Archive for November, 2007
Silbury is the sleeping giant of prehistoric archaeology. Its megalithic cousin, Stonehenge, which stands about sixteen miles to the south, is an open book by comparison with this stupendous, enigmatic mound. Indeed, Silbury is so enormous that it was described by one awestruck writer in 1776 as an artificial mountain, while treasure hunters have been desperately tunnelling into it for over two hundred years in the belief that it is a colossal barrow, or the ancient burial mound of a king.
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A Comet’s Tale
4:11 pm
A month or so ago, I published a detailed piece (below) dealing with the beliefs of the astronomer priests who undoubtedly presided at Stonehenge when the monument was in active use. It seemed blindingly obvious to me that these people were in engaged in, what is by any reasonable definition, a search for extra-terrestrial intelligence in the dark voids above Stonehenge. They were engaged in other activities at the same time, of course, but there seems no question that these prehistoric “watchers of the skies” were actively considering the likelihood of intelligent life, regardless of what form it took, inhabiting the various lunar and interstellar realms above the Earth.
I was fortunate enough to receive support for this idea from a latter-day astronomer priest, the Vice Director of the Vatican Observatory in Arizona, while if you care to read through the piece on the connection between Stonehenge and the stars, you’ll see that I was meticulously careful to quote the considered views of this man in context. Nonetheless, the notion of Stonehenge as an ancient SETI structure is a contentious one, mainly because we are reluctant to credit or dignify our ancestors with what we regard as our own incisive and enlightened mindset, despite the fact that we have yet to emulate their Neolithic engineering achievements.
It is a harsh and unavoidable fact of life that many of us are unable to seriously entertain certain ideas until such time as they’ve been through due process and have acquired the trappings of officialdom. I wouldn’t seek to argue with this state of affairs, because it is simply the way things are, or as Professor Lyall Watson once elegantly put it “Reality is an opinion that has gained universal acceptance.” New and revolutionary ideas invariably take a long time before their validity is recognised, but I’m in no doubt that “the universe is unfolding as it should.”
With this in mind, it was a pleasant surprise to learn of a documentary entitled “The Comet’s Tale” being broadcast on BBC4 tonight, while you can read the following on the programme listings for yourselves:
The Comet’s Tale
Ancient civilisations thought they were Gods. They believed them to be bringers of life or harbingers of doom – strange, magical, mysterious things that moved through the sky, fiery streaks of light that tore across the heavens. This documentary shows how our ancestors may have been right all along and that comets and meteors really are like Gods.
[S]
BBC4 Sun 25 November 21:00-22:00. 60mins
There is much else to say about Stonehenge and Silbury Hill, but without the ability to see into the future, I can’t predict say how this information will be received, so we shall just have to find out in the fullness of time.
“Somewhere, something wonderful is waiting to be discovered” – Carl Sagan.
Words by Dennis Price. Photographs copyright Pete Glastonbury 2007.
