Referring regularly to the map of the Avebury area which had been “overdrawn”, the daylight suddenly dawned and I was hooked! Why on earth hasn’t somebody come up with this before as it appears to be an obvious man-made figure and not a natural phenomena. I have all the books on Avebury that I have been able to find so far and not one has seen any relevance to the ’causeways’ adjoining Silbury Hill as Mr. Goutte’ does other than as a means of reaching the hill during its construction. This huge mound that he sees as a symbolic representation of the uterus is accompanied by a drawing showing a full-term baby about to leave the uterus and pass through the birth canal being represented by the Swallowhead Springs. As the baby is departing the uterus it expands into what looks remarkably like the causeways to the south of Silbury Hill which leads directly toward the Springs. Quite remarkable that he made this fantastic connection and so obvious once explained and seen!
Archaeologists only deal only with actual facts, things they can find, see, handle and date, whereas Mr. Goutte will have spent many many hours simply wandering over the Complex while continually asking himself the same question. Why was it built and as it was, there MUST have been a reason. Tying it in chronologically with the Egyptian belief in an afterlife gave him the lead he was looking for.
Well now he knows and so do I! I’m sure that taking his father’s advice that he should “think Neolithic” will have gone a long way towards helping him to reach his astonishing conclusion.
Unlike many books of this genre, Mr. Goutte’s is written in plain English and is therefore very easy to read – something you can’t always say about many archaeological books, which, quite frankly are boring by continually going off on a tangent to ‘help’ us understand more, which they seldom do. I am minded to recall a famous quote by John Steinbeck who just “opened the pages and let the stories crawl in by themselves”. As I turned each page of the book, the more the theory unfolded and the more fascinated I became.

I shall be taking another trip to Avebury in the Autumn and I know that I’ll see things in a completely different light now, thanks to Mr. Goutte’s determination and enquiring mind.

My wife and I are in San Miguel de Allende and would like to bus down to Teotihuacan. Do you know how to find out about busses mentioned in this post?

Thanks!

Carl