← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
A
Hello everyone, it's me, Maddy. I am back. Well, not quite. I will be back on the pod very soon, but in the meantime, if you've missed your fix of Anthony and me together, you can now catch us live on stage at Conway hall in London on the 7th of May. There we'll be discussing my brand new book, Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment. Out that very same day, we'll be discovering how fake news is nothing new. Chatting about what it's like to spend time in the darker side of the Georgian world, and meeting the three extraordinary, bizarre and often frightening characters at the heart of the book. Copies of Hoax will be available on the night which I'll be signing after the show and hopefully chatting to as many of you as possible. So get your tickets now. The link is in the show notes. You can go to the Conway hall website or follow the link in my Instagram bio. I'm so excited about this book and I just can't wait to share it with you all. Do come along. It is going to be the most fantastic evening. See you there.
- [01:08]
B
Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this rush hour ad to keep you calm, which could help your driving. And science says therapy is great for a healthy mindset. So enjoy this 14 second session on us. I think you've done everything right and absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, anything that hasn't gone your way could probably be blamed on your father not being emotional because his father wasn't emotionally available and so on. And now that you're calm and healing, you're probably driving better too.
- [01:35]
C
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
- [01:39]
D
Out on the road, it's nice to have a partner who can help you make the most of your journey. A partner like the Love's Rewards app. With Love's Rewards along for the ride, you earn points on food, fuel, drinks and more every time you scan. Then you can spend those points at Luv's just like cash. So every stop is even more rewarding. Download the app today and watch the points roll in mile after mile. Love's Rewards save and earn at every turn. Terms apply. See website for details.
- [02:19]
E
Before castles, before kings, before the Romans, prehistoric Britain was was a land of tribes, ritual and survival. Across open plains and dense forests, people raised massive stone circles, ceremonially buried their dead in great Neolithic tombs and preserved them forever in the dark bogs. Were these sacred acts of devotion or something darker? Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of human bones with butchery marks. But what do these discoveries really mean? Did prehistoric Britons practice human sacrifice or even cannibalism. In this episode, we travel back thousands of years to uncover the beliefs and the bloodshed behind prehistoric Britain's most haunting mysteries. Hello and welcome to After Dark. Now, you may have noticed recently that I am currently flying solo because Maddie is mining for gold in South America. But we are going to have plenty of adventures together between now and the time when she gets back. And in this episode, we have a real treat for you. I'm so excited for this and I know you will be too, because we are exploring the dark side of prehistoric Britain. And who better, of course, to help us than Professor Ronald Hutton? He is a returning guest, one of our fan favorites. I don't need to tell you that you are the fans and he is one of your favorites. He is a professor at the University of Bristol and specializes in early modern Britain, British folklore, pre Christian religion and modern paganism. British Ronald Hutton, welcome back to After Dark.
- [04:20]
F
It's a delight to be back.
- [04:21]
E
They are going to be so excited. I can hear them squealing with delight right now. Now, tell me this. One of the things I first was introduced to your work when I was doing my, well, either undergrad or postgraduate, and it was around the Civil War particularly, is what I would have been reading your work in my first experiences of it. But we are here today talking about something slightly different and that is prehistoric Britain. And I'm really intrigued to know how and what makes that link for you. And if you see any parallels between the two times.
- [04:59]
F
I don't see any particular parallels between Tudor and Stuart history and prehistoric times. The link is me, because I'm simply greedy. I was the kind of 13, 14 year old who would relentlessly trek round historic and prehistoric monuments together and say, if I were in South Wales for a summer holiday, I'd look at the stone circles and the dolmens and I'd look at the castles that had all been ruined in the Civil War pretty well equally. And frankly, being in a university like Bristol that could let me do what the heck I liked, I didn't see any reason not to do the lot.
- [05:44]
E
It's so true because actually, historians so often go, this is my lane, I am sticking to it. And you know, in terms of the Civil War, there's plenty there that will keep you occupied. But there's something very, I think, adventurous and commendable about going, I am going to be greedy and I am going to invest all this time and my expertise in these seemingly disparate time periods.
- [06:07]
F
What is adventurous to One observer is reckless to another, and I'm perfectly happy to own up to both.
- [06:15]
E
The ivy.
