On BBC TV, Alice Roberts has just summarized theories about Stonehenge, including both the idea that the stones celebrate summer and life and also the opposite idea that they celebrate winter and death, the latter recently propounded by yet another TV presenter, Neil Oliver.
Poul Anderson's works cover many periods of history and also include two references to Stonehenge. Thus, TV viewing, like other reading, can be blog-relevant.
Domestics: laid up with a cold, although not too incapacitated to blog, I will have to miss a day-trip to London this Saturday.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteThe most reasonable thing to say about Stonehenge is that we don't know why it was built, or by whom.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, it does have a relation to the seasons and to stellar movements.
ReplyDeleteKaor, Mr. Stirling!
ReplyDeleteI can accept that Stonehenge seems to be aligned to match the solstices. Beyond that inference we know nothing, really, about its origins and builders.
Ad astra! Sean
It's sort of a risk to set scenes in the far past, because we're always discovering stuff about it. For example, in THE CORRIDORS OF TIME Poul has the Indo-Europeans arriving in Denmark about 1500 BCE, and we now know it was around 2500 BCE or a bit earlier.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd have to rewrite ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME if I was doing it again -- set it a thousand years earlier, just for starters. That was when the Indo-European speakers hit Britain, we now know.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
ReplyDeleteYes, I can see how it can be risky for writers setting scenes in the past. Any COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON should have the editors adding occasional explanatory notes of the kind you mentioned to works like THE CORRIDORS OF TIME.
I remember you ruefully saying recent discoveries would force you to rewrite your ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME BOOKS. Setting them a thousand years earlier would be during the VI Dynasty of Egypt (2345-2181 BC), perhaps during the reign of Pepi II, who allegedly ruled for 94 years. How might the Nantucketers have affected an Egypt nearing its first Intermediate Period?
It might have been the Indo-European invaders who built Stonehenge?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: not the earlier parts of it.
ReplyDelete