the concept of "nature") was at once both providential and yet capricious. The green man carvings found in medieval churches may be evidence that medieval people too were very conscious of their dependence on cycles that weren't entirely reliable.
For neolithic people the cosmos was only what they could directly eyeball. In one sense their "science" of circles & cycles, if such it can be called, was at the cosmological level complete in so far as it described all they could see and all they needed to know for farming; unlike us they had no awkward data being returned from sophisticated high-powered instruments to try and make sense of. My guess is that for them religion and science were of a piece, inseparable in that their religion was thoroughly cosmological and bound up with the motions in the heavens. Therefore my "imaginative" archaeological contribution is that these stone circles symbolised and crystallised in the minds of the people who built them the natural circles & cycles they observed and depended on. Although in the absence of an historical record we can have no idea of the details of their associated religion or of the ceremonies they hosted these stone monuments, I guess, were a celebration of the concepts that were the key to their survival; namely, the circle and the cycle.*3
If we look back to the Ptolemaic universe of the scholastic middle ages we may have an historical parallel which helps us understand something of neolithic man's obsession with circles and what a cosmological religion looks like; although it's true to say that the scholastics, as Christians, regarded the divine to reside beyond these circles, whereas it is possible that early pagan cultures regarded the heavens as the place of the divine with, perhaps, the heavenly lights actually being the gods themselves; such a conclusion is natural enough given that ostensibly the motions in the heavens had such an important relation with the agricultural cycle (This pagan error is compelling attacked by Genesis 1).
Some modern people, especially new agers, like to think that ancient peoples had a mystical harmony with their environment, something we have lost today. But, I suggest, that's only true because they knew so little about their ultimate cosmological setting and their undeveloped technology had little impact on the environment. About that environment they knew a lot less than ourselves and therefore had less to explain and what they did know was bound up with their agricultural survival. Today, of course, we know a lot more but we lack an emotional connection with what we cannot now unlearn; namely, that the cosmos no longer has the ostensive appearance of being anthropocentric. But we have lost no secret wisdom from the past; rather it's exactly the opposite: There has been a loss of ignorance and innocence as we have reaped the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
I was really looking forward to our visit to Skara Brae, presumably contemporaneous with the circle of Brodgar. The rain had stopped temporarily when we visited it but it was very windy and again this spoilt my attempts to recreate the site in my imagination. However, near the interpretation centre was a modern reconstruction of one of the houses. This house is entered by a meandering tunnel and it is thought that tunnels like this served as "streets" linking the houses. These "streets weren't a planned addition but haphazardly evolved over time as a way of keeping out the cold and the weather. On entering this complex, and especially as I entered the house itself with its very thick dry stone walls, I was
struck by how successfully it insulated its inhabitants from the noise of the howling wind. The interior was still and quiet and potentially cosy. But with no windows except a small hole in the roof to allow the exit of smoke, the space would have been relatively dark, lit only dimly with burning wicks. However, the house was a very effective stable environmental bubble isolating the villagers from the vagaries of the weather, vagaries we were experiencing ourselves on the day we visited. I have wondered why, especially at Christmas time I like to turn down the lights and enjoy the dim ambiance of sidelights and a log fire. Is this a result of some kind of residual "memory" that seeks comfort and security in a dimly lit warm atmosphere?
Today we are less aware of the buffeting of the capricious agricultural cycles of nature, if only indirectly feeling them when prices go up. Our technological environmental bubble is far more sophisticated than the cosy interior of a dry stone house and this has further distanced us from the environment. And yet we know orders of magnitude more about that environment than those Neolithic farmers ever could know. But this knowledge has come at an emotional price: We are far less confident about imbuing what we now know with anthropocentric meaning in the way that, I guess, these relatively ignorant Neolithic people did or even the medieval scholastics whose man-centred Ptolemaic universe was pregnant with divine meanings. The depths of time and space revealed by modern science is tricky to reconcile with an anthropic perspective and anthropically oriented beliefs like Christianity. I'm not saying it can't be done, it's just a little more challenging than it was 5000 years ago of even 500 years ago. It is no surprise, therefore, that even in the West some have abdicated their epistemic responsibilities by cutting the cosmos down to size as they return to young earthism, geocentrism and even flat earthism. The emotional driving force behind these anti-science world views is likely to be, I guess, the desire for a universe where man is restored to his overtly central place*2 in a Kincadian universe that is much more cosy and with less enigmatic indifference. We can find these throw-back worldviews not just among Christian fundamentalists but also among new agers who are thoroughly disillusioned with today's established scientific priesthood who they regard as not offering the spiritual guidance people are looking for. Instead the new-age gurus are offering all-sorts of mystical remedies for a wide range of human-ills. For those who don't have the energy to get into the technicalities of toy-town cosmologies, the spiritual angst and existential crises of the disaffected modern citizen can perhaps be fixed with gnosto-fideism; that is, the seeking of inner revelations, epiphanies, encounters and "higher levels of consciousness". The answers are no longer thought to be in the profane world "out there", but "in here", in the warmth of the inner life of the believer where esoteric experiences & enlightenment are said to be found. The emphasis here is on the irrational and what cannot and should not be articulated. As one aficionado of the bizarre Toronto Blessing opined: "Do not analyse it!".