- [06:16]
F
I never calculate anything when I research and write it. I just follow my heart, go full steam ahead, and then when everything's done, reckon with the consequences.
- [06:28]
E
But I think that's why that's so interesting, and I love to hear historians say that, because I identify with that myself. But it's so refreshing to hear a historian say they follow their heart, because that, I think, is why you resonate with our audiences so much, because they see that, they feel that, they hear that in the way that you explain these histories. So thank you for being so adventurous or reckless, whichever way you might want to view it. Let's talk, then, about this particular history and prehistoric Britain. It's a very broad term, Prehistoric Britain. Give us a time period in which we are situating ourselves for this discussion.
- [07:06]
F
For this discussion, I'd imagine we're situating ourselves back around 13, 14,000 years. That's when humans trekked back to what's going to be Britain at the end of the last Ice Age. Now, we've been visiting what was going to be Britain for tens of thousands of years before, but it's really from around 13, 14,000 years ago that we have enough evidence to work out at least what might possibly have been going on.
- [07:36]
E
Talk to me about that evidence, then, because when we come to your other area of specialism, the Civil War, we have tracts of written material, we have material culture, There is even clothing left from that time, and very relatively good, Nick. But our documentary evidence looks different from this time, doesn't it?
- [07:57]
F
We have really, strictly speaking, no documentary evidence from anywhere in British prehistory, or indeed in anybody's prehistory, which is what makes it prehistoric. The moment you get written evidence, even if it's just inscriptions carved on stone, you get history.
- [08:17]
E
So what do we use, then? What are the tools available to us as historians to start piecing these histories together?
- [08:26]
F
The tools available for prehistory are essentially material objects. But material objects are enormous in their abundance and their complexity for most periods. And you can tell an awful lot from them. So with the bones of people and of the animals they kept and or ate, their artifacts, which they make for every branch of life, we can now tell their ethnicity, their appearance, their diseases and physical mishaps and triumphs, their technology, their living conditions, their patterns of migration and trade, we can tell everything, in fact, except what's going on in their heads. We are usually completely at sea, as sea as the Victorians were about their social arrangements, their gender relations, their political structures, and above all, their religious beliefs.
- [09:33]
E
And that's very articulated, I suppose, in say, for instance, Stonehenge, where we have this continuous conversation, don't we? And it's one of the things that we hear again and again on this podcast going, well, it could be this. There's potentially an archer, there's potentially some religious connotations here. Do you think the potential in this prehistory is what keeps people coming back, coming back and keeping them intrigued in what they don't know as opposed to what they do?
- [10:03]
F
The great frustration of prehistory is how little we can probably ever know about aspects of it. In many ways the aspects in which most people are most interested, like what people thought. But the great release of that is that, given quite an abundance of evidence, we can leave everybody to make up their own minds. Stonehenge is popular partly because it's the people's temple. You don't have any kind of organized clergy there in charge of proceedings and giving their particular stamp of religion to what was. Since it has no central practical purpose, clearly a ritual monument, a temple, if you like. And if people want to see painted savages committing dreadful human sacrifices and performing war dances with stone tomahawks, they can. If they want to see wise priestesses presiding over a matriarchal and peaceful and ecologically friendly society, they can. If they want to see white robed elderly men gazing at the heavens and learning their secrets, they can.
- [11:37]
D
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G
Hey, sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again. I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check anyway. Carvana, give it a whirl. Love ya.
- [12:30]
H
So good you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees May apply.
- [12:37]
I
Hi there, I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's history podcast. I can imagine. On these dark winter nights, all you want to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history, with details I can guarantee you never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the holy land. With 300 handmaidens in tow, she leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor and trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Sneak history.
- [13:43]
E
It is that freedom, I suppose, in prehistory that's quite interesting to a lot of people, but it's a freedom that comes into one part of a pre Christian polytheistic belief that we call paganism. And for some people, they probably have an idea of what that encapsulates. But tell us in this period what exactly paganism, as far as we can tell, means.
