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Re: Silbury updates
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Good on the Guardian to print Lord A's letter but did anybody see this at the back of the Family section last Saturday.....just got round to reading it over toast..

Mr H

Go to Avebury in Wiltshire
Pete May

I've finally cracked the meaning of the Avebury complex in Wiltshire - neolithic humans built it to amuse their kids. My daughters are trying to climb the huge sarsen stones, and running down earthwork ditches. Then my eight-year-old is asking, a little too loudly, "But, Mummy, why would people have sex beneath the stones?" having overheard our discussion on fertility rites.

They love a good death story too, and are delighted by the museum's exhibition of a rusting pair of scissors found in the pocket of a 13th-century barber who was crushed to death while trying to remove and destroy one of the "devil's stones".

We climb Silbury Hill, and I explain that this took as much human effort as building the pyramids, yet no one knows what it was for. "Maybe they climbed up it to collect the cup," suggests my perceptive daughter Lola.

And then we walk to West Kennet Long Barrow, climbing inside the stone chambers beneath the earth. "And this is where the skulls were stacked, and this was for legs," I say, explaining how neolithic people talked to their ancestors via their bones. We picnic on top of the mound, gazing at Silbury Hill.

"Can we hear the ancestors talking?" asks five-year-old Nell, hopefully.

"Yes, you can listen with this," says her mum, handing her an empty mineral water bottle and letting the wind reverberate in its lips. She is transfixed.


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Mr Hamhead
Posted by Mr Hamhead
20th July 2007ce
08:00

In reply to:

Silbury updates (Littlestone)

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Re: Silbury updates (nigelswift)

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