⚡️I got to know each of the sixty-four stone boulders.
I noticed that they began to resolve themselves into human-like forms.
Like the deities I learned that they represented to those who had levered them into position five-thousand years ago (and five-hundred years before the mound above them was layered on top). This was my favourite of the stelae; do you see what I mean?
It seemed like this was a broad-shouldered stone God.
After the scorching heat of summer and the first rains of winter, I saw that the gods were beginning to crumble.
The mud which held them in place was cracking. When it rained, the clay soil around and inside the circle flooded. The cromlech itself had been threatened all summer by the heat. Then, as winter closed in, we’d be having months of snow and frost. Perhaps, that was the housing developer’s strategy all along? Let it “accidentally” collapse. So that they could build the houses they’d intended to construct after “researching” the mound.
One afternoon, on the last day before returning home for my final holiday before my retirement, I noticed a pair of teeth emanating from a tube of what looked like extremely old possibly fossilised wood just sitting on one of the stone deities. They looked like they were champing strangely into a piece of tubular wood.
I thought perhaps that the cracking mud had revealed the teeth. A passer-by had, I suspected, seen them on the ground and placed them on one of the stones. I really couldn’t work out the puzzle of these teeth. I called an archaeologist in the city — he responded, “children sometimes visit graveyards. They plant skeletons to frighten people as pranks.” I’d never heard about that kind of ghoulish trolling.
Perhaps he didn’t want a foreign diplomat to suspect his nation would be so negligent as to expose five-thousand-year-old archaeological treasures to the elements like that? He didn’t need to worry. My own country is just as bad, especially when housing developers get involved in public policy. Quotidian interests trump a nation’s irreplaceable cultural patrimony. Every. Single. Time!
After some research, it became clear that the teeth belonged to a horse. Some of the earliest archaeological evidence of the domestication and/or ritual use of the horse in human history had been discovered at a Ukrainian site not far from the cromlech.
Innumerable ancient entombments of local monarchs and notable people had been uncovered nearby. Sacrificed animals such as deer, horses, and dogs had been found inside such grave Mane over recent decades nearby. One of the three oldest wheeled wooden carts ever found in Europe had been discovered, in a kurgan less than ten kilometres from the cromlech, in the grounds of Dnipro airport in 1949.
I had thought carefully about whether to take the teeth away for safe-keeping — but I was a diplomat. I couldn’t afford to be accused of interfering with Ukraine’s archaeological patrimony. I tried to inspire local activists to go collect the teeth and bring them to Dnipro Historical Museum. One activist texted me after he had managed to get to the site - the teeth were already gone.
I left for that final vacation before my retirement in a state of anxiety that the entire stone circle would have collapsed by the time I got back to Dnipro. Russia’s war drums were beating more loudly than ever they had for the previous seven years at that time too. Things seemed to be falling apart. It wasn’t clear at all that the centre would hold.
So, before I left, I photographed it all very carefully. I imagined myself as a hero for having had the foresight to do so, if as I suspected, the rondel wasn’t long for this world. I spliced the photographs into a short video. I added a soundtrack. As I’d done many times before, I uploaded it to TikTok. I wouldn’t get many “likes” and views. Of course, I fantasised about my videos going viral. I also feared it though, as my manager expected me to keep a low profile.
Ancient Ukrainians
Relatively early in my research, I read that the builders of the mound that concealed the Dnipro stone henge were from what archaeologists call the Yamnaya Culture…
Continued:
[DecodingTrolls]
What That Exploded Dam Reveals About The First “Humans.”
Russia blowing up Ukraine’s Khakovka Dam in June 2023 has had several unforeseen consequences. The best preserved Sredni Stog culture archaeological site was located on an island that had been flooded to make the reservoir. ..
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embedded-post-meta 3 years ago · DecodingTrolls
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