- [14:11]
F
Well, the term pagan is coined by Christians to define religious believers whom they are not and who are not followers of the Jewish religion. It's a very handy umbrella term, therefore, these days for followers of the pre Christian, the traditional, the rooted religions of Europe and the near east, and indeed of those today who practice religions which are inspired by those. But actually, in its linguistic root, it works quite well because since the 1990s, the consensus over what the word originally means, it's a Latian, a Roman term, is it's the religion of the pagus, which is the unit of local government. In other words, the old religion, the rooted religion, the traditional religion. And that's precisely what it is.
- [15:10]
E
And we have various ideas of what that looked like. And one of the ways that we fill some of those gaps in knowledge is by the things that we find in the ground. Right? And me as an Irish person, I have been to the National Museum in Ireland many times, and in a specially designed, curved, encapsulated little space, we have bog bodies. And they are, you know, you can see the hair on these people's heads. You can, you can see a type of skin that's still covering the bones. Often they're, they're, they're kind of, you know, just the torso or the upper half of the body. It gives this idea of a brutal existence. It also lends itself, although not always in terms of accuracy, to this idea of sacrifice that's happening in some of these, as you really nicely explained, these pagan rituals that feed into the belief systems. But how prevalent was human sacrifice or ritual killing at this time? Can we even know?
- [16:19]
F
I don't think we can ever know how prevalent human sacrifice was in prehistoric Europe unless we get much better sorts of evidence than we've got hitherto. There are basically two different types of source and they're both equally dodgy. The written sources are by enemies of the peoples accused of human sacrifice. They are mostly Greek and Roman. And because the Romans conquered absolutely everybody else concerned, it's the Roman voice we hear. We do not really have any single example in ancient Europe or the ancient near east of a culture that practiced human sacrifice actually telling us about it. The nearest thing is from Tunisia, where the ancient Carthaginians left cemeteries of infant remains that seem from inscriptions to be offered up to the deities. But I don't think there's a single inscription there that actually says, I have killed this child for the deities. We surmise that. So there's still a doubt even there. And when you look at the material evidence, as one will be saying again and again when looking at this kind of issue, what to one person's eye is a human sacrifice? To another person's eye is an executed criminal, guilty or innocent or a mugging victim? What to one person's eye is a severed head, which is a trophy brought back from a battlefield or removed from somebody after they've been sacrificed, is to somebody else's eye, the skull of an admired ancestral warrior being brought back so it can help protect the tribe.
- [18:15]
E
That's fascinating because there has always been this, I suppose, pop culture idea that when you see these bug bodies, and I'd love to read the museum inscriptions now, having heard you speak on that, Ronald, because the idea is so closely linked to sacrifice just by default, almost. And it's interesting the ways in which we need to tell ourselves, or want to tell ourselves certain things about that material that we are discovering in the grounds. I have an example here, the Lindow Man. I don't know if you could maybe tell us a little bit about that particular discovery.
- [18:54]
F
Lindow man and I have a long relationship. He walls the most heavily studied prehistoric human body until his time, which is the 1980s. He was found in a peat bog south of Melbourne, Manchester, called Lindo Moss. In 1984, and he was the first really well preserved British bog body found in recent enough times to be scientifically studied. He was taken to London where a top clinical pathologist said that he had been killed three times over. His throat had been cut across the jugular vein, his neck had been broken by strangulation by a grot and his skull had been smashed with a heavy blow. Now this is overkill by anybody's reckoning. And so this looks like a heavily ritualized death because the Romans had said that the Druids, the priests of ancient Britain and neighboring areas, committed human sacrifice regularly. This was taken as proof positive that the Romans were correct. So where's the problem? Well, there are two. The first is that before the body went to the pathologist in London, it was studied in Manchester by an equally good anatomist from Liverpool University who said, this guy was beaten to death, his head was broken by a blow, another broke his neck and a third broke one of his ribs. The cut across the jugular vein seems to have been made after the body was in the bog, probably by somebody digging for peat long after. And the garrotte around the neck showed no trauma from strangulation. It was almost certainly a necklace which had sunk into the tissues as they swelled in the bog. So that completely contradicts the view of the other expert. But this contrary view was buried for many years. And the other problem is the dating, that the carbon dating shows a 1/3 probability that it's post Roman so it's not ancient at all, and a 2/3 probability that it's from the Roman period. If it is pre Roman, then it's not by more than a few years. The dates cluster in the Roman period when there aren't supposed to be any druids or human sacrifice. So there's something really wrong here. So either you can say, well this just proves that the Druids lingered in secret in the Roman period, carrying on murdering people on the sly, or you can say, well that's one slightly far fetched but possible interpretation, but there are loads of others. This could be a criminal had been sentenced to death and executed in Roman Britain and chucked into a bog. He isn't the only guy in the bog. There's remains of at least one, probably two more bodies that are both absolutely from the Roman period. So we're looking at a dumping ground for bodies that have met violent deaths. Could be the victims of a mugging gap that would waylay and kill travelers. Could be the local dump for the execution site, or it could be A site of human sacrifice. But if this is Roman, then the other explanations than human sacrifice on the surface carry a lot more traction. You see how far we've come now from the idea that this is the conclusive proof that the Iron Age pre Roman Druids committed human sacrifice. The British Museum, to its credit, has altered its label on the exhibit because the BM is where the body ended up and is still on display.