But Christianity in its non-elaborated form is much less about cosmology, cosmogony and esoteric experience than it is about saving human community from its disease of human selfishness and epistemic arrogance. i.e "Sin", the word with the "I" in middle. Genesis 1 & 2 are much less a blue print of detailed cosmology and cosmogony than they are a mythical attack on the idea that the heavenly bodies and the earth itself have the status of gods; rather Genesis 1 & 2 are compelling myths which put the objects of the cosmos in their rightful created place; not as gods, that is. Other than that little is said in Genesis about the details of how God created. Christianity is strong on the subject of community but weak on detailed cosmogony and even weaker on cosmology, but no weaker than they need be: The details of creation are the job of modern science, a providence of God. After all, even in the Christian middle ages the scholastics had to turn to Greek science to get their detailed cosmology. With our scientific loss of innocence came the loss of naivety, but in turn we have exposed ourselves to the Riddle of the Sphinx. and the spiritual dangers of nihilism. Perhaps God regards us as having come of age.
Footnotes
The Ring of Brodgar on a windy wet day
Apart from being fairly sure that these stone circles are what archaeologists vaguely refer to as "ritual enclosures" with apparent alignments to their contexts (both celestial and terrestrial), little is known about their original purpose. There has been much speculation as to what these structures meant to the cultures that created and used them. I don't suppose I'll make any new progress on that score myself but I always welcome a walk round a stone circle in the remote chance that some new thought as to their meaning might come to me as I savor the atmosphere and attempt to connect with those people of long ago; after all, they weren't alien life forms and we share a common humanity with them. In the absence of an historical record this shared humanity is the only key we have to understanding these enigmatic constructions.
Although the bad weather prevented me walking round the site, as it turned out the concepts of "weather" and "round", which were for obvious reasons upper most in my mind, eventually gave me a new lateral-thinking slant on the subject. In fact "circles" and "weather" were to become the themes of that inclement day.
Neolithic farmers were governed by both the weather and the cycles of the seasons. These cycles were echoed in the circular motions of the lights in the celestial vault; sun. moon, planets and stars. Naturally enough the neolithic architects of Brodgar may well have imbued these motions, which so strongly correlate with the seasons, with life giving and life destroying powers. Moreover, there was the repeated terrestrial pattern of birth and death and beyond their houses the landscape surrounded these neolithic people with a 360 degree aspect. Circles and cycles were every where to be seen, not least the farming cycles which were so obviously a matter of life and death for these people. Of course, this cycle is a matter of life and death for us too but modern farming is a little more resilient than neolithic farming and the superstructure of industrial society is now so high that few of us are conscious of the cyclic agricultural base on which it all rests. In contrast Neolithic people who were close to the land were no doubt all too aware of the life sustaining nature of cyclic agriculture and knew the consequences of its cycles faltering; they knew that nature (if indeed they had the concept of "nature") was at once both providential and yet capricious. The green man carvings found in medieval churches may be evidence that medieval people too were very conscious of their dependence on cycles that weren't entirely reliable.
For neolithic people the cosmos was only what they could directly eyeball. In one sense their "science" of circles & cycles, if such it can be called, was at the cosmological level complete in so far as it described all they could see and all they needed to know for farming; unlike us they had no awkward data being returned from sophisticated high-powered instruments to try and make sense of. My guess is that for them religion and science were of a piece, inseparable in that their religion was thoroughly cosmological and bound up with the motions in the heavens. Therefore my "imaginative" archaeological contribution is that these stone circles symbolised and crystallised in the minds of the people who built them the natural circles & cycles they observed and depended on. Although in the absence of an historical record we can have no idea of the details of their associated religion or of the ceremonies they hosted these stone monuments, I guess, were a celebration of the concepts that were the key to their survival; namely, the circle and the cycle.*3
If we look back to the Ptolemaic universe of the scholastic middle ages we may have an historical parallel which helps us understand something of neolithic man's obsession with circles and what a cosmological religion looks like; although it's true to say that the scholastics, as Christians, regarded the divine to reside beyond these circles, whereas it is possible that early pagan cultures regarded the heavens as the place of the divine with, perhaps, the heavenly lights actually being the gods themselves; such a conclusion is natural enough given that ostensibly the motions in the heavens had such an important relation with the agricultural cycle (This pagan error is compelling attacked by Genesis 1).
