Discovering the Ancient Brits

Not many tourists go to Dorchester.  It is too far from London, and not as picturesque as Cornwall, where Doc Martin is filmed..  I took Mother and David to Dorchester so that I could see the hometown of the author Thomas Hardy, best known for his novel, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”  In his novels he called the town “Casterbridge.”.  It is a typical English country town, which looks as if it has not added a new building since Hardy was writing about it in the 19th Century.

The most exciting structure David and I found in Dorchester was not the Hardy sites, but a pre-historic fort, built thousands of years before the country was called England – before the Romans left mosaic floors buried all around the countryside, before the Angles and Saxons invaded and wiped out all the native Brits.  Not one word of the modern English language comes from those ancient people.

But the original Britains left some remarkable remains.  Every one wants to see Stonehenge.  To cope with millions of visitors, the huge parking lot is across the road.  I followed tourists wearing blue jeans and short shorts, tank tops and tee shirts, their flip-flops slapping against the pavement as we walked through a long tunnel, only to come up to stand behind a fence, so far away that the big stones looked no bigger than my grandparents gravestones in Rockwall Cemetery. Like watching a football game from the upper stands of Cowboy Stadium.

At Dorchester we were the only visitors the day I stopped the car at the base of  a huge earthen mound, right at the edge of Dorchester, overlooking its quaint half-timbered houses.  Today the English call the structure  “Maiden Castle.”  No one know what the original builders called it   It reminded me of Cahokia Mounds in Southern Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.  Once when on my way from Chicago to Albuquerque, I stopped at Cahokia and climbed to the top.  I had a clear view of the Gateway Arch. 

In England Mother waited in the car (she missed a lot of things in England while David and I had adventures.)    He and I climbed to the very top of Maiden Castle.  There was no path, just steep (very steep) sides.  I huffed and puffed while David scampered ahead like a goat as we climbed up and up, through a series of trenches which ringed the entire structure, forming impressive defenses for the ruined earthen fort at the top.  David and I were surprised as we reached the top of a trench and looked down on a cow quietly grazing where the ancients once fought off invasions by other tribes.  The cow turned and gave us a bored look, as if to say, "What are you two foolish humans doing here in my hillside pasture?"

 I have seen the Parthenon in Greece and equally impressive Greek temples in Sicily.  In Rome I saw the Coliseum, and was surprised to learn that the rest of Ancient Rome is still there, buried beneath thirty feet of dirt and garbage.  T. E. Lawrence first went to the Middle East as an archeologist studying Hittite ruins.  The Hittites were an important force in the Middle East a thousand years before Alexander the Great marched through. 

The Hittite Empire reached its zenith 3500 years ago.  Now the Hittites have vanished like the original Brits.  Like the mound builders of Southern Illinois. 

What makes us sure that the Washington Monument – or Cowboy Stadium – will stand forever?
.