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Cerne Abbas Giant

Sollywos said:
It was the green that was the driver of the project ... honest! I needed a good block of it with not too much distraction. Just some back stitched white lines and he has such a lovely friendly face ...whistle.
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I know exactly what you mean and now your living room should also be safer from any Viking invasions. Bonus.
 
Programme late last night on BBC Radio 5 Live had an historian explaining that the cult of Heracles/Hercules was brought to Britain by the Romans and had widespread popularity. As Roman culture became superseded by Anglo-Saxon, the latter people incorporated elements of Hercules' mythology and iconography into depictions of Thor. There are certain similarities between Thor and Hercules - both were sons of the head honcho deity and both wielded a thunderous blunt implement. So a good shout for the Cerne Abbas Giant being an Anglo-Saxon depiction of Thor bearing some Herculean traits.
Both Hercules and Thor may well have been derived from the Proto-Indo-European weather god Perkwunos (the striker or lord of oaks).
 
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Swifty said:
So you looked at your wall one day, thought 'That wall looks a bit bare. That needs something that does?.' .. 'I know! .. an embroidered picture of a bloke holding a club with a hard on!!' ... excellent. :cool:
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It's what every well-decorated house needs. Forget sparkly lighting or sofa throws - bloke with enormous knob for the win every time.
 
catseye said:
It's what every well-decorated house needs. Forget sparkly lighting or sofa throws - bloke with enormous knob for the win every time.
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100% and he's got a weird wobbly club. I'm on that with no sarcasm. It's that or were going to have to revert to ATHENA card shop posters with that bloke with muscles holding that baby or whatsherface scratching her arse on that tennis court. I'm 100% badly drawn bloke with a big cock and a club choosing between those options.
 
I live on the periphery of giant-knobby-man-land and there are all sorts of great items in the local tat shops featuring his impressive physique.

I'm quite partial to a mouthful of the shortbread:

Dorset-Food-Cerne-Abbas-Giant.jpg


Which is manufactured by Percy's Bakery in Yeovil.
 
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According to the BBC historian on TV a couple of minutes ago, the Cerne Abbas Giant may have been a tribute to Alfred The Great (possibly with Herculean traits) carved into the hillside to celebrate his history-changing victory against the Vikings in the late 9th century.
Certainly plausible, but I was kind of hoping it could be far older like the Uffington White Horse - maybe a celebration of the ur-thunder deity Perkʷūnos (from which we get the modern English term "percussion" - something to think about next time you listen to a rock band heavy on the drums and cymbals!).
 
AnonyJ said:
I live on the periphery of giant-knobby-man-land and there are all sorts of great items in the local tat shops featuring his impressive physique.

I'm quite partial to a mouthful of the shortbread:

View attachment 72600

Which is manufactured by Percy's Bakery in Yeovil.
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That looks like the Gingerbread Man from Shrek - the porno version
 
New study of Giant

Now a new study from two academics at Oxford and Oslo Universities has narrowed the timeline with experts concluding it was constructed between 700AD and 1100AD, most likely at the later end. Published in Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, the team working with the site owners the National Trust used a technique called optically stimulated luminescence to get their results.

OSL is a method for dating when minerals, in this case the quartz in the chalk, were last exposed to sunlight. Trenches were dug at various points to obtain early samples of the giant. Authors Dr Thomas Morcom, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo and Dr Helen Gittos, associate professor in Medieval History at the University of Oxford, say the hillside carving was potentially used as a mustering site for West Saxon armies.

They discovered that the giant has been largely kept visible through scouring, except for two major rechalkings. Dr Morcom said: "OSL cannot precisely date when the figure was cut, but rather when the silt began to accumulate within his outlines and when the hillwash built up downslope of them.

"The dates indicate that the outlines of the giant were silting up in the period 700-1110 AD, with a midpoint date of 905 (this date comes from his right elbow). This is confirmed by a second sample, from the silt in the bottom of the trench in his right foot, which gave dates of 650-1310 AD, with a midpoint date of 980.

"These early medieval dates are confirmed by two other samples from higher up in the stratigraphy which both have a midpoint date of the mid-thirteenth century. They are also supported by the analysis of snail shells in the soils, which reveals that the early levels contain snails first introduced into Britain in the Middle Ages.
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"It is therefore most likely that the giant was cut in the early Middle Ages rather than earlier or later, although it could have happened anytime within the period of c. 7001100. The dates also suggest that he was not much cleaned after having been initially cut but that he was then substantially rechalked."
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AnonyJ said:
I live on the periphery of giant-knobby-man-land and there are all sorts of great items in the local tat shops featuring his impressive physique.

I'm quite partial to a mouthful of the shortbread:

View attachment 72600

Which is manufactured by Percy's Bakery in Yeovil.
Click to expand...
Not sure I'd be happy putting that in my mouth...
 
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