Cerne Abbas Giant: Snails show chalk hill figure 'not prehistoric' | Hacker News Reader

Cerne Abbas Giant: Snails show chalk hill figure 'not prehistoric'

bbc.com

26 pointspepys8 comments

For context, it is fairly well-established through historical records that the figure is not ancient, but was made perhaps in the 17th century as a satirical portrait of Oliver Cromwell [there are other theories]. So it's unlike the really prehistoric horse figures (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffington_White_Horse). Good to have the snails confirm this!

> Early antiquarians linked the giant with the Anglo-Saxon deity Helis, others have said he is the classical hero Hercules, while some believe he was carved during the English Civil War as a parody of Oliver Cromwell.

Cerne Abbas [0]. One of the few entire hills in the UK that is arguably NSFW and certain elderly aunts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant

I grew up in Dorchester, only a few miles away from Cerne Abbas. During primary school, when I was 7 years old, we went on a field trip there. The giant's anatomy led to some fairly obvious questions from my classmates and me that were never satisfactorily answered.

It's amazing to me that our civilization could lose record of something like this so quickly. Like imagine if someone just stumbled upon a 30 foot tall nude statue which kinda looks like richard nixon and no one had any idea who made it or how long it had been there.

> There has also been a suggestion his significant anatomy is in fact the result of merging a smaller penis with a representation of his navel during a re-cut by the Victorians.

Well, before the invention of email spam, they had to advertise those pills _somehow_.

That gut feeling of looking at something fake...

Same with the Golden Hat discussed here before.

Is the medieval period more prone for attribution of fabrications?

I don't think it could be said to be fake as such. It's likely that no-one was pretending when it was constructed that it was particularly old; it's just that people much later on assumed it was old because it was similar to other old stuff.

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