Were
these hills covered by forests? I don't know. These archaeologists don't
know. Or if they do they haven't told me, which is just as bad. I don't
believe they know.
"What trade came here along these tracks? So far as I know, they had no
beasts of burthen. But suppose one day someone were to find a potsherd
here from early Knossos, or a fragment of glass from Pepi's Egypt."
The place had stirred up his imagination. He wrestled with his ignorance
as if he thought that by talking he might presently worry out some
picture of this forgotten world, without metals, without beasts of
burthen, without letters, without any sculpture that has left a trace,
and yet with a sense of astronomical fact clear enough to raise the
great gnomon of Silbury, and with a social system complex enough to give
the large and orderly community to which the size of Avebury witnesses
and the traffic to which the green roads testify.
The doctor had not realized before the boldness and liveliness of his
companion's mind. Sir Richmond insisted that the climate must have been
moister and milder in those days; he covered all the downlands with
woods, as Savernake was still covered; beneath the trees he restored a
thicker, richer soil. These people must have done an enormous lot with
wood. This use of stones here was a freak. It was the very strangeness
of stones here that had made them into sacred things. One thought too
much of the stones of the Stone Age. Who would carve these lumps of
quartzite when one could carve good oak? Or beech—a most carvable wood.
Especially when one's sharpest chisel was a flint. "It's wood we ought
to look for," said Sir Richmond. "Wood and fibre." He declared that
these people had their tools of wood, their homes of wood, their gods
and perhaps their records of wood. "A peat bog here, even a few feet of
clay, might have pickled some precious memoranda.... No such luck....
Now in Glastonbury marshes one found the life of the early iron
age—half way to our own times—quite beautifully pickled."
Though they wrestled mightily with the problem, neither Sir Richmond nor
the doctor could throw a gleam of light upon the riddle why the ditch
was inside and not outside the great wall.
"And what was our Mind like in those days?" said Sir Richmond. "That, I
suppose, is what interests you. A vivid childish mind, I guess, with not
a suspicion as yet that it was Man ruling his Planet or anything of that
sort."
The doctor pursed his lips. "None," he delivered judicially. "If one
were able to recall one's childhood—at the age of about twelve or
thirteen—when the artistic impulse so often goes into abeyance and one
begins to think in a troubled, monstrous way about God and Hell, one
might get something like the mind of this place."
"Thirteen. You put them at that already?... These people, you think,
were religious?"
"Intensely. In that personal way that gives death a nightmare terror.
And as for the fading of the artistic impulse, they've left not a trace
of the paintings and drawings and scratchings of the Old Stone people
who came before them."
"Adults with the minds of thirteen-year-old children. Thirteen-year-old
children with the strength of adults—and no one to slap them or tell
them not to.... After all, they probably only thought of death now and
then. And they never thought of fuel. They supposed there was no end to
that. So they used up their woods and kept goats to nibble and kill the
new undergrowth. DID these people have goats?"
"I don't know," said the doctor. "So little is known."
"Very like children they must have been. The same unending days. They
must have thought that the world went on for ever-just as they knew
it—like my damned Committee does.... With their fuel wasting away and
the climate changing imperceptibly, century by century.... Kings and
important men followed one another here for centuries and centuries....
They had lost their past and had no idea of any future.. .. They had
forgotten how
these hills covered by forests? I don't know. These archaeologists don't
know. Or if they do they haven't told me, which is just as bad. I don't
believe they know.
"What trade came here along these tracks? So far as I know, they had no
beasts of burthen. But suppose one day someone were to find a potsherd
here from early Knossos, or a fragment of glass from Pepi's Egypt."
The place had stirred up his imagination. He wrestled with his ignorance
as if he thought that by talking he might presently worry out some
picture of this forgotten world, without metals, without beasts of
burthen, without letters, without any sculpture that has left a trace,
and yet with a sense of astronomical fact clear enough to raise the
great gnomon of Silbury, and with a social system complex enough to give
the large and orderly community to which the size of Avebury witnesses
and the traffic to which the green roads testify.
The doctor had not realized before the boldness and liveliness of his
companion's mind. Sir Richmond insisted that the climate must have been
moister and milder in those days; he covered all the downlands with
woods, as Savernake was still covered; beneath the trees he restored a
thicker, richer soil. These people must have done an enormous lot with
wood. This use of stones here was a freak. It was the very strangeness
of stones here that had made them into sacred things. One thought too
much of the stones of the Stone Age. Who would carve these lumps of
quartzite when one could carve good oak? Or beech—a most carvable wood.
Especially when one's sharpest chisel was a flint. "It's wood we ought
to look for," said Sir Richmond. "Wood and fibre." He declared that
these people had their tools of wood, their homes of wood, their gods
and perhaps their records of wood. "A peat bog here, even a few feet of
clay, might have pickled some precious memoranda.... No such luck....
Now in Glastonbury marshes one found the life of the early iron
age—half way to our own times—quite beautifully pickled."
Though they wrestled mightily with the problem, neither Sir Richmond nor
the doctor could throw a gleam of light upon the riddle why the ditch
was inside and not outside the great wall.
"And what was our Mind like in those days?" said Sir Richmond. "That, I
suppose, is what interests you. A vivid childish mind, I guess, with not
a suspicion as yet that it was Man ruling his Planet or anything of that
sort."
The doctor pursed his lips. "None," he delivered judicially. "If one
were able to recall one's childhood—at the age of about twelve or
thirteen—when the artistic impulse so often goes into abeyance and one
begins to think in a troubled, monstrous way about God and Hell, one
might get something like the mind of this place."
"Thirteen. You put them at that already?... These people, you think,
were religious?"
"Intensely. In that personal way that gives death a nightmare terror.
And as for the fading of the artistic impulse, they've left not a trace
of the paintings and drawings and scratchings of the Old Stone people
who came before them."
"Adults with the minds of thirteen-year-old children. Thirteen-year-old
children with the strength of adults—and no one to slap them or tell
them not to.... After all, they probably only thought of death now and
then. And they never thought of fuel. They supposed there was no end to
that. So they used up their woods and kept goats to nibble and kill the
new undergrowth. DID these people have goats?"
"I don't know," said the doctor. "So little is known."
"Very like children they must have been. The same unending days. They
must have thought that the world went on for ever-just as they knew
it—like my damned Committee does.... With their fuel wasting away and
the climate changing imperceptibly, century by century.... Kings and
important men followed one another here for centuries and centuries....
They had lost their past and had no idea of any future.. .. They had
forgotten how
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