Avebury
On Monday, after we had gazed upon Silbury Hill, we walked a mile further to the village of Avebury. It was good to arrive there on foot and not in a motor vehicle. Almost five thousand years ago, our pagan ancestors began to construct something there - something that was quite amazing. It would have involved thousands of hours of manual labour and the project evolved over hundreds of years in different phases. This was in a time of hunting and gathering, before farming took a hold and changed the landscape forever. It was a huge stone circle surrounded by ditches, a deep moat and tall embankments. There were also avenues of standing stones that led up to the stone circle. Beyond the shielding embankment were two smaller stone circles. This was not a place of burial but a place of pre-Christian ritual. We can only guess at what happened there for no one really knows. The mysteries will never be uncovered with any certainty. Centuries later, as memories of the true purpos...
