I care!

I havnt done much the last two days. In writing class today we took a walk through the woods to create a narrative or something along those lines. My professor also provided us with a ton of information that we did not know. For instance, the reason the one academic building is named "Pathfoot" is for the medieval village that used to exist in that location. Another fact was that the reason a particular wall existed where it does is because the nobles who lived on the estate (which is now the campus) wanted to not have to see the peasants walking from the village to the church (which was on the other side of the estate from the village) and so built the wall to obscure them. Another story, perhaps my favorite, was that it became very fashionable, if you owned an estate, to have a "crazy hermit" living in your woods. So nobles would hire a man to become a hermit in their estate and whenever they had guests over to jump out and act like a wild man. The remains of the hermit's house apparently still exist.

Anyways it started to downpour so we ended our walk early. Unfortunately I need to go into town so off I went in the rain. I actually got to take a look at that bookstore underneath the street which was AMAZING and bought more chocolate :D. But what I wanted to talk about in this post is something that makes me a little squeezey and very angry when I think about it.

THIS is a standing stone. Standing stones are extremely common megalithic monuments across Britian and especially in Scotland. Think Stone Hedge but with only one stone. No one really knows how long ago they were erected but it is believed usually around 2,000 years ago. Their purpose is probably spiritual and has to do with the ancient druid religion. This one is extremely wide and 15 feet tall. However that is not what makes this one special.
So after doing research I learned that this stone is much more than I thought. In more modern times it played a crucial role in Scottish history. It is believed that this stone was the marking point for a very important battle. It is the place where King Kenneth McAlpine of the Scots defeated the Picts to create a unified Scotland in 834AD....AND THEY BULLDOZED THE SITE FOR RUGBY FIELDS!!! I found many protest websites leftover from when the university first decidded they were going to do this. Their reason, why they got away with it, was because there was not enough proof that the battle took place there.BS. They know the battle took place at the base of Dumyat in Stirling. They know it took place around a large standing stone. For heaven's sake it is called The Battle of the Gathering Stone!!! Many historians believe this is the site of the battle. Did they excavate to make sure they werent destroying a piece of Scottish history? No! The only thing they did was not knock over the stone. 
As an anthropology student, things like this make me want to vomit, or punch someone in the face. How could they so carelessly disregard the past? How could they destroy it with so little thought? UGH. I seriously cannot get over this. People say they care about the past, but in reality people in power rarely do, and this is an example of their greed. They wanted rugby pitches, and they built them. It the horrid and despicable truth.