To know or not to know

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CianMcLiam C
CianMcLiam Apr 16, 2010 18:10:30
Replying to Sanctuary

I'd like to know, not so much what they explained them as or for, they are historical curiosities that would be interesting to know, but what really motivated groups of people to lay down a plan and organise such huge (and not so huge) investments of time and labour. Why certain structures were more satisfying than the alternatives and replicated over and over, why certain motifs carved in rocks spread across the wildest parts of the Atlantic facade.
I probably wouldn't get the really satisfying answers to these questions by asking the people who were involved, though the stories and explanations they would tell us would be fascinating to record. I'd love to get to the bottom of the part of human nature that drives people to build these things (now as in the past) and what draws us to the abandoned and forgotten sites today.

S Sanctuary
Sanctuary Apr 16, 2010 19:59:57
Replying to CianMcLiam

CianMcLiam wrote:
I'd like to know, not so much what they explained them as or for, they are historical curiosities that would be interesting to know, but what really motivated groups of people to lay down a plan and organise such huge (and not so huge) investments of time and labour. Why certain structures were more satisfying than the alternatives and replicated over and over, why certain motifs carved in rocks spread across the wildest parts of the Atlantic facade.
I probably wouldn't get the really satisfying answers to these questions by asking the people who were involved, though the stories and explanations they would tell us would be fascinating to record. I'd love to get to the bottom of the part of human nature that drives people to build these things (now as in the past) and what draws us to the abandoned and forgotten sites today.
I think your words 'investments of time and labour' are a major key to at least understanding why the huge structures were built. In many cases such as at Avebury and possibly Stonehenge for instance (if it was indeed also part of a major complex) that the work involved was so time consuming that it must surely indicate to us that the time spent working on them in a human lifetime was possibly seen as irrelevent if compared to a reward on offer later, i.e. an Afterlife! That is the only reason I can possibly see why, for many, they would spend their whole lifetimes toiling away day after day. Were they built for someone else to benefit from or for the very builders and people themselves I think we need to ask ourselves?