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Which means the method of farming in Britain had already been in place for
nearly 4,000 years before the Romans even came to Britain, and 2,000 years before Stonehenge was
built.
We know this from the charred residue remains, chronologically analysed, of wheat and other serial crops found in the ashes of old Neolithic fires. If this is the case, then productive farming methods must have been used in an abundance. Land was carefully and meticulously cultivated, turned over in
preparation of crop rotation and the crops themselves harvested with a methodical application. A grain surplus whicn allowed the early Briton to trade with more distant regions, of not just the Kingdom, but also their European neighbours across the channel simply couldn't have been produced any other way.
And with these Neolithic modern farm techniques came a sense of mutual co-operation. You can't have a land surrounded by tribal factions if they systematically slaughter each other. If the early Britons were locked in conflict, constantly squabbling with each other over land, they'd be no one to tend the crops. Their time would be swallowed up by sporadic fighting, death, injury
and disease.
And all the known evidence contradicts this. We know for a fact serial production around the Neolithic period, and up till the Roman occupation crop rotation and production was abundant. In fact, it was the first thing the Romans decided to tax when they got here. And although some
argue crop production actually went up under the Roman occupation, and this increase in yield shows a more superior productive nature, let me just point out, this doesn't mean a more productive method of intensive farming. Under Albert Speer, Nazi Germany's weapons production not only doubled, it tripled, then quadrupled.
But this wasn't necessarily achieved through higher productivity of the individual worker, or the introduction of more efficient machinery, it was achieved by enslaving the Jews and working the poor bastards to death. As we know the Romans were fairly adept at nailing people to crosses, among other evil things.
Therefore, it's not unreasonable to
assume the peace loving Britons were dragged from their families and brutally abused by callous, unfeeling legionnaires, whose policy resembled that of their later replacement, the Nazi storm trooper.
And it's this simple idea of Roman taxation which got me thinking. If crop production was so bountiful then the thirty-three tribes of indigenous Britons couldn't have been warring The two don't go together. For high yield production a system, where enough wheat is produced, with more left over to trade, a form of common stability must have been employed, tribes must have had a mutual understanding of each other's desires and wishes, were prepared to accept each other's way of life, and their individual lands and boundaries must have been respected by the individual tribes. And this simple, harmonious way of
life couldn't have been achieved without people sitting down, formulating plans, talking to each other and working through their differences in a mature adult, grown-up way. These peoples must have held court. We might even say it was a coming together of the clans. And that I'm afraid makes Stonehenge a parliament, not a sacrificial site or observatory.
Stonehenge was the big
house.
Another reason to suggest this is taken from a modern view of the way we organise and run our lives along a democratic process today. Most modern democracies have a central parliament or senate, with peripheral, regional councils. We tend to pool our sovereignty and do what's in the general interest of us all, rather than the selfish interest of the few, or the one. We extend that out with supreme courts, county courts, and magistrate courts. If we imagine the ancient Britons living peacefully side-by-side, working together for the mutual co-operation of the many, as 33 separate kingdoms of the united kingdom were when the Romans arrived, we might assume there was 33 separate stone circles with adjoining roads or walkways which led to a central parliament. This would mean at given junctures in their history the elders, or whoever represented the individual kingdom would have travelled to Stonehenge to make their point, trade, help each other out, do a bit of business and sought out any local rivalry.
And that would place them in a higher order of Democratic process than the Romans, The Greeks, even the Egyptians were.
Continued
Stonehenge: Essay Paper 1
Stonehenge: Essay Paper 2
Stonehenge: Essay Paper 3
Stonehenge: Essay Paper 6
Stonehenge: Essay Paper 7
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