Orkney stone age temple complex

[bunn]

Via endlessrarities  - if you didn't see the History of Ancient Britain special report on the excavations on Orkney, and if you have a passing interest in awesome stuff like painted Neolithic walls and huge buildings with a fireplace mysteriously positioned in the middle of a doorway, and a monstrous era-ending 600-cow feast* for thousands of people, you should watch it!  

And do so swiftly, for it will fall off the BBC Iplayer in 6 days. 

It does also have a certain amount of Neil Oliver posing dramatically on random headlands with his hair whipping about in the breeze, but by NO standards the amount of posing per nugget of fascinating info dispensed is quite low. 

* we really should work out a way to get Neolithic people to plan the upcoming Olympic opening ceremony.  On this evidence, it would be epic.  

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I do know what you mean re: Brian Cox. There's something very odd about his lips, and he also seems to be notably content-free :-/

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

I've just watched the programme and, of course, I was thinking of Marcus and Esca inside the barrow :-)

The two things that fascinated me most were the ending of it all, and the idea of its being catastrophically overtaken by bronze-based culture, and also that hearth in the doorway and the suggestion that only those with the nerve (?) to pass through the flames could advance to the next level of revelation...

I actually heard Brian Cox say something very interesting the other day, lol, about no two electrons being able to occupy the same level of energy (I've probably worded that wrong -- I'll have to watch it again ;-), so if you change the energy level of some electrons (he warmed a piece of diamond in his hands) every other election in the universe has to respond. It reminded me -- though this is a tangent -- of the pagan idea, presented in The Way of Wyrd, that all things sit upon a web, and a perturbation in one place will cause some reaction elsewhere (which a shaman, of course, can read).

But I fell out with Brian Cox when he started talking bollocks about ancient Egyptian religion.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The doorway of flame is just awesome, I was very taken with that.

What on earth did Brian Cox say about Egyptian religion that was so horribly wrong? Normally he seems to stick to the vaguest generalities.

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

I can't remember the exact details, and I think it was actually something he said in an article in the Radio Times, but it was the usual thing of taking an ancient belief out of its context and implying that the people who held it were somehow less rational than we are. No -- and if you can't handle historical ideas properly, leave them out of it!

He's not the only one, and I suppose it's part of being a card-carrying TV 'scientist', but he's so influential, he shouldn't be allowed to be so sloppy!