chapter 38. ESTRANGEMENT #1
on archaeological finds
THE IMAGE of two trigrams: Lake below, Fire above. Water always seeks the lowest, most humble place. Heat rises. If the Water was already down, and the Fire was already up, they never meet. The rich get richer, the poor poorer. The screamers get louder and the shy get quieter. The interaction, the coming together, the exchange and understanding of each other - so central to the previous chapter, Family, is sorely missing. What is this?? There is nothing you recognise yourself in. Fire over Lake: the image of Alienation and Estrangment.
A wasteland, a heavy excavator, trowels and tassels. Regulations dictate that before land is prepared for building - in this case for a new housing estate - archaeologists are given the opportunity to search for what the past may have left behind. A rectangular discolouration appears in the sandy soil. Only the trained eye recognises the outline of a farmhouse. Nothing has remained of the walls, floors and roof; everything has decayed with the centuries. A dark line pattern is the only thing left.
In the immediate vicinity of the farm, more than a hundred graves are found, as well as tools, jewellery and ceramic pots. And these date back to the time of the hunebed or dolmen builders, 5,000 years ago. It appears to be the largest burial field from this period found so far in Europe. The floor plan, 12 metres long and 4.5 metres wide, testifies to the oldest farm in the Netherlands.
The archaeologists, the onrushing press and the curious public have disappeared. On top of the ancient burial ground and farmstead, the Oosterdalfsen neighbourhood arose and only the street names - Funnel Beaker, Hammer Axe and Mantle Pin - still refer to what was found under the current houses and pavement in 2015.
What did the ancient farmhouse look like?
And inside?
The archaeological site is on the north side of the Vecht river. The farm where we live is three kilometres as the crow flies from there, on the south bank. Everything about our house and its immediate surroundings - the river dyke, the old oaks - gives the impression of permanence: all this is solid, and will remain. That, of course, is pretence. One day this farm will be gone, just like the one from the Funnel Beaker era. The memories of what went on here - who lived and worked there, what they feared and what they dreamed of, the animals and things - all this will fade away with the years.
In the year 7024 - it could be and few years earlier or later - construction work finds the outline of the house. Nothing has remained of walls and roof, only the outline in the sandy soil is visible . And, yes, there is a piece of floor of modest dimensions, lined with hard and flat square stones. An archaeological find as spectacular as it is puzzling.
Several more objects are found in the immediate vicinity of the house's floor plan, with unidentifiable functions. Some with strange inscriptions and all made of a strange material that has not decayed even after so many centuries. Only the large glass marble is instantly recognisable, having remained unchanged after five thousand years!
And a heated debate rages among specialists, by the way, about what exactly a 'house' was. Walls, a roof, a sheltered place to live in - in 7024 this a completely unknown - and unnecessary - phenomenon. Recall that the time span between 7024 and the current year is as large as between the present and the funnelbeaker house.
However, the highlight of the excavation remains the floor covered with rock-hard, square pieces of stone. The whole thing measures 132 by 137 centimetres. The individual flat cover stones are 20 centimetres square. At the edges, there are several more of various smaller sizes. The colour - at least at the time of excavation - is cloudy black and dark red, with a moss-green patina due to centuries of weathering.
The science of 7024 is puzzled and finds it hard to interpret this floor piece. Wild Erich-von-Däniken-apres-la-lettre-like-speculations are circulating. Including the assumption that some of this might have to do with the position of the sun, planets and seasons. Those people in 2024 may have been primitive, but certainly not crazy, they were probably capable of inventing such things.
The orientation of the capstones and of the total square is 48.81° with respect to north. After calculation, it appears that in the year 2024 at the location of the archaeological site, the azimuth of the sunrise on the day of the solstice was 48.23°. While the two numbers do not correspond exactly - they are nevertheless close enough that the possibility that this is a remnant of a 21st-century structure for predicting the seasons cannot be entirely dismissed.
to be continued in the coming days …