Some modern people, especially new agers, like to think that ancient peoples had a mystical harmony with their environment, something we have lost today. But, I suggest, that's only true because they knew so little about their ultimate cosmological setting and their undeveloped technology had little impact on the environment. About that environment they knew a lot less than ourselves and therefore had less to explain and what they did know was bound up with their agricultural survival. Today, of course, we know a lot more but we lack an emotional connection with what we cannot now unlearn; namely, that the cosmos no longer has the ostensive appearance of being anthropocentric. But we have lost no secret wisdom from the past; rather it's exactly the opposite: There has been a loss of ignorance and innocence as we have reaped the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
 |
| Skara Brae |
 |
| Inside a neolithic house |
 |
| Inside my house on a winter's night |
Today we are less aware of the buffeting of the capricious agricultural cycles of nature, if only indirectly feeling them when prices go up. Our technological environmental bubble is far more sophisticated than the cosy interior of a dry stone house and this has further distanced us from the environment. And yet we know orders of magnitude more about that environment than those Neolithic farmers ever could know. But this knowledge has come at an emotional price: We are far less confident about imbuing what we now know with anthropocentric meaning in the way that, I guess, these relatively ignorant Neolithic people did or even the medieval scholastics whose man-centred Ptolemaic universe was pregnant with divine meanings. The depths of time and space revealed by modern science is tricky to reconcile with an anthropic perspective and anthropically oriented beliefs like Christianity. I'm not saying it can't be done, it's just a little more challenging than it was 5000 years ago of even 500 years ago. It is no surprise, therefore, that even in the West some have abdicated their epistemic responsibilities by cutting the cosmos down to size as they return to young earthism, geocentrism and even flat earthism. The emotional driving force behind these anti-science world views is likely to be, I guess, the desire for a universe where man is restored to his overtly central place*2 in a Kincadian universe that is much more cosy and with less enigmatic indifference. We can find these throw-back worldviews not just among Christian fundamentalists but also among new agers who are thoroughly disillusioned with today's established scientific priesthood who they regard as not offering the spiritual guidance people are looking for. Instead the new-age gurus are offering all-sorts of mystical remedies for a wide range of human-ills. For those who don't have the energy to get into the technicalities of toy-town cosmologies, the spiritual angst and existential crises of the disaffected modern citizen can perhaps be fixed with gnosto-fideism; that is, the seeking of inner revelations, epiphanies, encounters and "higher levels of consciousness". The answers are no longer thought to be in the profane world "out there", but "in here", in the warmth of the inner life of the believer where esoteric experiences & enlightenment are said to be found. The emphasis here is on the irrational and what cannot and should not be articulated. As one aficionado of the bizarre Toronto Blessing opined: "Do not analyse it!".
But Christianity in its non-elaborated form is much less about cosmology, cosmogony and esoteric experience than it is about saving human community from its disease of human selfishness and epistemic arrogance. i.e "Sin", the word with the "I" in middle. Genesis 1 & 2 are much less a blue print of detailed cosmology and cosmogony than they are a mythical attack on the idea that the heavenly bodies and the earth itself have the status of gods; rather Genesis 1 & 2 are compelling myths which put the objects of the cosmos in their rightful created place; not as gods, that is. Other than that little is said in Genesis about the details of how God created. Christianity is strong on the subject of community but weak on detailed cosmogony and even weaker on cosmology, but no weaker than they need be: The details of creation are the job of modern science, a providence of God. After all, even in the Christian middle ages the scholastics had to turn to Greek science to get their detailed cosmology. With our scientific loss of innocence came the loss of naivety, but in turn we have exposed ourselves to the Riddle of the Sphinx. and the spiritual dangers of nihilism. Perhaps God regards us as having come of age.
Footnotes
*1 It is quite possible that some of the encoded signals sent out from this bunker were decoded on my mother's decoding machine which she operated at Bletchley park during the war: See here.
*2 This spiritual conceit is also apparent in the fundamentalist doctrine of the fall which aggrandises humanity by positing man's fall to be the sole source of cosmic chaos and tends to ignore the meaning of the highly symbolic story of the serpent in Genesis 3. This compelling mythical account provides us with evidence of the existence of sin and its concomitant of chaos prior to the fall of man. We remember that in human culture the figure of the image of the serpent has strong connotations of cosmic chaos .
*3 It's worth asking the question why these prehistoric temples with circular symmetry gave way to more asymmetric temple designs housing an effigy of a god, usually placed opposite to the temple entrance. As far as I'm aware large statues of gods have not been found in stone circles. My first shot at answering this question is as follows: The conventional temple design is usually associated with literate & farming efficient societies where writing was the means by which a bureaucracy could maintain the organisation of large cities. Thus, the invention of writing (along with an efficient agricultural base) was one factor allowing a large section of the population to become removed from the agricultural cycle and run the city. In this context autocratic rule headed by a monarch was the usual means of government. It may well be, then, that the concept of the king in his palace was then used as the model to understand the divine. This linear temple model was even present in Judaeo-Christianity albeit without a focusing effigy at the business end of the structure; witness the temple in Jerusalem and the linear design of medieval churches.
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