“Carved into the chalk of a hillside in southern England, the Uffington White Horse is utterly unique. Stretching 360 feet from head to tail, it is the only prehistoric geoglyph—a large-scale design created using elements of the natural landscape—known in Europe. “There’s just nothing like it,” says University of Southampton archaeologist Joshua Pollard, who points to the Nazca lines in Peru as the closest parallel. Pollard says that because the site is so anomalous, researchers have resisted grappling with its distinct nature. As a consequence, few new interpretations of the site have been advanced since the early twentieth century. “Archaeologists are tripped up by things that are unique,” says Pollard, “and the White Horse has thrown us.” But now, after making a close study of the site and its relationship to the landscape around it, Pollard has developed a theory that connects the Uffington Horse with an ancient mythological tradition ...”
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The sun horse theory gets tacked on to almost anything that is circular in Scandinavian prehistory whether there is a horse or not . It's ubiquitous , looks like it's starting here now .
In this case there is no sun symbol to go along with the horse .
Like Josh they also ignore the all important direction of travel (to the west during the day and east at night ) of motifs that are shoe horned into the theory , which is clear on the Trundholm chariot (the basis of the theory) .
The Uffington theory also ignores the direction in which the the horse is actually facing . It faces roughly north- south ,(i.e. not west )not a direction the sun ever travels in and making a mockery of " when observed from a hill opposite, in midwinter, the sun rises behind the horse, and as the day progresses, seems to gain on the horse and finally pass it. From the same vantage point, at all times of the year, the horse appears to be galloping along the ridge in a westerly direction, toward the sunset."
I cannot believe the shite that gets published, I really cannot.
'The horse appears to be galloping along in a westerly direction..'? The bloody thing 'points' just off south. What on earth is going on here?
I've got the ravilious print on my wall, and i'm looking at it now. Such a great image.
It gets worse , the original paper has a plan of the horse complete with a northing arrow very clearly showing the orientation of the horse is close to north -south .It then describes the sun rise above White Horse Hill as seen from Dragon Hill as a "sun roll" complete with a diagram showing the sun rise directly above the hill into the heavens i.e. not up or down the slope the hill .
Thank you for your comments Tiompan. I posted this link because as you may know Uffington is 'my patch' and I have a strong attachment to the place. To be honest I no longer give these sort of speculative papers a lot credence regardless of who writes them. This one has missed something important out - perception.
A few weeks back on 23rd July (to be precise) I was traveling back from London on the train, late evening. It was still light, however, and the sun was going down in the West. Uffington Hill and White Horse was bathed in a golden light and suddenly in that split second I understood something that no archaeologist can ever tell me.
That GWR sandwiches are overpriced?
George, it makes you wonder, it really does.
I've just had a quick skim of the paper.
I feel like i'm stating the obvious, but the sun does not rise 'immediately' behind the horse from dragon hill, and the horse does not 'appear' to be galloping off in a westerly direction. And 'sun roll' (!) you've noted.
Farcical.
"That GWR sandwiches are overpriced?" - no not that Evergreen, but up to your usual sarcasm passing for wit standard. I thought it would be obvious what I meant but for the benefit of clarity - was thinking more that the effect of the the sun setting and reflected light might have had a bearing of the siting of the horse. The setting sun seems often to be associated with the 'after-life'. Ancient sites, albeit far older than the White Horse, often 'look' towards that direction.
Sorry, but I do like to laugh. I'm just trying to be funny, but not at anybody's expense. I have a tendency to take things too seriously, so perhaps it's a safety valve!
Well, what you've written there sounds more plausible to me than the stuff in the paper anyway.
Another gem from the original paper "When seen from the north, the views are straight along the back of the horse, from its tail to its head."
Errr , if it was aligned east to west , "straight along the back of the horse "would be perpendicular to an observer looking from the north .
Fwiw, "straight along the back of the horse " i.e. the direction it is at least looking towards leads to the nearby B.A. round barrow and a wee bit further , Uffington Castle .
And this has me totally stumped -
'..the image adopts a very clear running posture, with head down, tail out and legs in wide gait. Its north-east to south-west alignment, with the head to the south-west, gives the impression of the figure following a broadly east–west route.
Computer says no.
The horse is heading generally southwest though. The head is SSW, the tail is NNE. If it carried on running along the edge of the escarpment (on the basis that it's not running on the spot) it would be heading southwestwards.
Yes it is close to the southern side of SW (approx 202 degrees )about 10 degrees from SSW but certainly not East to West . Fwiw the orientation of the back is also too far south for any sun set to be seen on the horizon from either the tail or continuing the same orientation from the eye ."not a direction the sun ever travels in" , in relation to the horse .
