Back to the Stone Age calendar
It is from about this time that archaeologists, there they are again, have found evidence of Stone Age people having
ceremonial centres. These would be places where they held celebrations of some sort. However it is very difficult, from evidence dug out of the ground, to
be exactly sure what was happening. We guess lots of people were at the ceremonial centres because we find lots of animal bones indicating a feast of some
sort but maybe it was a bone recycling centre with lots of wooden containers, now rotted away, marked, “Cow Bones”, “Sheep Bones” “Fish Bones”. Just an idea,
almost certainly wrong.
Think about the problems archaeologists have. Suppose you find bones of horses where hunter-gatherers had stayed. Does this
mean the hunter-gatherers had eaten horses or does it mean the horses had been killed by other predators like bears or wolves after the hunter-gatherers had
moved on? Or were the hunter-gatherers also scavengers who made their camps where these other predators had already killed.
Can you imagine, if there was no written record, in thousands of years when someone digs up London and finds all these strange buildings which
seemed to be built around 2012 and asks what on earth was going on here. Lots of people it would appear, strange footprints left by a man who seemed to be
running and then took a giant step landing on one foot, another giant step landing on the other foot and then landed on both feet. If you don’t know about
the triple jump or the Olympics, what would you think?
We are pretty certain that Stone Age people worshipped lots of different gods so everyone coming together to celebrate a particular god would
seem likely. The gods were for different things and celebrated at different times of the year. Our Stone Age people knew about the seasons even if they
didn’t fully understand why they happened. They would perhaps believe in a god who brought spring time when they could start sowing in the fields again
and another god who allowed good weather in autumn when the time came to collect the crops. If the weather was bad, these people would think it was because
they had upset the god rather than an anticyclone over the Atlantic Ocean, which is what our weather forecasters may tell us.
Forward to 2700BC
