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Pineta


Particle Physics and Pony Fiction Experimentalist

More Blog Posts440

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    Pineta · 12k words  ·  48  0 · 821 views

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Jan
30th
2016

The Art and Science of the Uffington White Horse (Prehistoric Pony Art) · 5:09pm Jan 30th, 2016


Source

At least once a year, I make an effort to cycle to the Uffington White Horse – the ancient chalk hill figure cut onto the hillside on the edge of Oxfordshire, England. I do this partly to satisfy my inner Rainbow Dash. It’s a good 80-120km round trip from my house (depending on what route I take), and I can reach some pretty awesome speeds on the downhill stretches. But, having done this for many years, it has also taken on the flavour of a sort of ritual pilgrimage to a holy place.

There are chalk figures cut into hillsides across England and other countries. The method is simply enough. Where you have grass growing on a chalk hill, just cut down to the white rock. Thus creating a distinctive white-on-green figure visible from the air, or a suitable viewpoint. Some figures are of uncertain age; some are modern. It’s probably only a matter of time before a brony artist with access to a suitable hillside produces a rendering of Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash or Princess Celestia in this style. Nature will ensure the grass grows back in a few years, so these works of art must be regularly renewed. But there are plenty of local communities who do this.

Although there are hundreds, maybe thousands of such figures, the Uffington Horse is unique. Firstly, it is possibly the only one which has been proven to date to prehistoric times. Some other figures have been said to predate the Romans, but evidence suggests they are actually just a few hundred years old at most.

So how do we know that it is so old? It’s an ancient site, right on the ancient Ridgeway trackway, and next to an Iron Age hillfort. The design matches those on old Celtic coins and jewellery. But the real evidence comes from Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL). This is the science bit.

OSL – also known as Luminescence Dating is one of many methods of dating samples used by archaeologists. It can tell us how long grains of sand—found in almost every soil—have been buried underground.

How does it work? The Earth is continuously bombarded by radiation from outer space which penetrates a few metres underground. The level is so low that we don’t notice any effects unless we look for them. But these high energy rays can knock electrons out of atoms. Usually the electrons just fall back into their place in the atomic lattice quickly, but sometimes they can get stuck in trap states. If kept in the dark, they can stay trapped for many years, but if they are exposed to light (Optically Stimulated), this knocks them out of the trap. As they relax, they emit the energy stored as more light (Luminescence).

When we dig up a sample in bright sunlight—or even in the typical British weather—we don’t notice this as it’s just a faint glimmer. But suppose we stick a special boring tool into the ground to take a sample and keep it in the dark. Then we take it back to the lab and, in a controlled chamber, we expose our sample to a flash of light. This liberates the trapped electrons and it emits a faint glow. The longer it was underground, the more radiation it was exposed to, the more electrons get trapped, and the brighter glow we get from our sample. Measure this light and you can work out how long it has been since these tiny grains of quartz last saw the sun.

It’s not easy to get an accurate date as you need to do everything in precisely controlled conditions and carefully calibrate your instruments. But it can be done. The lines of the Uffington Horse are ditches filled with cut chalk. Samples from the bottom of the ditch have been dated to be 3000 years old. Taking us back the Late Bronze Age.

Unlike some chalk figures, this one looks no more like a real horse than our favourite cartoon ponies. It’s a stylised minimalist figure. Although there are records referring to it as a horse going back a thousand years, there are those who say it is a dragon, or a dog, or a unicorn (the story is that the horn was removed by early Christians to make it look less pagan). This is, of course, all in the eye of the beholder. Personally I say it’s a horse. There’s something about it which captures the movement of a wild horse galloping across a hillside. OK I’ve never seen real wild horses—they disappeared from England long ago—I base my interpretation on observations of the semi-feral Welsh hill ponies.

It is not possible to get a full overview of the White Horse unless you can fly. Which adds a bit more mystery to the next unanswered question: Why was it made? Was it some sort of ancient land marker? Or had some sort of religious meaning? Or are we overthinking this, and actually our ancestors were just smitten with the same urge to make images of ponies which affects us today. Maybe the Vale of the White Horse is just the Bronze Age version of Derpibooru.

Unsurprisingly, the Uffington Horse has inspired or influenced works of fiction by many writers from GK Chesterton to Terry Pratchett. And, of course, pony fiction, including my Equine Comedy, and in a more subtle way, Lucky Dreams infinitely more enchanting In the Place the Wild Horses Sleep.

Comments ( 4 )

So, time to make modern day cave paintings?

Pratchetts description. T,aint what it is, tis what it be.

The Nac Mac Feegle ride again.

INDEED.:pinkiecrazy:

This is the science bit.

It's a Pineta blog post; there must be a science bit!

3724233

The science is that the hair we see is extruded dead protein. Vitamins cannot help it.

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