What does go east to west (almost spot on ) as seen from Dragon Hill is the road below and to the right of the horse , the difference in orientation between the two is telling and clear in this pic .
alamy.com/stock-photo-the-ancient-white-horse-chalk-figure-and-dragon-hill-near-uffington-8392588.html
The horse is following the route of the road and the contour of the escarpment, when it gets round the bend it will be facing west :)
George, the road is east - west for only a short distance. then it veers off sw/ne.
SC, if your auntie had balls she'd be your uncle.
edit : I got my bollocks and balls mixed up.
As you said George, the difference in orientation is very clear.
Well , not only is the difference clear , there is no sign of any associated sun .
Just as well there are no cup marks in the area or they would have become symbolic suns , no matter how many . Mind you there is the round barrow and that is where it heading . And the direction it is facing is towards a part of the horizon where the sun is never seen to rise or set , maybe it got lost .
Well I beg to differ George. As I said in a comment above - I saw for myself from a train (probably the best land view of the White Horse) the reflection of the setting sun over Uffington Hill and White Horse. This was one evening late July at around 8.00pm. Mock the article if you will, its no skin off my nose but please don't tell me there is no setting sun to be seen. The views from Uffington Hill are wide and far reaching - I can't vouch for the actual horizon but the setting sun must be visible from there. Anyway carry on if you must, glad you find it so amusing.
I think tjj is right, the question is where the horse/sunset is viewed from, not whether the horse itself aligns with the sunset on the horizon. Presumably when viewing the horse from the vale to the north, the sunset will be over on the right from the viewer's perspective, at any time of year, so the horse will appear to be heading towards it.
Tjj, you're getting the wrong end of the stick, if you don't mind me saying so.
George isn't saying you can't see a sunset from Uffington(!), he's talking about the orientation and the stuff in the paper.
SC, have you read the paper?
Yes, and there's a lot in there that I don't agree with.
But here I'm picking up on your comments about the direction that the horse 'appears' to be galloping in and that it isn't aligned NE/SW, which is true if you're looking at it from above, although it is NNE/SSW.
Viewed from the north (as tjj was doing), the horse does appear to be heading to the viewer's right (west) which is towards the setting sun.
I never said it isn't aligned NE/SW (although it isn't).
It isn't NNE/SSW either.
I was saying that the figure doesn't follow a 'broadly east-west route'. (because it doesn't).
"The viewers right (west)"
Eh? It might be to the viewers right, but the head points just off south.
The head doesn't point south, the orientation is SSW/NNE, as George says above "Yes it is close to the southern side of SW (approx 202 degrees )about 10 degrees from SSW"
zoom.earth/#51.576928,-1.564144,16z,sat
The viewer from the vale is viewing it displayed across the side of the hill, not from an aerial viewpoint. To them the head of the horse is at the right, the tail is at the left. The sunset will be over to the right of that, I think at any time of year.
I can't believe there is disagreement about this. It is plain.
10 degrees from SSW is not SSW. It is 10 degrees from it.
Your 2nd paragraph - The sunset will be over to the right of that because the sun sets (in midwinter) broadly SW. Summer - NW. Equinox - W.
The horse is broadly N/S.
I don't think I can make this any clearer.
There's disagreement because you're viewing in terms of compass alignments whereas I'm viewing it in terms of viewer perspective from the ground.
Here's the view from the vale:
themodernantiquarian.com/post/58105/uffington_white_horse.html
The viewer is viewing a two dimensional image stretched across the hillside facing them, with the head facing right. The sun would be setting out of shot to the right. The horse would therefore be heading towards the sunset from the viewer's perspective.
From the report :
..Its north-east to south-west alignment (wrong, as you've agreed), with the head to the south-west (wrong, as you've agreed), gives the impression of the figure following a broadly east–west route.(wrong, as I hope you agree)
There is no 'sun roll', the sun does not rise immediately behind the horse (from DH as claimed), and I do not see the horse following a broadly east-west route, even with the viewer seeing the image stretched across the hillside facing them.
You can see from the satellite that it's NNE/SSW, not north-south. The head is SW of the tail, it's not due south of it.
And it does give that impression, when viewed from the ground. We're not going to agree, but I think there is more to the argument being made than you're giving credit to.
For what it's worth, I don't accept that this proves any link between the horse and the sun. I do however accept the premise that the horse is facing broadly towards the sunset, and as the figure is clearly in motion it's following a route which heads towards the sun, not away from it.
The photo from the vale has been taken from NWish.
How can the horse be seen to follow a broadly east-west route from this view?
Oh wow.
I have never said it is N/S.
