“And archaeologically, they are just a total enigma.” “They are iconic, and they are big tourist attractions,” Allen says. Yet surprisingly little is known about them.
Thanks to the chalky geology-formed in the time of the dinosaurs, when tiny marine creatures sank like snowflakes to the floors of inland seas-these figures are the only geoglyphs of their kind in the world. Still, several questions remain about the “Rude Man” and about many of the other 30-odd chalk geoglyphs scrawled across Southern England.įor millennia, people have used these grasslands as a bucolic blackboard, drawing horses, giants, war memorials, and even an oversized kiwi bird. “We were all wrong … and that’s tremendously exciting.” The results were totally unexpected because no other chalk figures date from that time, says environmental archaeologist Mike Allen. 1100 in the late Saxon or early medieval period. Now, using a combination of laser beams and snails, scientists established that the giant was born between A.D. Until this May, researchers debated whether he was an Iron Age fertility symbol, a Roman representation of Hercules, or a parody of 17th-century politician Oliver Cromwell. According to folklore, couples who couple on his crotch will successfully conceive.īut this naked man has been clothed in mystery. Thanks largely to his 35-foot phallus, the giant has become a beloved fertility icon. The 180-foot-tall figure was created by scouring away grass to reveal the white chalk beneath, then packing the trenches with more chalk quarried nearby. No actual behemoth was harmed in the process, because the Cerne Abbas Giant is a geoglyph-a large artwork emblazoned into the landscape.
They sliced into his elbows and feet, then took bits of him back to their labs in bags and metal tubes. In March 2020, archaeologists traveled to a hilltop in Dorset, England, to bag a giant.
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