Who were the Picts?
A study of one the most important
archaeological discoveries in Scotland for 30 years, a Pictish monastery at Portmahomack
on the Tarbat peninsula in Easter Ross, has found that they were capable of
great art, learning and the use of complex architectural principles.
The monastery was an enclosure centered on a
church thought to have housed about 150 monks and workers. It was similar to St. Columba's
religious centre at Iona, and there is evidence they would have made
gospel books similar to the Book of Kells and religious
artefacts, such as chalices, to supply numerous "daughter
monasteries."
In a discovery described as "astonishing,
mind-blowing" by architectural historians, it appears that the people who
built the monastery did so using the proportions of "the Golden Section," or "Divine Proportion," as it became known during the
Renaissance hundreds of years later. This ratio of dimensions, 1.618 to one,
appears in nature, such as in the spiral of seashells, and the faces of people
considered beautiful, such as Marilyn Monroe. It can be seen
in Notre Dame
Cathedral in Paris, the Alhambra palace of
Granada in Spain, the Acropolis in
Athens
and the Egyptian Pyramids, but was thought
to have been too advanced for the Picts.
"The Picts have always been an attractive
lost people, they are one of the most interesting lost peoples of Europe,"
said Martin Carver, a professor of archaeology at York University who has
worked on the site since the mid-1990s, and recently written a book detailing
the findings. "The big question is what happened to them, and did they
ever really make a kingdom of their own."
The answer to the latter question seems an
emphatic yes, based on the findings at Portmahomack, which is remote
today, but would have once been a key point on sea routes in the North Sea.
"They would have been dreaming of a New Rome and a new world connected by
water rather than Roman roads," said Professor Carver. "They were the
most extraordinary artists. They could draw a wolf, a salmon, an eagle on a
piece of stone with a single line and produce a beautiful naturalistic drawing.
Nothing as good as this is found between Portmahomack and Rome. Even the Anglo-Saxons didn't do stone-carving as well as the Picts
did. Not until the post-Renaissance were people able to get across the
character of animals just like that."
In addition to stone carving, the
archaeologists found evidence that vellum, chalices and other religious
artefacts were being made at the site on a considerable scale. Vellum, a form
of paper made from animal skin, would have been used to make highly decorative
gospel books. The cemetery, containing graves of middle-aged and elderly men
almost exclusively, and a piece of stone bearing a tantalisingly incomplete
inscription provided other key clues as to the Christian nature of the site.
"The most important piece had a Latin
inscription. That's extremely common in the Mediterranean environments, but
extremely rare in Scotland," said Professor Carver, who previously led
research into the Anglo-Saxon burial mound at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk. "It says 'This is the cross of Christ in
memory of Reo...' and the rest is broken away. Unfortunately the key bit, the
name of the person, is missing. It means there's someone around there who knows
how to write in the eighth century. That itself is a revelation." It also suggests something about the
spread of Christianity in those early times to remote places in the known
world.
A Pictish wall, which is believed to have
formed part of the original monastery's church, was discovered in the basement
of the derelict church on the site, which has now been turned into a visitor
centre. But it was the dimensions of another structure within the complex, the
"Smith's Hall", that attracted particular attention as it was made
with "a startling symmetry offering us more than just competence in
construction."
A detailed study was made of the horse-shoe
shaped building, searching for the unit of measurement used by the Picts.
Professor Carver said a "Tarbat foot" of 12-and-a-half inches seemed
to have been the standard measure used to make hall and other parts of the
monastery. He also found the ratios of lengths of different walls and bays
inside the window conformed to the architectural principle called the Golden
Section. "The Golden Section, together with its inverse, the Golden
Number, 1.618, has been valued by artists for millennia ... and it is a true
delight to observe it among their architects," he said. "It shows the
importance of symbol and worship in everything done in the service of the
Christian God.
"There is something rather intriguing in
the learnt character of them. This is a building put up to house metal workers.
It's the idea they were all possessed of the same kind of knowledge and all trying
to serve it."
Jean Gowans, who recently retired as chairman
of the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland, said the idea the Picts had
been using the Golden Section was "wonderful, astonishing."
"It really is absolutely fascinating. It's
mind-blowing stuff," she said. "This is staggering to hear, but I'm
not totally surprised. I think they were pretty sophisticated, when you think
of all the Pictish stones and the wonderful carvings that they made, a lot more
sophisticated than perhaps they are given credit for in public
perception."
The monastery at Portmahomack suffered a major
fire in the ninth century and several stone sculptures were smashed, suggesting
it was sacked by an invading force, likely to be Vikings intent on expanding
their territories in northern Scotland. The site continued to be occupied but
at this point evidence of a monastic settlement disappears.
However, the shared religion of the Picts and
Scots may have helped them unite against a common enemy, ultimately creating
the kingdom of Scotland. "There was a war as important as Alfred's against
the Danes [in England] and the Picts got really battered. In the Annals of
Ulster, there are records of battles where the flower of Pictish aristocracy is
killed," Professor Carver said.
"Portmahomack got burnt down pretty
definitively round about 820. The idea is they were under new masters. It could
be the Norse or the Men of Moray, MacBeth and his family. I think Portmahomack
was captured by the Men of Moray. The Norse wanted it badly, but they didn't
get it. There is no Norse material there. There was no more vellum-making and
sculpture, and it stopped being a monastery. In the ninth to 11th centuries,
they are making metal work, but that's the real Dark Age."
Portmahomack: Monastery of the Picts is
published by Edinburgh University Press
Tribes that resisted the Romans. Picts was the name which the Romans gave
to a confederation of tribes living beyond the reach of their empire, north of
the Forth and Clyde.
The name makes its first known appearance in
the works of a third-century orator, Eumenius, and is assumed
to come from the Latin word pingere, "to paint," suggesting they
painted or tattooed their bodies.
But what name they called themselves, or what
language they spoke, we do not know.
One thing that puzzled outsiders is that they
were the last people on these islands to trace their lineage through their
mothers. The Venerable Bede, writing in 731,
said that the Picts had come from mainland Europe, presumably Scandinavia, to
northern Ireland to ask for land, but the Irish sent them on to Scotland.
Hence a myth that the Picts were given Irish
wives, on condition that they became matrilineal.
Other wild stories included that they were
dark-skinned pygmies who hid in holes in the ground during the afternoon, but
had magical powers at night.
Probably they were a coalition of indigenous
tribes, brought together by the Roman threat.
In Bede's lifetime, the Picts were defeated in
war by the Northumbrians and converted to Roman Christianity.
Source:
Andy McSmith
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-truth-about-the-picts-886098.html
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