A Village in A Circle

The juxtaposition is jarring. The audacity is outrageous. That a society 5,000 years ago could conceive of a landscape so intricate and complex that it literally connects heaven and earth, and then structure their culture and society such that they could construct this colossal monument over many generations is simply astonishing. The henge survives as an enormous bank and ditch (originally 55' high and 30’ deep) nearly four football fields wide, encompassing the largest stone circle in Britain which in turn encloses two other stone circles. The standing stones are enormous, some as high as 14’ and weighing over 40 tons. The earth here is mostly chalk and the site of this enormous walled circle glistening in the sun must have been truly awe inspiring.

That other people in the recent past could barge into this extraordinary landscape, build homes and farms on this seemingly sacred ground and break apart these enormous stones to build churches, barns and chicken coops seems stunning and outrageous, but the same actions are being pursued by the United States Government today in areas like the Bear’s Ears National Monument in southeast Utah.

The neolithic complex dates from around 2850 BC, the beginning of the Bronze Age, before the pyramids of Egypt, a thousand years before Abraham. It is a landscape that gave physical expression to that community’s ideas about the relationship between heaven and earth, and their own place within that cosmos. 

This is a grand design that fulfills the societal need for a ritual landscape as an expression of a community’s desire for stability and continuity. We have always been drawn to the comfort of constancy and order, that night follows day, spring follows winter, and the stars arc across the heavens each night, returning to the same position in the sky each year. This landscape reveals the order and the constancy of the universe on a grand scale and provides stability to our seemingly chaotic lives, and the promise of a predictable future.

The sprawling randomness with which the town and farmhouses have encroached on this landscape is perhaps a reminder that, despite our attempts at preservation all this will, like us, eventually be churned under and a new landscape will take its place.