Prehistoric Britain
Seahenge
2050 BC, Norfolk, East Anglia, England.
The plant had become its roots and the roots had become the plant.
'The circle of wooden posts they found poking through a beach at Holme-next-the-Sea in 1998 has nothing to do with the sea,' said Miranda. 'Even though it's now called Seahenge. The shoreline might well have moved quite a distance in four thousand years and Seahenge was probably miles away from the coast when the monument was built. Southern England has sunk about four metres since then, to compensate for the rebound of Scotland when all the ice disappeared at the end of the last Ice Age. And if you factor in all the coastal erosion and longshore deposition as well...'
'So in a leafy glade, possibly miles from the sea,' said Quintin, 'a child could squeeze through the wooden uprights of the palisade and view the meaningful object within.'
'A religious sculpture,' replied Miranda.
'An upside-down tree with its trunk disappearing into the ground and its roots reaching up towards the sky.'
'Fine art, like in the old cathedrals,' said Miranda. 'Viewed in its own private chapel.'
‘Dad wrote this in one of his novels.' said Quintin, putting down the pencil he had been drawing with. 'Drafted and independently reviewed in July 1996. Really! He still has the reviewer's original letter with the typescript that he sent. "Suggi Harris had developed, not a new strain of plant, but a wholly new way of growing existing plants and trees. Lit by ordinary fluorescent lamps from below, the roots grew upwards with a new strength, able to take nutrients from a charged atmosphere and feed a rapid growth; almost as though the plant had become its roots and the roots had become the plant... the beauty of root systems growing upwards into the air, with a variation of form as great as that between oak and strawberry, holly and yew. Roots that were feathery or cable-like, convoluted, orderly, chaotic, simple, intricate, symmetric, radial, entangled, fine, coarse, vertical, spreading, colourful, plain." Dad put this curious botanic specimen in a place that the whole novel was involved in a search for; where perspectives were radically altered, where what was normally hidden from view became visible and where you were encouraged to try to see things that are normally not seen.'
'So the Bronze Age farmers pulled up an oak tree,' replied Miranda, 'turned it upside-down, planted it again and enclosed it in a wooden palisade that it's possible only children were able to squeeze into, to encourage a young mind to look inwardly into itself and to find the goddess.'
‘An object to stir the imagination,’ agreed Quintin. 'And perhaps to bring into focus some deeply-held intuition.'
Account of the discovery and scientific excavation of Seahenge, Holme-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, England, in: Pryor, Francis, 2001. Seahenge: A Quest for Life and Death in Bronze Age Britain. HarperCollinsPublishers. 337 pp.