Unending Mystery A Journey Through Labyrinths And Mazes

Chapter One The Image the design may look complicated, but with a little practice a child could scratch it on a wall in seconds: the long arcs to the left and right, the sudden reversals in direction, a path that leads back and forth, inward and outward, until it finally reaches the center. It seems complex, with each side mirroring the other, but you can trace it freehand in the bare earth or on a sandy beach in just the time it takes to drag a stick across the ground. Or you could use a trick, a mnemonic device. Draw a plus sign, and put a dot in each of the four corners. Different people might see this image differently, as basic geometry or a magical device or an emblematic representation of the cross of Christ defended by the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Or perhaps it is a compass rose, indicating north, south, east and west as well as the four corners of the earth. Now, starting at the top of the upright arm of the plus sign, draw a curving line to the dot on the left. Then, from the dot on the upper right, draw a curving line to the end of the arm on the left. Continue on around the imageconnecting arm to dot, dot to armuntil it is complete, the simplest possible labyrinth.* The labyrinth design is far older than most of the myths and stories about it that we now remember. An image cut into the wall of a tomb in Sardinia may date back to 2500 b.c. Another, in the Val Camonica, near Brescia on the Italian mainland, may date to 1800 b.c. Some think a labyrinth painted in red on the roof of a small cave near Trapani in Sicily may even have been made in 3000 b.c. And although all these dates can be challenged (as indeed they have been), similar designs are found on Neolithic and Bronze Age remains in Spain, Ireland and North Africa and on ancient rock faces in the American Southwest. Sometimes square or rectangular, sometimes round, oval or simply lopsided, the image is always basically the same. Never a simple, elegant spiral sweeping steadily inward, it is always a single meandering path with no branches or dead ends that weaves and circlesusually seven timesbefore reaching the center. Now usually called the classic, or Cretan, design (from the labyrinth's later association with the Minotaur legend and with coins imprinted with a similar labyrinth design minted in fourth- and fifth-century b.c. Crete), it is self-contained, complex and built around an undeniable center. Its meaning is one of our oldest mysteries, but clues to the origins of the labyrinth design can be seen in Neolithic and Bronze Age rock carvings on rugged hillsides throughout Europe. One of the best examples is in Argyll, on the west coast of Scotland, at a place called Achnabreck ("Rock of the Host" in Gaelic). It is a cluster of three large, curved outcroppings covered with man-made Stone Age markings. As with the sites of similar markings in northern England and Spain, the setting is spectacular, a high, wooded ridge between the Sound of Jura and Loch Fyne, with the glint of light reflecting off water far in the distance and a steep hillside dropping through stands of trees and open fields to the valley far below. Although visible in full daylight, the carvings are best seen during the hour or so before sunset as the receding light catches the grooves and incisions to cast deepening patterns of shadows. Observers over the centuries have suspected the carving to be a map either of the landscape below or the heavens overhead. The gray rocks are marked with round, hollowed-out depressions the size of halved golf and tennis balls. Archaeologists call them "cups" and mostbut not allare surrounded by concentric circles, or "rings," often as many as seven of them, just as there are seven circuitsMcCullough, David Willis is the author of 'Unending Mystery A Journey Through Labyrinths And Mazes', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400031641 and ISBN 1400031648.