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Discovering a new view of ancient Britain

My father was a house builder and we used to move to the first house on each site so that he could keep an eye on the rest of the work. So I practically grew up on building sites. I used to watch the men at work and I built dens out of sand and bricks and bits of wood. I have grown up with a fascination for how things are made.

I have always admired and been intrigued by the enigmatic structures and art of Ancient Egypt. Over the last few years I have studied their construction methods in some detail and have participated in Egyptology discussion groups on ‘Usenet’.

One day I happened to notice a Usenet message posted by someone (Gordon Pipes) who claimed to have a highly efficient method for moving large stone blocks. He suggested that I join the discussions on ‘The Modern Antiquarian’ (TMA) website. This opened up a completely new view of ancient Britain for me.

Like many people in this country, my school history lessons essentially started with the Romans. Any references to earlier history were of a savage, primitive, barbaric culture who wore animal skins and painted themselves with woad — not the kind of ancestors to be proud of.

It’s true, I had visited Stonehenge and Avebury. I’d even seen Silbury Hill, but I had been sold the national myth so well that I disregarded them as irrelevant without even questioning why.

My sights were set firmly on the splendours of Egypt. As I dug deeper into TMA though, I began to discover a quite different story. A story of a people who were highly skilled, organised, advanced in science and technology. A people who, just like the Egyptians, were capable of building colossal structures and were doing it at the same time. These were not the primitive savages we have been told about. I had discovered ancestors to be proud of.

George Orwell didn’t invent 'new-speak', the Romans did. They rewrote history to suit their own ends. In reality it is they who were the savages, systematically annihilating the indigenous culture and replacing it with their own. They gave us words like 'civilised' and 'barbarian' with loaded meanings that suited their purposes, and in doing so ensured that we would continue to perpetuate their lies long after they were gone.

I now see that Britain has a rich prehistoric culture every bit as admirable as the Egyptians. Silbury Hill, Avebury, Thornborough Henges and numerous others. All are massive feats of engineering. The magnificent legacy of our ancestors is still here, right under our noses. When you really look at it, really see it for what it is, it’s truly awesome.

Yet many of these places continue to be destroyed even now, either wilfully and systematically by quarrying, inadvertently (in some cases) by ploughing, or else by gradual decay. They are neglected by a public who have been sold the ‘worthless savages’ lie and are, like I was, largely unaware even of the existence of these ancient places.

Conservation is an ongoing activity, but destruction is a one-off event that cannot be undone. The sites that remain have survived for more than 4,000 years despite the worst that has happened to them so far. For our few decades on Earth we are the custodians, the sole guardians of this ancient landscape.

I went to Thornborough Henges last Saturday and was appalled that ‘the powers-that-be’ have allowed the central cursus to be used as a landfill site and Tarmac to quarry right up to the henges themselves. In my view this is corporate vandalism backed up by bureaucracy. And it won’t stop until we, the public, speak up and say “enough is enough”.

The crazy thing is that there’s no shortage of gravel and companies like Tarmac will continue to thrive whether we allow them to dig up our heritage or not. They only do it because we make it easy for them.

Why aren’t we proud of our ancient heritage sites? Why aren’t we protecting them? How long must the insidious ‘life started with the Romans’ lie persist?

Let ours be the generation that puts an end to the decay and destruction; the one that refuses to sell out our inheritance for the short-term gain of soulless corporates. Let our descendants look back on our stewardship and applaud our achievements rather than curse our negligence.

Would the Egyptians stand by and see their pyramids ground up to make road stone or the Sphinx buried in mound of garbage? Of course they wouldn’t. We have world-class heritage that’s just as old and just as valuable. Help us to protect it right now, today.