If pretty funny that you think the “general run of mankind” of the past 50 years is incontrovertibly worse than the previous 4950 years.
In my mind, I can totally hear this being exclaimed in Christopher Walken’s voice.
I’ve heard that the only American allowed to touch it is Tom Brady.
So if a blind person visited, they’d be SOL, I guess. I understand the policy but hate the “absolutely no exceptions” rule.
Each rock weighs 25 tons. I’m not arguing against the rule, merely the idea that a bunch of tourists clambering over a rock that weighs the equivalent of a fully loaded garbage truck isn’t going to demolish it, not without heavy equipment and more than 10 minutes.
This was more than 50 years ago:
Fer cryin’ out loud. If he’d asked me I would have charged him $10,000 or pounds or euros or whatever they use for money over there to touch the special Stonehenge stone kept in a nearby facility for only A list celebrities to touch. No pictures allowed and he’d have to sign an NDA also.
ETA: I do think Walken is a very good and interesting actor, I enjoy his movies a lot. So I’d only charge him $5000.
Perhaps allow him to touch it with a gloved hand?
I am just thinking of recent well publicized events of vandalism of monuments seemingly for the fun of it. Perhaps you’re right and this is just to be expected, but I do think that if people were allowed to approach Stonehenge (at least unsupervised) very bad things would happen in very short order.
I agree, but I meant deliberate damage. Of course Christopher Walken wouldn’t have damaged the stones deliberately or accidentally. The rule exists for a good reason, is all.
Allowing blind people to touch the stones is a great idea for an exception to the rule, though! I like it.
How about allowing deaf people to touch Christopher Walken?
If he manages to smuggle the whole thing out, more power to him.
Yet the very post preceding yours listed a bunch of heavy rock formations that had stood thousands or millions of years, and were instantly destroyed by modern idiots using only their muscles.
Stonehenge is not precariously balanced, easily tipped over by children or child-brained adults. Just pointing out the difference there. And also I don’t think they should let people touch it because people suck. People knocked over those balanced rocks, and thought it was a good idea, other people created the circumstances where woefully ignorant people would believe the random activity in their knowledge starved brains was a good idea, and other people think taking cow worming medicine will cure Covid. I can understand why they don’t want those people touching the rock.
Also, it’s a rock. If anyone doesn’t know what a rock feels like I’ll send them for just the price of postage and handling. I think own rock one that is Stonehenge stone size. First come first serve on that one, all the others will be smaller.
Yes, some Druids, Pagans, and of course archaeologists and Park people.
But even the Druids can’t deface or climb on the stones or anything like that.
Note that Stonehenge has been defaced quite a bit in the past, stones moved, put back etc.
One of the points Mike Pitts makes in his recent (rather good) book, How to Build Stonehenge, is that everyone, including archaeologists, have probably underestimated the extent to which visitors have been damaging the stones continuously since they were first erected.
Miss Henge, will you tell the jury where Mr. Walken touched you?
But what if Walken was driving on the A303 at night, and he had a sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly?
Could you point to it on this model?
Right on the stones. Also fondled the pillar.