So, what so special about this one ?
I think that it is an example of the “holy” nature of the North Sea. Holy in respect of ancestral significance because it is where my remote ancestors originated.
The North Sea is a relatively young sea, it originated around 6000 BC at the end of the last Ice Age when sea levels rose dramatically all over the world. Before then, Britain was not an island and the basin was a cold, dry tundra, home to herds of herbivores and their predators, including Hunter-Gatherer tribes of Man [my ancestors]. These tribes had a developed spirituality with shaman – we know this to be true because the Dutch have been trawling the bed of the sea and bringing up many carved articles and weapons, including votive objects of carved animals used in hunting. Around 6000 BC, the massive ice sheet began to melt and the sea began to rise. This was accelerated in two major incidents which made the inundation of the basin very rapid in geological terms. Firstly, there was a massive land slip off the coast of Norway which sent a tsunami down the tundra partly flooding it. The second event involved the collapse of an ice dam in what is now Canada. This dam was holding back uncountable trillions of litres of melt water which rushed into the North Atlantic and from there into the North Sea, completing the flooding making Britain an island.
The Hunter-Gatherers and the herds were sent rushing to safety, both east and west. Those who came west found a dark, damp gloomy land with an endless forest, a “folded” land with many cliffs and valleys – very different from the flat tundra they were used to. The tribes also found there earliest deities in the forest – the Green Man, the Horned Man, and the Green Spirits of Nature – the human shaman learned much wisdom in the forests which survives even today. They survived and were forced into farming by the nature of their new land. Two/three millennia later, they were building henges and stone circles, and had founded a successful Neolithic culture.
So, now I wander the beach, looking for relics from that time, hoping to find a carved stone hand-axe made by my ancestors or some similar relic. Holy is not too strong a word to use !
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