{"id":5862,"date":"2013-07-16T09:03:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T15:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5862"},"modified":"2013-07-15T21:39:27","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T03:39:27","slug":"bbc-our-ancestors-were-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5862","title":{"rendered":"BBC: Our Ancestors Were Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is the Beeb with a story about an ancient monument in Scotland: <\/a><\/p>\n

“Excavations of a field at Crathes Castle found a series of 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then they trot out that stale old idea that ancient people needed to build giant monuments to tell themselves what time of year it was:<\/p>\n

The pit alignment also aligns on the Midwinter sunrise to provided the hunter-gatherers with an annual “astronomic correction” in order to better follow the passage of time and changing seasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And these, mind you, were hunter-gathers, not agriculturalists \u2014 not that any farmers need a calendar to tell them when to plant. Every traditional farming culture has its signs: “When the leaves of such-and-such tree are big as a mouse’s ear, plant such-and-such a crop.”<\/p>\n

And hunters? They watch the animals and factors affecting animals. <\/em>“It’s snowing hard. The elk will be moving down off the mountain.”<\/p>\n

And gatherers? They watch the plants<\/em>. “It’s rained for the last week. Let’s go check our mushroom-gathering area \u2014 they might be coming up.” I plan to do that tomorrow, in fact.<\/p>\n

You don’t need twelve posts in a circle to tell you when it is time.\u00a0 Even today, would you need a calendar to tell you when it was spring? Changes in vegetation, bird migrations, and other natural signs are quite enough.<\/p>\n

Astronomically aligned structures are meaningful, but sometimes we do not know why. But many instances, ancient Tenochtilan,<\/a> for example, aligned grand buildings\u00a0 showed that the rulers enjoyed the favor of heaven\/the gods. Likewise in imperial China and in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Possibly these twelve posts in a meadow were erected on the orders of some Paleolithic “Big Man<\/a>” whose ideas about the “formal construction of time” were connected to his sense of self-importance. That makes as much sense as allegedly telling people when it was time to hunt and gather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is the Beeb with a story about an ancient monument in Scotland: “Excavations of a field at Crathes Castle found a series of 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months.” Then they trot out that stale old idea that ancient people needed to build giant monuments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,17],"class_list":["post-5862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-scotland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1wy","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":791,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=791","url_meta":{"origin":5862,"position":0},"title":"Ancient British religion–stranger than we imagined","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Were the heads of dead children really a memorial?In the depths of the cave, there's the first glimpse of the trapped pool of water-- this was the bridge to another world, the high altar of a Bronze Age basilica.Any BBC Scotland viewers, let me know what you think of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7896,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7896","url_meta":{"origin":5862,"position":1},"title":"Magic in Philadelphia, Worshiping Game Characters, and a Holy Mountain in Scotland","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 If you live in or near Philadelphia, visit the U. of Pennsylvania museum for \"Magic in the Anciet World,\" an exhibit that \"explores some of the magical objects, words, and rituals used in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome.\" \u2022 When a Chinese grandmother left an offering at a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"exhibitions_magic1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/exhibitions_magic1-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4437,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4437","url_meta":{"origin":5862,"position":2},"title":"Puppy Mills for the Gods","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"When I read an article like \"Millions of Mummy Puppies Revealed at Egyptian Catacombs,\" I realize how little we know about what was really going on with popular religion there centuries ago. It's one thing to study the tombs of high-ranking individuals. We still put high-ranking individuals in fancy tombs,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10679,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10679","url_meta":{"origin":5862,"position":3},"title":"Megalith Culture Spread by Seafarers?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 27, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"From Science, \"Stonehenge, Other Ancient Rock Structures May Trace Their origins to Monuments like This\" Stonehenge may be the most famous example, but tens of thousands of other ancient sites featuring massive, curiously arranged rocks dot Europe. A new study suggests these megaliths weren\u2019t created independently but instead can be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ancient megalithic monument in Brittany (Science magazine)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencemag.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/inline__699w__no_aspect\/public\/carnac_16x9.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencemag.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/inline__699w__no_aspect\/public\/carnac_16x9.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencemag.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/inline__699w__no_aspect\/public\/carnac_16x9.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9037,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9037","url_meta":{"origin":5862,"position":4},"title":"On Dale Pendell (1947\u20132018)","author":"Chas S. 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There are some earlier uses of \"Celtic,\" again referring to the Gauls, from the late 17th century.\"Celts\" begame fashionable as Noble Savages after Scotland, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5862"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5865,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions\/5865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}