To know or not to know

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Sanctuary S
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?

B BuckyE
BuckyE Apr 19, 2010 16:07:32
Replying to Sanctuary

Sanctuary wrote:
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?
We're getting closer to the probable real truth with these posts. Because we already know why people built these things: for lots of "reasons." Don't you think the priests/shamans were concerned with mystical knowledge and how it could help life; that some tribal leaders saw the projects as good ways to foster their control, while other tribal leaders were concerned with group solidarity and how it could help their tribe; that the young boys wanted to show off for the girls, who enjoyed being shown off for; that the old women wanted to get together and brag about their childrens' success, gossip about whose venison stew was awful this time; you fill in the blanks for any group or type of people you can come up with.

Obviously, given the range of types of monuments, there had to be a range of beliefs about the different types of structures' ostensible meanings. (The explanations you'd get if you asked them why they were building Stonehenge or a barrow.) But to a large degree, so what? Some tiny Four Poster was all of the above to a small group, and Stonehenge or the alignments at Carnac were all of the above to a larger group. People changed their ostensible beliefs in tandem with changes in technology and social complexity.

The real question is whether ostensible beliefs are **more of** a motivation than the social interactions I mention above. Are ostensible beliefs the "true" motivations? I'd say not. And that therefore, while forgotten or unrecorded ostensible motivations have the allure of the mysterious, they are a red herring.

Of course the attempt to understand the past will inform the present and future. But that's the case no matter where your attempt begins, because any given thing relates to a myriad of things, which have their relations to myriads of others, eventually leading to **everything** that can be studied, pondered and appreciated. So, to a large degree, it doesn't matter where we begin: with the provenance of stones, or the diffusion of art motifs, or archaeoastronomy or whatever. Eventually, if we follow the connections of any of these subjects through all their ramifications, well, we end up here!