Road Trip Through History: Stonehenge
We caught our first glimpse of Stonehenge from the highway--the familiar stone circle silhouetted against the sky. I felt a flutter of excitement. After all, Stonehenge is a major Bronze Age site, built at roughly the same time as the Great Pyramid at Giza. Like the pyramids, it's built from monolithic stones, some brought from more than 200 miles away. Unlike the pyramids, we don't really know why* it was built or by whom.** As far as ancient mysteries go, it's one of the most mysterious.
My Own True Love, who was not really interested, asked "Couldn't we just say we've seen it and drive on?" As it turned out, he had the right idea.
The day was cold and gray. The wind was relentless. The line to get into the site was long. Protestors stood just outside the fence that defined the site, with signs urging that the ongoing excavations be shut down.***
Once we got past the ticket gate, the day was still cold and the wind was worse. The guidebooks had made it clear that visitors are no longer allowed into the stone circle itself without making special arrangements. Instead, you walk around the monument on a tarmac and grass path made for the purpose. Under the right circumstances, this could be an awe-inspiring experience--like circumambulating a Buddhist stupa. These were not the right circumstances. The crowd moved in clumps, stopping when their audio tours told them to stop and occasionally posing to take each other's pictures with the stones in the background. On a warm day, it might have been festive. As it was, there was a dogged quality to the whole thing. Halfway around the circle, we looked at each other and said, "Let's blow this pop stand."
Close up, the grandeur was gone. We'd have been better off with the view from the highway.
* Most scholars believe the circle served as a celestial calendar, based on the alignment of its stones with sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstices. Recent discoveries suggest it could be part of a giant mortuary complex (there are some 500 Bronze Age burial mounds within a three-mile radius of the site).
** But we do know it wasn't the Druids, who date from 1500-2000 years later.
***The wind was so high that I didn't take notes--a fact I'm kicking myself for in retrospect. My memory tells me the signs cited reverence for a sacred site, reverence for the first kings of Britain, and respect for the dead. All good things--and yet….
Image credit: gianliguori / 123RF Stock Photo
Another Chance to Win a Copy of Mankind
Look at MANKIND shoulder to shoulder with a book by Barbara Tuchman on the bookstore shelves.
Those of you who didn't win a copy of Mankind: The Story of All of Us have a second chance. I'm blogging about Big Bang, Big Brains, Big History over at Wonders & Marvels today as part of the 12 Books of Christmas give-away. Leave a comment on the blog post over there to be included in the drawing for Mankind. (Comments left on this blog won't count for the drawing.) While you're there, check out the essays and books of my fellow contributors and comment on anything that takes your fancy. If you want an additional chance to win, sign up for the newsletter.
Book promotion will be over soon, I promise.
Road Trip Through History: Portsmouth
H.M.S. Victory, photo courtesy of Jamie Campbell
My Own True Love and I went to Portsmouth primarily to visit the Historic Dockyards. Restored historic ships, the story of the Tudor warship the Mary Rose, the history of the dockyards themselves--it sounded right up our alley. And in fact it was. The quality of the exhibits ranged from the fabulous to the dated and dusty, but we spent a happy day there. The exhibits on the discovery and underwater excavation of the Mary Rose and the construction and conservation of Admiral Horatio Nelson's warship, the HMS Victory were excellent. I came away with several "oh wow!" moments:
- The attempted French invasion of Britain in July 1545 was larger than the Spanish Armada. Who knew? (Attempted French invasions were a repeated theme of our trip.)
- Before mechanical watches were invented, mariners, shepherds and other peripatetic types carried pocket sundials. (Am I the only one who didn’t know this?)
Obviously, these were the Patek Phillipes of pocket sundials. I suspect shepherds carried something a little plainer.)
- A hands-on exhibit for children included a chain mail shirt sized for a ten-year-old boy. It was so heavy I could barely pick it up. I can’t even imagine putting one on without help, let alone fighting in it.
- In 1802, Nelson commissioned an oak tree plantation in the forest of Dean. Two hundred odd years later, the oak is now ready to use for repairs to the Victory. Somehow this brought the fact that timber for ships was a major issue in the days before metal ships to life for me in a new way.
But interesting as the Historic Dockyards were, the unexpected high point of Portsmouth was the D-Day Museum. Despite the fact that I read Antony Beevor's excellent book on The Second World War a few months ago, I was chagrined to realize how little I had retained about the invasion itself--a handful of names and a few images. I certainly knew nothing about the preparations leading up to the invasion or the Portsmouth's key role in those preparations.
The museum does an excellent job of portraying the invasion itself, but it is not "just" a military museum. A significant portion of the exhibit focuses on social history of the period, looking at bombing raids, women in the workforce, black outs, evacuation and rationing as experienced in Portsmouth. I was particularly taken by the oral history element of the museum: the museum not only provided book after book of first hand accounts for the visitor to read, it also played recordings of those accounts in the relevant sections of the museum. My favorite line was from a woman working in a munitions factory:
"They used to tell you that you couldn't do it, but at the same time there was no-one else to do it…You had to get it done."
Sing it, sister.