- [22:55]
E
I think that is utterly compelling because I think most of our listeners will be thinking if a body is found. And this now seems silly after what you've just said, Ronald, but this is what I came in with to a certain extent, so I might as well say it because other people will be thinking it too. If a body is found in a bog, then there has to be something ancient and prehistoric about it. That's just the default in my mind. But of course, the bog. I walk my dogs on a bog when I'm in Ireland almost every day today. I mean, you know, you could fall into a bog at any time or be pushed into a bog at any time or. It's interesting the associations we've made with prehistory and this, the oneness with the ground and the earth, because those things meld in our minds. They come together as part of one story. But this idea of something far more visceral and human and potentially far after we have believed that it was the case. I mean, and what I also find interesting is the idea that we can tell that he was probably a male in his mid-20s, and we can get some gleams of actual interest from it. But it's this unknowing is utterly, utterly compelling. And it's why I think people are drawn to these histories. Now, when we're talking about prehistoric Britain, we've established that, okay, there may have been human sacrifice, there may not. One of the things I would imagine we're finding, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, is some form of weaponry or vestiges of weaponry. Do we conclude that this is a violent time, or do we conclude that these are hunting tools, you know, survival tools? What do we feel about some of that material that we're finding?
- [24:37]
F
You can draw some pretty certain conclusions about the purpose of weaponry from the weaponry. For example, once swords get invented, which in Britain is in the Bronze Age, they are useless for carpentry, tree felling or hunting. They're purely war weapons. You can use a spear on red deer or rival warriors with equal facility, but a sword is a weapon of war. Likewise, a mace is not going to be too much use as a hammer. You need a different style of head for that. So that is braining people.
- [25:19]
E
Yes.
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F
So there are custom made war weapons. And overall, in British prehistory, the conclusion reached is in many ways rather a comforting one, which is that then as now, human beings not infrequently wage wars or at least get involved in fights, but they wax and wane. In other words, there are periods that are more peaceful than others and some that seem very peaceful in between warlike periods. So we haven't had some kind of Eden like fall from grace from a time in which we all loved each other and put flowers in each other's hair and learned how to domesticate animals and grow crops to a time we're all killing each other like maddened canines.
- [26:11]
E
It's gone from this, it's become this brutalist thing. Whereas, you know, actually it's not that delineated at all, which, it makes far more sense. When we're talking, we're talking now, you know, about human sacrifice. We've talked about violence, we've talked about the ways in which people are dying brutally and all of these kind of things. There's also this idea that prehistoric civilizations are obsessed with cultures of death or that they, you know, they live more cheek by jowl with it. I'm imagining from what you've said so far about the other areas that we've discussed is that this probably is less definitive than we have otherwise imagined. But talk to me about those cultures of death and those practices of death. I remember seeing in some kind of out, you know, one of those outside museum situations where they try and replicate Bronze Age dwellings and all that kind of thing. A hole in the side of a cliff, basically, that was just. And a body was bundled up and shoved in there and it was very much presented as in like, well, the houses are over there and the, the burial sites are over here and we're living cheek by jowl. Do we think that was the case or what can we glean from that?
