Alternative views of the Long Man of Wilmington

[cursuswalker]

The Long Man of Wilmington as we know him in the early 21st Century:



Windover Hill with no Long Man, as must have happened to so many other hill-figures:



The Long Man just after being marked out with yellow bricks in 1874. The last traces of the incorrectly marked left foot are still just visible:



The Long Man of Wilmington as he would have looked in 1873, the year before he was first marked out with bricks:



Detail of the feet of the Long Man in 1873:



The Long Man of Wilmington in 1550, newly recreated/created as a chalk figure, for reasons unknown.

The current archeological evidence places the creation of the basic naturalistic figure we know at this time. There are also many theories as to what the figure may have lost in the last few centuries. I have gone with the one with the best tenuous evidence in its favour:



The Long Man of Wilmington in 2000 bce, during the early Bronze Age:



If you want to design your own version of the Bronze Age Long Man, please feel free to use this template so that you can get the proportions right for the photograph I have based my version on.

If you send your design to me in the same form I will then be able to put your design into the same picture really easily.

You will be credited with the design in my album of these pictures on Facebook:



Windover Hill 8000 bce, during the Mesolithic, around the time that the first post holes are being made at the site of the future Stonehenge:



Windover Hill 20,000 bce, during the last Ice Age.

At this time there were no Humans living in Britain, which was part of the European mainland and was covered with the Arctic ice-sheet. This was the period of maximum glaciation during the last Ice Age and humans had been driven out of Britiain as a result.



Windover Hill 65 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous.

At this time the hill is nothing more than a low rise, as the South Downs start to form due to the erosion of the Weald.

This is the last period during which dinosaurs walked the Earth. Within a few thousand years they will be wiped out in the Extinction event that lead to the rise of the Mammals, and ultimately of Humanity:



http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?ai ... 0496656349

[DaRC]

great stuff cw i'm glad it's always sunny at least.

Where's the view of the Long Man in the dark when you can just feel his presence

[cursuswalker]

great stuff cw i'm glad it's always sunny at least.

Yes, it's always Summer at the Long Man

Where's the view of the Long Man in the dark when you can just feel his presence

I can do that.

[DJ Droood]

I can't see any of the images :-c...is it just my work firewall blocking the images?

[cursuswalker]

I can't see any of the images :-c...is it just my work firewall blocking the images?

I'm getting the same at work. It probably is

[cursuswalker]

The Long Man of Wilmington in 3500 bce, during the Neolithic:

[cursuswalker]

The Long Man in 200 bce, during the Iron Age.

The figure has long since lost any religious significance, however a chieftain of the nearby village that will one day be called Wilmington, two centuries earlier, ordered the Bronze Age figure re-scoured in honour of his dead eldest son, with spear heads added to the heads of the staves. This figure has been half-heartedly maintained ever since. Were it not for this local custom, the figure would have been permanenently lost, as were most other Bronze Age figures.

[cursuswalker]

The Long Man of Wilmington 47 ce.

Roman legionaries under Aulus Plautius encamp near the future Wilmington and crudely scour the much faded figure into an image of Emperor Claudius, with the staves intended as banners, as on roman coins of the time.

Ironically it is this act of vandalism that first renders the figure in something closer to a naturalistic form.

[DaRC]

I like the Neolithic version - it's almost like a pair of Mannaz Runes married together.

Some good points there CW about the changes through time and people's perceptions. It's always tempting for people to think of 'the past' as a static solid, understandable point in time whereas it is a weave of waves.

[cursuswalker]

I like the Neolithic version - it's almost like a pair of Mannaz Runes married together.

Some good points there CW about the changes through time and people's perceptions. It's always tempting for people to think of 'the past' as a static solid, understandable point in time whereas it is a weave of waves.

Thank you

Last images to do tonight: The Saxon Long Man. Pagan and later Christian

[Huathe]

Cursuswalker,

This is damn cool!

[cursuswalker]

Cursuswalker,

This is damn cool!

[cursuswalker]

The final album in date order is here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=10 ... &aid=65420

[cursuswalker]

The Ghost of Long Man Future? Nuff said

[envisager]

Here's an interesting use for the unusual and special angle and orientation characteristics which happen to occur at the Long Man:

http://heavenshenge.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/make-your-own-heavens-hinge-part-1.html

Incidentally, the archaeological record dates it to perhaps 1600AD. However, the interim report LM04 2006, (Butler, Bell) states:

Our provisional conclusion from this evidence was that the hill figure may have been created in the late medieval or early post-medieval period and that it might have been outlined in brick from the time of its first creation. However, it is equally possible that the figure may have been earlier and was re-lined in brick at this date.

It also puts the clearance at least some 3000 years earlier:

The 2002 excavation (Bell 2004) showed that in the early Holocene the slope had been wooded. Human activity in the Neolithic and Bronze Age is indicated by pottery and flintwork. Clearance, cultivation and colluviation seems to have taken place in the Bronze Age leading to the burial of a soil surface dated by Optically Stimulated Luminescence 1650+/-940 BC (E. Rhodes pers com.).