STONES AND HEROES OF OLD

Bank Holiday today, so the Intrepids and I went to Avebury. It's like Stonehenge but better - a Neolithic ring of 6,000 year old stones built on a rampart. No-one knows why they're there.

The rocks are huge unhewn monoliths, some about 6 feet high and spaced around the circle, embedded firmly and immovably in the green grass. Their ancient faces are weather-worn and moss-covered, jagging out of the ground like stone teeth.

My favourite theory is that the stones formed a sort of complex for ancestral worship. I don't approve of ancestral worship (for one thing, my ancestors were pirates) but I do quite like the idea of each stone representing someone who has gone before, a hero of old. That seems like quite a cool way to remember a person and their legend - their stone as unique in strength and stature as they were, no two stones the same, yet all standing together between this world and the next. I pictured them gathered there like a colossal hall of fame, an island of gravestones, surrounded by a moat of water and the tall trees of a long-forgotten forest.

My Dad and I wandered around the Avebury ring, taking in the size of the place, while Mum had a cup of tea in the cafe. Stonehenge, at least what's left of it, is surprisingly small when you see it up-close: Avebury is much less famous, and much more accessible, allowing you to walk between the stones, to touch them and climb them and marvel at the 6,000 year-old mystery of their origins. 

Another theory is that these places act as a sort of natural clock to mark out the seasons. Certainly, Stonehenge could have been this, the sun winking as it does through its arches every summer solstice. Avebury even looks a bit like a clock-face, the stones marking out the numbers around its circular plane. I don't think so though - I'm not sure of the mechanism. It was much more likely to be a place of significance - you can sort of feel it when you're there.

I wonder what kind of stone I would leave behind? I wonder what kind of tales would be told by my children and theirs. Would it be tall? Would it be wedged into the ground by a corner? Would it be squat and sturdy, simple, or carved like those Easter Island statues? What would it say? What would they say? I reminded myself of something the Bible says about us being living stones, built together, forming something... well, something special where our uniquenesses combine to change the world. I hope they could say that.

"Right, I suppose we should be getting back to your Mother," said my Dad, swinging his golf umbrella. He looked anxiously at the grey sky rolling overhead and started strolling across the grass. I looked back at the stones. Nobody knows those stories of old, nobody has any idea of the legends whispered by stone-age children as they peeked through the misty forest towards the clearing of the stone circle. The heroes are lost and all that remain are their stones. 6,000 years is a long time.