On the Norfolk coast once lay two mysterious Stone Age timber circles nicknamed ‘Seahenge’, a play on the world-famous Stonehenge.
Sat in the middle of one, named Holme I, was a gnarled, upturned oak tree, curling up towards the sky. Surrounding it were 55 oak posts, forming a tight-knit circle. At the centre of the other, named Holme II, lay two oak logs, laid flat.
Protected from the ravages of the North Sea by sand dunes and mud flats, over time the sites were covered by peat, protecting them for millennia. Until 1998 that is, when rising tides on Holme beach exposed the curious circles’ remains.
But not their purpose.
Since they emerged from the waves, archaeologists have pondered their purpose.
Some have argued one may have been built to mark the death of a prominent individual. Others suggested they were used for ‘sky burials’, with the dead placed in the centre, waiting to be eaten and carried away by birds.
However, a new paper has proposed a much bigger meaning to them – climate change.
Not as we see today, with temperatures and sea levels rising, but the opposite.
The circles were built in the Bronze Age around 2049 BCE, at a time when the world was significantly cooler, prolonging winters and impacting crops.
This has led Dr David Nance, a researcher at the University of Aberdeen, to argue that the circles were built in response to extreme climatic deterioration, where locals may have carried out rituals intended to extend the summer and hasten the return of the warm weather.
‘Dating of the Seahenge timbers showed they were felled in the spring, and it was considered most probable that these timbers were aligned with sunrise on the summer solstice,’ said Dr Nance.
‘We know that the period in which they were constructed 4,000 years ago was a prolonged period of decreased atmospheric temperatures and severe winters and late springs, placing these early coastal societies under stress.
‘It seems most likely that these monuments had the common intention to end this existential threat, but they had different functions.’
The summer solstice had particular significance for locals at the time. According to folklore it was the date that the cuckoo, a symbol of fertility, stopped singing and returned to the Otherworld, taking summer with it. We now know cuckoos migrate to tropical Africa over winter.
‘The [Holme I] monument’s form appears to imitate two supposed winter dwellings of the cuckoo remembered in folklore: a hollow tree or “the bowers of the Otherworld” represented by the upturned oak-stump at its centre,’ said Dr Nance.
‘This ritual is remembered in the “myth of the pent cuckoo” where an unfledged cuckoo was placed into a thorn bush and the bird was “walled-in” to extend the summer – but it always flew away.’
In other words, Norfolk locals were trying to trick the cuckoo into staying, and with it, warm weather.
Holme II, Dr Nance argues, could have been built for a rather more grisly purpose. He relates it to the legend of ‘sacred kings’, who were sacrificed if some kind of misfortune fell on the community, such as a bad harvest or long winter. The sacrifices were made to the goddess of Venus, to restore harmony.
‘Evidence suggests that they were ritually-sacrificed every eight years at Samhain [now Halloween] coincident with the eight-year cycle of Venus,’ said Dr Nance.
‘The fixtures in Holme II that were thought to hold a coffin, are orientated towards sunrise on Samhain in 2049 when Venus was still visible.
‘Both monuments are best explained as having different functions and associated rituals, but with a common intent: to end the severely cold weather.’
However, if you’re thinking of trying to trap a cuckoo to try to usher in some warmer weather this year, you’re out of luck. Holme I was excavated soon after it was discovered, and is now on display at Lynn Museum in Norfolk.
Holme II was left in place due to its location in a nature reserve, and is no longer visible – which is possibly for the best given the country is in need of some better luck on the weather front.
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