It is not N/S. It is not NNE/SSW.
The horse is not facing broadly toward winter solstice sunset.
I have to step back now i'm afraid, because I am repeating myself and we're getting nowhere.
Earlier: "The horse is broadly N/S."
Now: "I have never said it is N/S.
It is not N/S. It is not NNE/SSW."
We seem to have run out of compass points. What orientation do you put it on?
Correct!
Once more.
It is not N/S.
It is not NNE/SSW.
It is a number of degrees off both.
You are saying that from the perspective of a viewer in the vale that the horse is facing broadly toward the sunset (you don't mention which but i assume the winter solstice). I don't see that at all.
The paper states, among other things, broadly east-west.
That is not true. It's very obviously not the case.
Tjj ,
Of course you can see the setting sun over Uffington or from Uffington . That applies to anywhere outdoors . Wherever you are , unless obstructed by steep walls or valley sides you should be able to see the sun rise and set most days ,even over auspicious monuments . I didn't say anything to the contrary . More importantly it doesn't change the orientation of the horse .
What I am saying is ; 1)The horse is not aligned on a point on the horizon where the sun will be seen to rise or set from the horse (from my first post "not a direction the sun ever travels in") .2) The horse is not aligned east to west which is suggested in the paper and would make sense if it is transporting the sun on it's daily journey . The horse is always pointing in the same compass direction wherever you view it from .
All can be proved empirically .
I don't think it's funny , more like sad .
Er ultimately isn't it going the direction the hill's going? Maybe they didn't have much choice about compass directions, if it was sited towards who they were hoping was going to look at it? i guess it could be further round the manger but maybe that wasn't impressive enough to the neighbours.
And with an extra decision about whether it was going left or right. Maybe we think animals heading right are going speedily forward because that's the direction we read in. So it looks like it's progressing more to us than if it were going the other way. But maybe it's also like going 'clockwise' (no they didn't have clocks either) - it matches the general direction the sun moves round, left to right.
I reckon a fieldtrip with provisions to the actual spot is the only way to sort it out. I mean June's been there and seen the sun set. Surely that's more useful than arguing about angles to the nth degree? We've got no reason to think they were that concerned with precision, is that right? It's not like it's Stonehenge is it. Surely.
The only precision that is being questioned is that of the author of the paper .
He made a very simple claim that is demonstrably wrong .
You can spend the rest of your life with a picnic sitting at the tail or the eye and you wont see the sun setting in line with the orientation of the horse ,June certainly didn't and she never claimed that either .
Nobody suggested that the those who made the the geolglyph had compasses or where interested in precision . They knew what they were doing .
It is far more likely that the orientation of the horse is to do with the contours of the hill , that is really obvious isn't it ? .It is also pointing towards Uffington Castle .The author of the paper doesn't make those type of claims but does make others that can be proved wrong .
It doesn't "match the general direction that the sun goes round " either .It's facing a direction the sun never travels in , that's one of the obvious points .
Rhiannon, theres stuff in the paper which is just wrong, whichever way you look at it. And then theres an argument about the perspective from Dragon Hill and further down in the vale, which I don't buy either. Highly speculative.
But, any excuse for a visit to Uffington, waylands etc.
I'll bring the chocolate digestives.
Perhaps the path of the sun at the winter solstice can be demonstrated with a chocolate digestive.
Yes there is a very high concentration of piff in the linked to article, I'm not doubting it.
Right at the beginning it says:
"Pollard found that there are other hillside locations in the immediate vicinity that are much more visible, and where creating a totemic image meant to symbolize a group’s identity would have made more sense" - which sounds immediately daft to me because presumably the creator's hillfort was on THIS hill not somebody else's hill. But you are correct, it's easier to take aim at claims that can be shown as objectively wrong or right.
anyway. I believe jaffa cakes can be used to explain the phases of the moon. So it's possible that chocolate digestives were created to explain the movements of the sun. This is my theory. Let us test it.
Indeed, I believe thats why Thom smoked that pipe, to keep him off the jaffas.
I'm up for a meetup there, would be great. Even though i've visited a number of times i've never set foot on Dragon Hill, so it'd be good to do that.
Are we thinking December in order to see the proposed sausage, I mean sun, roll?
Jaffa cakes and sausage rolls - you are all making me want to come down now :-)
I have looked up the original article, it's in Antiquity. I can email it to people if they want.
The real piff is in the original paper . That's where the bulk of the falsifiable quotes/claims come from . Plus , it contains plans complete with northings that clearly show the errors , obliviously ignored by the author .
should we take this into the forum. This is going to break a record for the world's longest comment otherwise. Or is that I just want to carry on arguing the toss.