Stonehenge

I guess I learned something new today. When we look at photos of Stonehenge, we're not seeing the unaltered relic of ancient days. Rather, we have been seeing a "restored" Stonehenge, an "artist's rendition" as it were.

The photos here tell the story. The first shows us how the monuments appeared in an 1877 photo of their original disarray, ravaged by the centuries. The second shows how the British re-shaped and stabilized the pillars to give it the form they believe it once might have had in the mid-twentieth century.

History is probably a lot like this. Historians give us neatly packaged stories that attempt to explain everthing so that it is orderly and understandable. But the real histories are quite a bit messier because life is just a bit more complicated than what historians can effectively reproduce. People are simply too complex, with complex motivations and drives, both rational and irrational.

Makes it all the more fascinating to wonder what future historians will write about our place in history. Let's work together to make the story something good.

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If you think you might enjoy a strange piece of historical fiction, you might be interested in my story An Unremembered History of the World which also has its beginning in rural England.