- [27:25]
F
There are world cultures which you can say, have a more close and constant relationship with death than others. Ancient Egypt is a good example where the elite spend a lot of their lives preparing for death. And famously the way in which bodies are prepared is a very long, expensive and intricate process. But archaeologically, it's very hard to judge whether a society is more preoccupied with the dead and the idea of dying than others. Supposing we scrap all the written record from 21st century Britain, or indeed any modern Britain we have vast cemeteries across the landscape which are studded with written memorials to people. When you compare that with a lot of prehistory, you find that only a small percentage, maybe even 5 to 10%, of the population seems to get buried at all. The rest have just disappeared. Either there was no conservation of their bodies or they were laid out to be picked clean, or else they were cremated and their ashes thrown into water or their bones thrown into water. No memorials, no funeral monuments, and actually precious little sign of human bone except fragments of it around living spaces, which suggests there's no special kind of status attributed to the dead.
- [29:04]
E
Is there an idea of collective burial, then? Are people buried as individuals in individual spaces, or is it less formalized?
- [29:15]
F
Throughout prehistory, there are particular styles of treatment of the dead that keep waxing and waning. It's like a carousel. They go out of fashion and then come back. Cremation versus inhumation, which is the burial of whole bodies or unburned bodies, is a classic case. Another case is collective versus individual burial. There are prehistoric societies that liken turing their people together. There are prehistoric societies that don't. If you take a good example from just one period, which is the early Neolithic, and just one type of monument, which is what we call a long barrow or a dolmen, that's bigger than mounds, which often in most areas has a stone or a timber chamber as an end with bones of the dead. But that which I've just said is really just true of the chalk lands of Wessex, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Dorset and the Cotswold area, where you find very large numbers of human bones, quite often in chambers. In these long mounds we call long barrows. In Sussex, you have long barrows that look exactly the same on the ground, but they have little or no human bone in them. Instead, the mound is very carefully constructed of soils from different districts. So it's the mound itself, not the dead, that is the object of relence. When you cross beyond Swansea into West Wales, the long mounds vanish completely. And what you're left with is the big stone chambers, which get a bit bigger and you get some human bones there. Not very many, only with other types of deposit, like flints and pots, and not very much of any. So it looks as if the reverence is to the big stones themselves. Alastair Whittle and Vicki Cummings gave the marvelous label of stones that float to the sky for these enormous capstones that seem to have been the object of reverence. So what is is basically derived from the same kind of architectural style can have three utterly different applications in areas which today would be half a day's drive apart at exactly the same time, which is between three and four thousand years before the Christian or Common era.
- [31:58]
E
So we're talking about death in prehistoric Britain. And probably what's coming to mind for a lot of listeners will be the idea of Stonehenge. Or maybe not. Maybe we've been misled. Tell us, Ronald, how this does or if it does, or might it link up to ideas of death, or is this something else entirely? When we're talking about Stonehenge, specifically when
- [32:24]
F
we're talking about Stonehenge, there's stuff we do and don't know. What we don't know is what the ceremonies were there and what the religion was and what the associations were. It's the largest cemetery that we possess in England from the early third century, before the Common or Christian era, with a lot of cremations in particular being interred there. But is this because the dead are the focus of what goes on there, or is it for the same reason that you get churchyards around churches, that people like their honored dead to lie close to what is dedicated essentially to something else, which is a religious monument that isn't directly concerned with honoring humans at all? We know that Stonehenge was really important at Midwinter because it was aligned on the setting sun at Midwinter. It's the product of careless megalomaniac carpenters. Their carpenters, because uniquely, and it doesn't really work, attempted to shape enormous stones as if they were wood, planing them smooth, curving them slightly, and above all, fastening together the tops with mortise and tenon joints like doorways. These are not stone workers techniques. They're woodworkers. And they're careless. Because the piece de resistance at Stonehenge was the greatest of those freestanding three stone settings like doorways, which are Stonehenge's logo image. This was called the Great Trilithon. And the setting sun at midwinter went down so that with wonderful precision, it would have thrown a laser like beam of red light light through the narrow gap between the two uprights of the trilithon. But it isn't there now and hasn't been there for a very long time because it was sloppily built. What they needed to do was have two enormous upright stones that each went six feet into the earth and was fully anchored. They got one of those, it's still standing. But they either couldn't find or couldn't be bothered to find another upright of Equal length. And they got a much shorter stone that had a bit jutting out like a shoe from the bottom. And you can almost hear the arguments around the drawing board. Four and a half thousand years ago, they convinced themselves that if they put this uprising the earth, then the projecting bit sticking beneath the turf would stabilize it. And if they jammed a heavy enough lintel stone on top, fastened to the rock solid upright by a mortise and tenon joint, then it would keep the rockier stone stable. They were wrong. The shorter stone toppled, it seems, not too long after it was built. It might even be while Stonehenge was still being built, which is why we have no absolute proof that the outer circle of stones was ever finished, was ever erected in its holes. You may notice there's a big gap on the southwestern side today, and the lintel toppled over into the center. The falling upright broke in two and also knocked the altar stone over, which is where the beam of light coming through had hit in a stunning visual display. And the broken stones are still there. They were never cleared away, which means the people who built Stonehenge abandoned it when the great triathlon came down. So it's a disaster because of sloppy construction.
