A bit tired

It's getting too late for me to write tonight's Bike, I've been out listening to a lecture about warfare in the Neolithic. Apparently 30 years ago there was a widespread belief that the Neolithic was a period of unbridled peace and harmony between 4,000 - 2,000 BC. Textbooks of archaeology would talk about it in glowing terms suggesting it all went wrong from the Bronze age to the present. They were wrong, as archaeology became more scientific it became obvious from the examination of ancient bones, that a high number of people died from injuries which were unlikely to be accidental or self-inflicted, it's difficult to shoot yourself in the back with a bow and arrow and so on. It was suggested that up to eight per cent of people met their end at the hands of another, and this applied to all ages and genders.

It wasn't just the British Isles where it occurred either, as pits have been found in Germany where it seemed massacres occurred, from the same period, and the bodies were men, women and children. Of course we don't know why these events occurred as it was long before written histories began, but it appears that humans have been killing each other for at least six thousand years in organised aggression. It would seem nothing has changed.

I'm off to Wales tomorrow to see my ex and my daughter, the latter is still suffering from chronic fatigue, probably from the surgery she had twenty months ago. I hope to get home early enough to write another episode of Bike then.

Angharad