{"id":6575,"date":"2014-07-11T14:45:47","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T20:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6575"},"modified":"2014-07-11T15:46:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T21:46:03","slug":"caves-a-sacred-pillar-and-a-mystery-disk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6575","title":{"rendered":"Caves, a Sacred Pillar, and a Mystery Disk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00b6 If I could visit Chauvet Cave, I could die happy. It’s one of “10 must-see cave paintings<\/a>,” of which I have seen none. At least I know where there is signage-free rock art in southern Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u00b6 Croatian Pagans erect a pillar to Perun<\/a>, the sky god. With video, still photos, and music.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00b6 An article on the Nebra Sky Disk, buried in Germany thousands of years ago<\/a>. Except I don’t buy this part:<\/p>\n

Astronomer Ralph Hansen maintains that the disc was an attempt to co-ordinate the solar and lunar calendars to tell Bronze Age Man when to plant seeds and when to make trades, giving him an almost modern sense of time. “For everyday calendrical purposes, you would use Moon years. But for designing when to plough fields and when to harvest, you use Sun years,” said Hansen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am just a gardener, not a Neolithic farmer, but I do not think that Neolithic farmers needed stone circles or <\/em>“portable instruments” to tell them when to plant. If you live in a place long enough, you know the local signs, for instance, “plant cool weather crops when the grass turns green,” or “it’s usually safe to plant warm-weather plants when the oak leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear” \u2014 whatever works for you.<\/p>\n

But I have seen this so many times \u2014 members of the Clerisy like Hansen who think that the peasants are or were too stupid to know when to plant their peas unless someone like themselves, backed by the authority of a stone circle (“Lo, Father Sun is rising . . .”) tells them when to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00b6 If I could visit Chauvet Cave, I could die happy. It’s one of “10 must-see cave paintings,” of which I have seen none. At least I know where there is signage-free rock art in southern Colorado. \u00b6 Croatian Pagans erect a pillar to Perun, the sky god. With video, still photos, and music. \u00b6 […]<\/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":[237,20,131,5],"class_list":["post-6575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agriculture","tag-archaeology","tag-europe","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1I3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9634,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9634","url_meta":{"origin":6575,"position":0},"title":"The Element of Fire Is Invoked in the South . . . and West, North, and East","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 3, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I were driving home from Pueblo on Monday, anxiously watching the horizon. \"This reminds me of those cartoons about cavemen where there are always some volcanoes erupting in the distance,\" she said, indicating the mountains with a flick of her hand. We had just passed through an area\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fire\"","block_context":{"text":"fire","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fire"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/chateau-fire.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/chateau-fire.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/chateau-fire.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1875,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1875","url_meta":{"origin":6575,"position":1},"title":"Get Right with Tlaloc","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"On a recent trip to look at some Anasazi \/ Ancestral Puebloan ruins in northeast Arizona, I took Craig Childs' book House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest as my guide book. Driving and backpacking from southwest Colorado down into Sonora, Mexico, over a period of\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":617,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=617","url_meta":{"origin":6575,"position":2},"title":"Giggles in the cavesA respected\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Giggles in the cavesA respected expert on prehistoric art suggests that many of the Paleolithic cave paintings were made by teenagers, not the mature male shamans usually assumed to be their authors.\u201cThis assumption may be true of a few of the best known and better-drawn images, but these are a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11135,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11135","url_meta":{"origin":6575,"position":3},"title":"“Witchy” Cave Is New Obstacle to Mine Expansion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"When I went to graduate school, I wanted to write a paper on how so many interesting natural sites have \"Devil\" or \"Devil's\" in their name. Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming might be the best-known in the United States.((The federal government has been confused by the possessive apostrophe since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4856,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4856","url_meta":{"origin":6575,"position":4},"title":"Pentagram Pizza: Eat It Back in the Cave","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 You knew this was coming: the zombie Tarot deck. \u2022 On cave paintings, art, and cognition. \u2022 More old stuff: were those ancient figurines of voluptuous women goddesses . . . or toys? Don't suggest the latter to the idol-makers of today. \u2022 Have beautiful handwriting by Christmas. You\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"pentagram pizza\"","block_context":{"text":"pentagram pizza","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=pentagram-pizza"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/pentagrampizza1-126x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5132,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5132","url_meta":{"origin":6575,"position":5},"title":"Candles and the Eco-Witch","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Homes with candles burning brightly are filled with sexy wood nymphs nightly. As best I recall, that was a couplet from one of Al Manning's books. I never met him, but from his how-to books and particularly his early-1980s autobiography, Eye of Newt in My Martini, I get the impression\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"witchcraft\"","block_context":{"text":"witchcraft","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=witchcraft"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.partylite.biz\/imaging\/resize?fileName=\/productcatalog\/production\/en_US\/product\/1342048967653P95477-FH12-1.jpg&height=274&width=250&quality=0.85","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575","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=6575"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6578,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions\/6578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}