I don't share this to make it a travelogue, I am sharing it because of some of the folks on RP have shared their Ancestry and History. Chip has connections to everybody from Native Americans to Scotch/Irish to Prussians. Another Sarge has roots that go back before the Revolutionary War. It teaches you, that in the long run we are all connected.
But in these pictures, the flow of time just hit me hard. My grandkids, and their Cousins in that amphitheater can trace their family back to Ancient Rome! What is it like to stand in a place, that one of your Great, Great, Greats...stood in that exact same spot, two thousand years ago? The one set of Cousins have lived in the same town for over eight hundred years. I mean talk about deep roots.
Once, when we were visiting Bath in England, I went down to the old Roman Baths and so wanted to stick my toe in the water. Signs were everywhere to not touch the water, because some nasty bugs live in there now. But I just wanted a connection with a Roman Soldier putting his toe in that water some 2,000 years ago. And just like me in most of my Army Duty Stations, he was far away from home and family. I would have felt that connection.
What is it like to feel a connection where you still live where your family started millennia ago?
I did touch the Pillars at Stonehenge in England, and again in the tombs at Newgrange, which are older than both Stonehenge and the Pyramids. And that was a faint connection. Even though all four of my Great Grandparents only spoke Irish (the Irish don't call it Celtic) I think of myself as American. I have to reach out to my Biology Background and my early Religious training to get my roots to go back to when everyone was related and lived in the same place.
But my grandkids got to stand in front of something from ancient history that goes in a straight line from more than 2,000 years ago...to them.
And that, I thought was worth posting about.