I’ve already watched a show on Barbarians -- about how the Romans maligned the Celts. Interesting but not really earth shattering. I watched a C-SPAN show with an author discussing dog food and melamine. Nothing I didn’t already know there either, but it was still kind of interesting. I was glad to hear the author say that from her research pet food manufacturers are no longer putting the carcasses of dead pets in food anymore. You hear this all the time. It is something that used to go on but it really caused so much bad publicity that it just wasn’t worth continuing. To be honest, I doubt that your dog or cat cared if they were eating their brethren. I know we hate to think about it but dogs and cats really aren’t that picky when it comes to their food sources. They may have you fooled and be picky about what you put in their food bowl, but most cats and dogs will eat thoroughly disgusting things when left to their own devices.
I also watched an interesting show about a couple of trainers who took in dogs who’d had a bad life and re-trained them to be working dogs. Now before you start thinking that you can do this with just any dog from a shelter, the dogs were a Bloodhound and a Bearded Collie, so they already had the instincts do particular kinds of work. The Bloodhound turned out to be very good at tracking work and went on to work for a K-9 unit in Massachusetts. The Bearded Collie needed more work and training at the end of the show. But it was interesting to see the trainers work with them.
Right now I’m watching The Wolf Within, which I’m pretty sure I’ve seen before. It’s a good overview of how we’ve ended up with dogs from wolves.
I deleted Stonehenge Decoded. I watched it when it was on last year and I thought it was absolutely awful. It offers the theory that Stonehenge was built as a place for the dead and a nearby wood henge was built as a place to celebrate the living. The evidence is severely lacking and the theory is based on what the lead archaeologist came up with from studying a tribe in Africa that was obsessed with death. There is, frankly, nothing in the culture of the peoples who inhabited the Stonehenge area or those who came later that would substantiate that they had a death fetish or worshipped death. Stonehenge was built long before the Celts came to Britain but there is nothing leftover in the oral tradition that shows any special obsession with death. The show (and the archaeologist) also overlooks the fact that stone henges (and wooden henges) are found all over the British Isles. They offer no explanation for this fact or how it would fit in with their theory. There are even similar stone megalithic structures all over western Europe. They don’t seem to be particularly connected with death in any way.
I think a much more likely explanation for Stonehenge is supplied by another recent theory that suggests it was a site for healing. People still could have come from far away to visit, bringing ailing people with them. It would account for the nearby neo/megalithic village set up to cater to visitors. And, it would explain the burials near the site. It’s also a much more life-affirming explanation that trying to claim that Stonehenge was a place to celebrate death. If the stones were part of a healing place it could also explain why there were similar sites in other parts of the country -- people would need healing places everywhere.
I visited Stonehenge once, years ago, but I don’t remember much about it. I can’t remember if it was before or after they let you go up to the monuments. I thought we could still go up to the monuments but the things I’ve read say they had put the fence up then. I wish I could say that I had some transformational experience but I didn’t. I just remember the big stones sitting in what seemed like a huge field and parking lot. It was impressive but it seemed like the British were doing their best to belittle the place instead of preserving its grandeur.
One place I’d really like to visit is Newgrange in Ireland. It probably doesn’t look very impressive from the exterior photos but it’s as old or older than Stonehenge. It’s a passage tomb, a neolithic grave, in this case on an acre of ground surrounded by white quartz. During the winter solstice light travels through a small opening above the door and illuminates the innermost chamber of the tomb. I think it’s quite mystical. They allow a few people at a time into the tomb during the winter solstice so they can see the light illuminating the tomb. It’s quite amazing to think that this has been going on for 5000 years. When you think about it, the people who built the tomb had to be quite savvy to build a tomb that would be exactly aligned with the rising sun on the winter solstice for so many centuries.
There are sites like this all over Ireland and the British Isles. There’s another good one at Maeshowe in Scotland where you can watch the winter solstice light come into the tomb. I like that one because they have a web cam so you can watch it online during December and January each year. You can see the light getting closer and closer (and farther and farther away) from the room until it fills it up. It can be quite aggravating some times. You’re at the mercy of technical problems, bad weather, or mice chewing on the cords in the room. But when you have a clear day and the light fills the room it’s quite spectacular. You see the room as it must have looked at a very special time to ancient people thousands of years ago.
Watching the light come to these tombs has made me wonder about the religious beliefs of ancient peoples in the British Isles. Why would they go to the trouble of building these tombs and aligning them with the rising sun on the shortest day of the year? We’re told that, in general, ancient peoples believed in sun gods and moon goddesses. They believed in rituals and magic to produce better hunts. They believed in rituals and magic for fertile crops. What did they believe about an afterlife? I don’t know. I know a little something about Celtic gods and goddesses but they don’t show up in the British Isles until about 500 BC. These tombs and megaliths were built 1000-2000 years before the Celts came to Britain. I don’t know what those people believed. They had reverence for the dead or else they wouldn’t have built these tombs. But what did it mean that they aligned these special tombs with the light of the winter solstice? Was that a light toward an afterlife? A way to live again? A pathway? Reincarnation is commonplace in Gaelic and Celtic stories -- stories of transmigration of souls and transfiguration. But, again, we’re not talking about the Gaels or Celts here.
Maybe the light lets the dead return to the world of the living each year for a while? The path could work both ways. The veil between the living and the dead could lift for a while.
Just some ponderings.
More dog shows on Tivo now.
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