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Stonehenge and its Environs

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"Attributing some "ancestral" nature to those stones is mostly affectation, for all of us"

Affectation or not, its based upon solid fact IMHO. Given the millions of ancestors we each have and the millions of descendants that the Aveburyites had, its inconceivable that the two sets aren't intermingled, not just once but many many times. You and I ARE descended from the people who built Avebury.

That being so I don't think that feeling a connection is fanciful or an affectation. Using terms like "our ancestors" is merely shorthand for this reality. Its certainly not a claim to direct descent rather than a diffuse one. I don't think anyone here is daft enough not to be well aware of the reality.

Having said that, marks made by your ancesters that are evident in fields where you live are bound to touch you more deeply than ones in say Poland. They are more immediate, why shouldn't they? Taking a trip to see Ozymandias lying in the desert sands can't evince the same sense of connection as digging bits of him up in your own garden. Logic says the two cases are the same but feeling an ancestral pull isn't about logic its about emotion.

nigelswift wrote:
"Attributing some "ancestral" nature to those stones is mostly affectation, for all of us"

[snip]

Logic says the two cases are the same but feeling an ancestral pull isn't about logic its about emotion.

nigelswift wrote:
"Attributing some "ancestral" nature to those stones is mostly affectation, for all of us"

[snip]

... feeling an ancestral pull isn't about logic its about emotion.

Well, exactly. I guess I'm just an old fart in my own way. My particular interest in the stones is a pedantically "practical" one: can studying the stone pushers (as well as many other times and peoples) tell me anything about how the world in which I live got to be the way it is? Probably I've missed out on some very important literature and sources. This is, after all, more of a hobby than anything. But from what little I've read, the answer seems to be, only pretty tenuously at best.

It all reminds me of the folks who get those family coats of arms for their playrooms. And perhaps strikes a chord because I've just spent a few months unravelling some wonderfully tangled up, mythologized and totally silly actual family history of my own. [http://lovebunnies.luckypro.biz/genealogy/ for a real hoot!] So I've just had a marvelous experience with "ancestry," and you and littlestone's [Hello hello, littlestone!] contrasting an american's ancestry experience with a Brit's seemed rather romanticized and hardly the hard headed and curmudgeonly outlook I've come to expect.

Getting soft in your old age?