Hail horsecow!
I am equal parts fascinated and frustrated by the archaeology of pre-Roman Britain. Frustrated because (apologies to the silly hippies that dance around Stonehenge twice a year) we’ll never know much about them other than the glimpses we get from their garbage dumps. Fascinated because what we do know is often really very weird.
Like this. There was a people in southern England in 400BC who dug pits in the chalk to store food (it would keep it slightly cool). After a couple of years, they would abandon one pit and dig another. The abandoned pit would be filled in with…stuff. Archaeologists describe them as offerings to the gods, because that’s what archaeologists always do.
Some of the pits held the usual. Whole pigs. Dogs. Goats. A woman with her throat cut. Same old, same old.
Then there was the six-legged sheep. The horse with cow horns. The cow with horse jaw. The headless sheep with the cow skull on its butt.
These were frankensteined together from multiple animals. They know the animals were intact when they were buried, with skin on, because the bones are anatomically placed, correctly articulated. It’s probably too much to hope they were stitched together into fabulous monsters. Is it? Isn’t it?
I’d like to think these weird people are my ancestors, but (like native Americans) we’re talking many, many genetically and culturally distinct peoples.
Nah, these ones are mine.
Posted: July 21st, 2015 under britain, personal.
Comments: 12
Comments
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: July 21, 2015, 11:08 pm
Did they find a horses-ass critter? I know my ancestors came from Jolly Ol’ but it would be nice to reaffirm it.
Comment from mojo
Time: July 21, 2015, 11:10 pm
Subsistence farmers have lots of time on their hands, seasonally. And they’re a bunch of daft, superstitious galoots, as a rule.
Comment from Stark Ðickflüßiᵹ
Time: July 21, 2015, 11:10 pm
Did they find a horses-ass critter?
Indeed. With clear evidence that it had travelled to Kenya to reproduce.
Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: July 21, 2015, 11:14 pm
The horse realized that she was meant to be a cow. She had just been living a lie all of those years and finally had to accept that she could no longer live as an unclovened one.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 21, 2015, 11:25 pm
Shoot. I really have to find a plugin that will let me upvote comments.
Comment from Uncle Al
Time: July 22, 2015, 12:00 am
Two and a half millennia ago, iron age oracles began to see, dimly to be sure, into the distant future. Their preliminary work with recombining body parts of sacrificed sheep, cows, horses, and people was their way of creating the politicians of the 21st Century.
Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: July 22, 2015, 5:49 am
Haaa-a-a! The Ancient, Fabled Unicorn!! (Well…sorta-kinda, anyway…)
Needs more cowbell, I think.
Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: July 22, 2015, 5:52 am
Feynmangroupie’s comment, however, clearly wins the Internutz For The Day…top marks, dude!
Comment from Allen
Time: July 22, 2015, 9:00 am
I haven’t seen one of those, but I have seen a Bulltruck. Damn bull charged into my truck a few weeks ago and got a horn stuck. Ah, home on the range.
Comment from Wolfus Aurelius
Time: July 22, 2015, 3:39 pm
Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: July 21, 2015, 11:14 pm
The horse realized that she was meant to be a cow. She had just been living a lie all of those years and finally had to accept that she could no longer live as an unclovened one.
*
*
Born a horse, but with a bovine identity!
Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: July 22, 2015, 8:02 pm
@JS Bridges
<>
I identify as a woman, in spite of my female reproductive organs and chromosomes.
Comment from Bob
Time: July 23, 2015, 1:14 am
I recall something by Edgar Cayce that one of the things the Atlanteans did that invited Divine destruction was the creation of living chimeras from different animal parts. Some say the Atlantean survivors went to England.
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