The A to Z Challenge – W for White Horse of Uffington

wI’m participating in the A to Z Challenge for the entire month of April, by posting an interesting topic for each letter of the alphabet. This excludes Sneak Peek Sundays. Follow this link to nearly 2000 other bloggers and authors.
The A to Z Challenge – participating blogs

Today’s Calliope’s Writing Tablet post is brought to you by the letter W for White Horse of Uffington.

A geoglyph is a large drawing cut into the ground. Figures of all sorts are found worldwide both ancient and modern, and curiously, all were designed to be seen from above. When I think of geoglyphs, the enigmatic Nazca Lines in Peru come to mind — lines and pictures so old no one alive knows their purpose.

Called Hill Figures in Britain, an estimated 57 of these artworks are scattered throughout the UK, but not all are ancient works. The most recent is the Folkestone Horse created in 2003. Horses seem to be a popular theme. In Wiltshire alone, there were eight chalky horses (two have since disappeared).   In Aberdeenshire, a horse was cut into quartz, and the Red Horses of Warwickshire were were cut into the red loam. One of the largest and most famous geoglyph is the Cerne Abbas Giant in Britain. Some say he’s a huge fertility symbol, others just call him the Rude Man. Look him up. I’m guessing fertility symbol.uff

Gouged into the rolling English hillside near the village of Uffington in Oxfordshire, is one of the most famous geoglyphs in the world — the White Horse of Uffington.  Experts determine the horse was created around 3000 years ago during the Bronze Age or early Iron Age, in the time of Stonehenge.

Most people see a stylized horse on the run when they consider the white chalk outline, but some feel the original head structure and curvature of the legs represent a large cat…a lion or cougar perhaps. Early references from the local Abbingdon Abbey in 1072 AD, refer to the hillside as Mons Albi Equi or White Equine Hill. That it’s a horse is a long held notion. Given the age of the artwork, it’s all speculation. It looks like a horse to me, so I’ll just call it a horse.

Like the Cerne Abbas Giant, the White Horse of Uffington was created by carving through turf to reveal the white chalk underneath the soil. Since open spaces like this soon fill in with plants and soil, many of the figures scattered across the UK are slowly being covered. The Uffington hillside and the White Horse require regular maintenance to keep it looking its best. To those who know things like this, it’s estimated it would only take 150 years to cover over completely. It makes me wonder what other images are hidden in the grass.  Researching this prehistoric artwork, I’m struck by the fact there has been an unbroken chain of people tending it for the last 3000 years. That’s amazing all by itself!

Here’s an interesting clip showing all the Hillside Horses in Great Britain ~

And here’s Google Earth so you can see the rest around the world
http://www.google.com/earth/index.html

Next — the letter X!
APRIL-2013-CALENDAR-001

I’ve had so much fun discussing my historical posts in the A to Z Challenge. To keep conversations going, I’ve just launched a new blog — a Salon Blog called Another Stone Unturned. Pressed for time now that my edits are in progress, I’ve put my Gobekli Tepe post there to reanimate the discussion. Let’s talk about it. What have you found on the web? What stone might still be unturned for interested learners? What can you share? I’d love to see! Read the details and let’s start the ball rolling. http://anotherstoneunturned.blogspot.com/

6-booksRose Anderson ~ Love Waits in Unexpected Place

I’m here…
Main Blog: https://calliopeswritingtablet.com/

there…

Satellite Blogs:

  1. http://calliopeswritingtablet.blogspot.com/
  2. http://calliopesotherwritingtablet.blogspot.com/
  3. http://theancillarymuse.blogspot.com/
  4. http://anotherstoneunturned.blogspot.com/

Static pages:

  1. http://thewitchywolfandthewendigo.blogspot.com/
  2. http://leonardosbookoflove.blogspot.com/?zx=c1927211cb19cf0f
  3. http://roseanderson4858.blog.com/
  4. http://roseandersonromance.weebly.com/
  5. http://roseanderson4858.wix.com/roseanderson–author

…and everywhere!

Come say say hi!
Subscribe to this blog for the latest happenings. 🙂

۞>>>>۞<<<<<۞

The Romance Reviews

About ~RoseAnderson

Rose Anderson is an award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and delights in discovering interesting things to weave into stories. Rose also writes under the pen name Madeline Archer.
This entry was posted in Past Posts - you'll never know what you'll find and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to The A to Z Challenge – W for White Horse of Uffington

  1. Lovely! You’ve offered a wonderful discussion here. I love the research you do into the unusual and unexpected. As a former librarian I commend your efforts.

  2. Melissa Keir says:

    You’ve taught me so much with these posts! I also saw the horse but could understand the cat as well. It would be nice to know for sure!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s