Shattered dreams and reconstructing visions

I still can't get over the way my assumptions have been overthrown, my whole Weltanschauung made a mockery of by this turn of events.

I refer, of course, to the discovery of an Early Bronze Age battle site in Germany. Here at the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley we've always assumed that the people of the Bronze Age were gentle, wise and spiritual. Living in peace with their neighbours, the environment and themselves. We don't have any evidence for this, but it fits our philosophy on life. The discovery of the site of a major battle is a real shock. What on earth were these gentle folk doing, hitting each other with lumps of wood shaped like baseball bats and croquet mallets? I mean - it sounds like the last time we had an expressive-form Sports Day.

Even the belief in their respect for the environment is destroyed when I consider that they flung the bodies of the dead into the river - polluting the water course and depositing the bodies way downstream.

I have only two hopes to cling to here. The first is that this was the site of Beaker People defending their community bravely against some genuinely evil outsiders - such as the Corded Wear Folk, or the Guinea Pig Folk of Nordrhein-Westphalia.

But the other - well, this is an outside shot, but depends upon wishful thinking to such a degree that it may actually be true. The scientists have found evidence of "a millet diet". Would it be so far-fetched to think that these, gentle, peaceful Beaker Folk died defending their homes against an attack of evil giant budgerigars? Scientists have, so far, been unable to disprove this theory. So I think we can safely assume it's true.