- [36:18]
E
Some things never change.
- [36:20]
F
So this is quite a story, and it's fact. We can state it for truth. But when you actually ask what that red beam of light was supposed to mean, is it the birth blood of a great goddess pouring from between her legs the uprights? Is it a male sun fertilizing a female earth? Or is it something else completely different? Does that red beam signify the pouring of sacrificial blood? For example, of lifeblood? We gotta make it up for ourselves.
- [37:10]
B
Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this rush hour ad to keep you calm, which could help your driving. And science says therapy is great for a healthy mindset. So enjoy this 14 second session on us. I think you've done everything right and absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, anything that hasn't gone your way could probably be blamed on your father not being emotionally available because his father wasn't emotionally available and so on. And now that you're calm and healing, you're probably driving better too.
- [37:37]
C
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
- [37:40]
D
Out on the road, it helps to have a partner. Like the Love's Rewards app. Download Luvs Rewards today and save 10 cents on every gallon of gas. Gas and up to 25 cents on every gallon of auto diesel. Loves, rewards, save and earn at every turn. Terms apply. Not available in all states.
- [38:07]
E
With the possibility that you're describing in the ways in which we interpret these monuments, fragments of bones, some of the elements of tools that you've been describing. Ronald, I wonder how or what you would say to people when it comes to trying to differentiate mythology from prehistoric fact, if such a thing exists. How do we separate out our desire for a good story, or should we even bother separate out our desire for a good story from what we know we have and we can say about these prehistoric, particularly in the terms of prehistoric British cultures.
- [38:53]
F
At the present state of British prehistoric archaeology, we have an immense array of fact in that we're getting better and better with our dating, we're getting better and better with our DNA analysis, we're getting better and better with our knowledge of what bones can tell us about people's health and longevity and so on, and we can say more and more about their living conditions in every aspect. Beyond that, we have to make it up so everybody can have their personal mythology, their personal fiction about prehistory, on an enormous range of reactions, from the kind of Lord of the Flies view of human nature that scratch a human being and you'll find a savage, to the benevolent view of human nature that the more humans are allowed to be themselves, the better things get. And there are many points between. And both of those extreme positions are equally valid when applied to prehistory. And so is everything on the spectrum in the middle. So, in theory, we could have as many different interpretations of a prehistoric monument and the people who built it as there are people who care to make the interpretations. Indeed, theoretically, rather more. If people change their minds
- [40:23]
E
to finish up this conversation, then I'd like to talk about some of the people that we may need to either blame or credit, whichever way you'd like to look at it, if you're frustrated by the not knowing, or if you're inspired by it in terms of the ways that the Victorians have shaped our idea of prehistory. Is that something that that has helped maintain interest over generations, or. I mean, it's relatively recent in terms of the prehistory we're talking about here. But are they responsible for a lot of the layering that we have talked about today?
