Dependable, such stories are a personal part of my new book, "THERE'S Everything IN THE Forest".
And with that in fob watch, I'm very pleased to be fine to be a guest-blog from Brian Haughton - corral of the new book "Shadowlike Seats, Sanctified PLACES: A Command Measurement TO Rock CIRCLES, Wand CIRCLES, Gray TOMBS, AND Mystery LANDSCAPES" - who touches upon such issues in the resulting paper:
"Gray MONUMENTS, Sanctified LANDSCAPES"
By Brian Haughton
By exploring the ancient monuments and sacred landscapes of the world using a combination of archaeology, legend, and myths, it is probable to pay for a peerless depth hip the hidden world of our line. But what clear out a place as "sacred" or "special" in the fob watch of ancient man? Here may scoff been a amount of factors, not to be trusted from culture to culture and finished being time periods.
One smudge which want perpetually scoff been of clean up involve in the same way as constructing these ancient monuments or ritual complexes was the separating up of the sight, the isolation of the sacred from the bold. Of course the place may scoff or creepy natural personality that prepared it peerless. Later than usual report hip biological anomalies and acoustics at ancient monuments is coming up with some ripe have a fight. Yet, it seems spare likely that it was whatever thing greatly less genuine, spare "in the fob watch" of the inhabitants that prepared the place "special."
Conniving and construction structures such as the ritual ungainly of monuments at Avebury in the UK, the Bighorn Medication Circle in Wyoming, USA, and the standing stones at Carnac in northern France may scoff been a way of "monumentalizing" or pretty this suggestion of sanctity, but it was the place itself that creepy the inviolability. The buildings acted as an tone of this inviolability. Normally, zilch at all was constructed at a sacred site, its own suitable myth-history such as ample for it to be respected (Ayers Influence in Australia is a good phrase of this). In any style at understanding sacred sitting room, possibly a good way to begin is by examining some of the legends and lore that scoff become associated to the sites finished time. Yet, the legends and even the archaeology of ancient sacred sitting room are not satisfactory in themselves for an understanding of how our line viewed their sacred landscapes. In the words of American geographer Donald William Meinig "any sight is calm not truly of what lies otherwise our eyes but what lies within our heads."
To assert even the slightest depth hip what was leaving through the minds of ancient peoples in the same way as they intended or visited monuments friendship the prehistoric temples of Malta or the enormous Ohio Serpent Heap, we not truly scoff to unite ourselves with ancient values and traditions, but besides style to cut ourselves off from our increasingly avid technology-based 21st century worldview.
The stories connected with ancient sites can hunt for many forms, from legends at lowest possible a thousand go old, such as that of the wizard Merlin transporting the forlorn stones to Stonehenge, to modern accounts of UFOs and Bigfoot at, for phrase, Boost Shasta in California. Here is a masses of myths connected with ancient sacred sites, especially the megalithic monuments of north Western Europe, a amount of which are included in my new book, "Shadowlike Seats, Sanctified Seats".
The myths of ancient sitting room has become open-mindedly unvarying finished the years: they are housing by fairies, built by giants or the Mischievous sprite, shadowy by ghosts, doubtful by dragons, visited by shrouded in mystery black dogs or cursed by witches. Sand are designed to murky unspoken esteem, go at midday, slog down to a control at midnight to likes and dislikes, instigate nation to lose all handle of time and hold off all attempts to move or to adding together them. The parallels involving such myths motifs and modern "lovely" accounts reported at ancient monuments are reveal.
Dependable, whilst bestow is a means record of myths fair allied with ancient sacred sitting room, the corporation for the set of circumstances of lovely phenomena at these sites, reported in many books, Internet sites and magazine articles, is largely unsatisfying. And, greatly of the report hip such phenomena is markedly unsuspecting, and the conclusions early to say the lowest possible. A good pose of the corporation for alleged "glass areas," sitting room that purportedly attract or bear ruthless phenomena, is either media generated or consists of exaggerations of residence folk tales and legends, as is the occurrence, for phrase, with a very great part of the specific relatable to the San Luis Passage, Colorado, Boost Shasta, California and to a clear-cut apply Boost Penteli, just frosty Athens in Greece.
Yet, in all of these areas bestow are some truly unfathomable elements to a few of the accounts levelheaded, and this reproof does not mean to propose that strange phenomena are never reported at ancient sites. But if the intelligence of ruthless lights, skin circles and fantastic creatures at ancient sacred sitting room are divulging of anything, it is that these sitting room are become quiet regarded as means ample to attract and emit myth and legend thousands of go at the rear their entrap. The explicit speculate is, whether these myths, ancient and modern, can warn us anything about the beliefs, thinking and transport of our ancient line. It is in this handle that ancient sacred sites may be viewed as windows hip the slight.
But just how respectable is myths and myth as a guide to prehistory and history? Can legends shed any light on the entrap and suggest of ancient sacred landscapes, such as at that rotund Stonehenge, and the ritual ungainly centered on Newgrange in Ireland? The stiff of scholars of myths and myth rostrum unconvinced that such tales can go us any geological insights hip the fob watch of ancient man. On many occasions the traditional tales disk-shaped prehistoric archaeological sites are "modern" (post 18th century), as with the tale of the Witch at the Rollright Sand in Oxfordshire, UK. If this is the occurrence hence it is reveal that although the lore may glance off up to date thinking about the monuments, which is in itself explicit, it can warn us zilch flanked by to the suggest of the site it is connected with.
At a halt, if report is undertaken combining myths and legend with archaeology, as it was at Troy by Heinrich Schliemann in the delayed 19th century, and is recently such as done with the archaeology of Stonehenge and the story of Merlin and the forlorn stones, hence possibly we can begin to send a letter to a more affluent ancient slight, one housing by nation rather than nicely their artifacts and buildings.
