{"id":9932,"date":"2024-03-26T07:25:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T07:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/26\/uncovering-the-mystery-of-dorsets-cerne-giant\/"},"modified":"2024-03-26T07:25:41","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T07:25:41","slug":"uncovering-the-mystery-of-dorsets-cerne-giant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/26\/uncovering-the-mystery-of-dorsets-cerne-giant\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncovering the mystery of Dorset&#8217;s Cerne Giant"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/www.sciencedaily.com\/images\/scidaily-icon.png?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Uncovering the mystery of Dorset&#8217;s Cerne Giant\" title=\"Uncovering the mystery of Dorset&#8217;s Cerne Giant\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p id=\"first\">For centuries, the Cerne Giant, a figure carved into a hillside in Dorset depicting a nude man carrying a club and stretching some 180 feet high, has fascinated locals and visitors to the area. The history of the giant, however, and in particular, its age, has long been a mystery. A new paper in <em>Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies <\/em>proposes that the Cerne Giant can in fact be dated to the early Middle Ages, and, as a result, its cultural context and significance more clearly understood.<\/p>\n<div id=\"text\">\n<p>&#8220;The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context,&#8221; by authors Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos, acknowledges that previous attempts to date the giant placed its creation either sometime in prehistory or in the early modern period. Using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence, researchers for the National Trust theorize that the hillside monument was actually constructed in the period between 700 and 1100 A.D, and potentially used as a mustering site for West Saxon armies.<\/p>\n<p>This dating breakthrough also sheds new light on various historical interpretations of the Cerne Giant&#8217;s identity. Many scholars had posited that the giant was modeled on the myth of Hercules, and although, as the authors write, &#8220;[a]t first glance, an early medieval date seems odd for a figure which looks like the classical god Hercules,&#8221; there was in fact a swell of interest in the Greek hero during the ninth century, lending credence to this hypothesis.<\/p>\n<p>Another popular theory regarding the inspiration for the giant was its basis on a Saint Eadwold. The authors propose that the residents of a Benedictine monastery, built in Cerne in the late tenth century, actively propagated this idea, redirecting interest in the giant away from Greek affiliations and towards Christian ones.<\/p>\n<p>One final persona bestowed upon the giant was that of a pagan god called Helith. The authors of the <em>Speculum <\/em>paper write that this identification was a mistaken one, the result of a misreading, in the thirteenth century, of an account of the giant written in Latin.<\/p>\n<p>The new findings concerning the Cerne Giant&#8217;s age and history make greater sense of this string of theories regarding its identity. Ultimately, as the authors write, this complicated biography is all &#8220;part of the history of the giant and what continues to attract so many people to him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For centuries, the Cerne Giant, a figure carved into a hillside in Dorset depicting a nude man carrying a club and stretching some 180 feet high, has fascinated locals and visitors to the area. The history of the giant, however, and in particular, its age, has long been a mystery. A new paper in Speculum: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/images\/scidaily-icon.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[14924,14927,14926,596,1158,14925],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9934,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9932\/revisions\/9934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}