Tuesday 27 November 2007

DOWNSPOEM & DOWNSPICS





DOWNSPOEM: Lines Composed Upon Recalling that Mammoths Actually Roamed the Slopes of the Downs, as did the Magdalenians (Cave-Painter Types)

This, too, is Arcadia

Where the Woolly Ganesh became the hills

Long-haired trumpeters sat down and said:

“We shall become this place;

It shall become us, dream us,

And we it.”


Mount Caburn, East Sussex, seen from the floodplain south of Lewes. One seems to see the upper profile of a mammoth, the long back, the hump of the head, the trunk extending off to the right.
Magdalenean Cave Painting from Roufignac, around 15,000 BC

A similar profile is presented by Wolstonbury Hill, further west along the Downs, (due North of Brighton) when seen looking west from Ditchling. For a beautiful but rather small photo of
this see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolstonbury_Hill


Mammoth piece in ivory, one of the oldest pieces of art ever found, about 35,000 years old.













2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi There,
my name is Lino Loi, and I am a scientist. I am writing a review paper on the use of cloning for restoring extinct species, including the wholly mammoth. I would like to use this nice picture of the ivory statur of a mammoth on oyu page, can I use it? Are there any pending copyright? Do you have more info about it? Where was it found?
Thank you a lot in advance,

sincerely yours,


Lino Loi

ELPHINofANGLELAND said...

Behind Charleston to the South lay Firle Beacon and its supporting downs, like a row of half-submerged ancient elephants. Their massive grey humps protected us from the west wind, which brought not only the rain but a sea mist which rolled down their sides and hid them from view. Angelica Garnet (daughter of Vanessa Bell, niece of Virginia Woolf) in Deceived with Kindness, Chapter 2, p.46.