- [41:02]
F
Basically, our view of anything in the west was Victorian until the 1960s, and that's because the Victorians achieved so much. They founded the science of archaeology. They handed us, with a lot of help from the continent, our basic division of prehistory, Old Stone Age, New Stone Age, etc. And they handed us our basic excavation techniques and a Lot of our most important finds. But there was a disposition under the Victorians to take a very dark view of prehistory for two reasons. The first is it was the greatest ever age of progress and of optimism in progress, the Industrial Revolution, the enormous expansion of European power, Western power and influence, and therefore aided by the discovery of the great age of the world and the doctrine of evolution, the Darwin, Darwin doctrine of evolution. You have this view of life as a perpetual ascent from the primitive to the complex, from the barbaric to the civilized, that begins with a protoplasmic atomic globule wriggling in the Precambrian slime and ascends through ever more admirable and complex and intelligent life forms until you reach Queen Victoria. The other thing is the expansion of European power, particularly French and British, over the tropical world, subduing and in the views of the conquerors, civilizing and Christianizing, huge numbers of indigenous peoples in Asia and in Africa, while the. The Canadians and the former American colonies were doing the same in the Americas. Therefore, people with indigenous lifestyles and older religions were being conquered and subdued and civilized by the British. And so the obvious British role model became the Romans, who, after all, brought cities marching in step, reinforced concrete currency, a uniform and complex currency to most of Europe. And they provided the template for Victorian imperialism. Therefore, the indigenous peoples became acquainted with the prehistoric northern European peoples, including the ancient British, whom the Romans were conquering. If you want a snapshot, you just need to go to the Houses of Parliament. When they were redecorated under Victoria, there was a gallery called the Progress of Britain with a series of before and after shots. And the first before and after was on one side, a British druid committing a human sacrifice, and on the other side, a Victorian army officer rescuing an Indian woman for being burned on her husband's pyre in the rite of Satie. In other words, we were like that 2,000 years ago, but now we're better and can stop the rest of the world being like that. I mean, it kind of makes us cringe now, but you can see where they're coming from.
- [44:34]
E
Yeah, yeah. One of the things I'm aware of here, and I suppose what we try to do on After Dark a lot is send people out into the world to see these histories, experience these histories, read about these histories, whatever it might be. And if we were here talking about 17th century, we could do that very readily. And there are houses you could go to there, whatever else. And obviously we have monuments. But what would you say to listeners or viewers on YouTube who are thinking, how do I encounter prehistoric Britain in everyday life? Where are the places to go? What are the things to watch out for? What traces does it leave where you don't necessarily have to step inside a museum.
- [45:19]
F
If you want to encounter prehistoric Britain at the present day, then there are three things that you can do. It actually depends how far you want to immerse yourself, of course. If you want a day in prehistoric Britain, it's one thing, if you want to develop a relationship with it, it's another. If you want a day out, then you simply pick a charismatic looking prehistoric site and go and spend time there. Go down a flint mine at Grimes Graves, look at an old Stone Age meat processing plant, Boxgrove in Sussex. But if you want to immerse yourself, then there are three means and they're all accessible no matter where you happen to live. Number one is go out on the ground, see the physical remains of prehistoric activity. Number two is do go to the local museum and ask questions there. And the third thing is to read. Not just read well written, user friendly books by archaeologists, but fictional works, novels. Compare and contrast Bernard Cornwell and Ken Follett on Stonehenge.
- [46:38]
E
I think one of the things that this is where my hidden desire to be an archaeologist starts to manifest itself. Because often when I'm on a train or something and I'm going past, you know, I'm bored and I'm looking out the window and you start to see if you're slightly elevated, you might be looking down on some of the fields below and you start to see some of those patterns in the fields of, you know, it reminds, it makes you feel like you're on Time Team for just a moment and you're like, ah, I think I've spotted something kind of prehistoric there. So I do like this idea of going out and encountering these things in the land. And local historians, I would also say are really useful tool in knowing the patterns of the landscape in people's general areas. So it's good to be able to tune in to some of that as well. Ronald, thank you so much for coming on to talk to us on After Dark about prehistoric Britain because it is a world that is, you know, the subtitle of this is Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. And we look at that darker side of history, but within darkness. Sometimes darkness manifests itself in a lack of knowledge or as you've been describing today, the gift of possibility that within that darkness we can find multiple meanings and those meanings are different. For different people, but therein lies the richness of this prehistoric exploration. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a five star review Wherever you get your podcasts, are you also watching us on YouTube? It's important that you get all your After Dark fics wherever you can. So we're on YouTube now. Find us at After Dark Historyhit and watch the episodes you've been listening to on your podcast platform. Until next time, happy listening.
- [48:25]
J
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- [48:56]
H
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