Memory, Instead of a View
Prehistoric sites such as Stonehenge may represent memory spaces, constructed to contain the knowledge of the tribe.
Again from The Memory Code. Here the author lays out a fascinating theory that prehistoric sites such as Stonehenge represent memory spaces, constructed to contain—using the method of loci, which existed long before the Greeks used it—the knowledge of the tribe.
Let’s play a mind game, imagining a narrative that would have played out over many, many generations, over thousands of years.
Imagine you can remember not only your immediate past, but that of all your forebears back to when you were part of a hunter-gatherer group, no longer nomadic but still mobile, still moving between known food sources over the year. At some locations you adapted the environment to improve the prime resource, maybe creating fish traps in a good fishing area or clearing land where yams naturally grew well. Each time you returned, generation after generation, there was more food available and you stayed longer, becoming better acquainted with other resources there. You gradually produced more food locally, fenced in your herds and reduced your dependence on wild resources. You traded for seeds and animals, and the knowledge about them, with tribes from far away. You started to favour one home over all others. But there was a problem.
As a mobile hunter-gatherer, your tribe had performed the rituals, the ceremonies, the knowledge, at sacred sites located right around the path you moved over during the year while travelling from seasonal resource to resource. You painted or engraved rocks and trees, caves and shelters, and embedded knowledge in the landscape, your vast memory space.
As you started to stay in one place for longer periods, a system of pilgrimages enabled elders to return to sacred sites, to perform the now ancient ceremonies and ensure that knowledge was retained. To settle permanently, though, a solution was found: your elders replicated the sacred places from right around the landscape at a site close to your village. They used stones or posts to represent the sacred sites and the knowledge encoded there: animal and plant properties, navigation, genealogies, agreements about resource rights, cultural expectations and, of course, religion and history.
Monuments, used as memory spaces, required a huge investment of labour, but this was willingly given because everyone recognised the importance of these stories for the survival, both physically and culturally, of the group. Stones were not erected randomly; timbers were not just put up anywhere. Circles and rows, circles within circles, rows in parallel, mounds and plazas all met the need for an ordered structure. Performance spaces, both public and restricted, were incorporated in the design of ceremonial plazas. Over the centuries, changes kept being made, enabling better enhancement of the sounds and making it possible for the growing population to participate. Movement while chanting was also used to recall the stories, so avenues and other forms of walking paths were built, maintained and revered.
