Cups and Rings

2013 July 11 Cups and Rings 

I have a theory about the cups and rings that have been puzzling everyone for thousands of years. 

They’re engraved in stone all over the place and nobody can figure them out. 

Because I’m certainly no expert all I can do is speculate – but then that’s all everyone else has been doing for all this time so what the heck.  It’s not like I’m stepping on anyone’s toes.  If anybody’s toes are so fragile that a little old gramma lady in the middle of nowhere can step on them, somebody’s attitude needs adjusting. 

ANYWAY, as I was SAYING, I have this theory that I might use in my story, just because I might feel like it when the time comes. 

My theory (and yes I know it’s not technically the word I ought to be using – deal with it and hush) is that they are indeed funereal in nature.  Not in the sense of having anything to do with burials but more a celebration of the life of the person, and recognition of the family s/he had a part in generating. 

If memory serves, the stones they used are flat (i.e. the surface that’s used is horizontal to the ground).

Hollows (called ‘cups’ because that’s a logical thing to call them) are dug, drilled, pecked, carved, or whatever, into the stone.  I don’t recall them being very big, maybe the size of a couple of fingers put together side by side and maybe as deep as to the first knuckle.  I would reckon that the sizes would vary considerably but the principle is the same. 

Surrounding these ‘cups’ are concentric circles, each bigger than the one before (duh, they have to get bigger if they’re gonna fit around the outside of the first one, second one, etc. – that’s what ‘concentric’ means).

Me, I think the circles represent the generations of the family of the person who has died. 

That makes sense to ME – because each generation WOULD be bigger, and outside of, the one before. 

So we have a parent, the ‘cup’, children, the first circle, grandchildren, the second circle, and so on, depending on how old the person was. 

Some of the engravings have the added feature of a sort of trough running from the cup in a straight line bisecting all of the circles. 

My thought is that trough represents the blood of the ‘cup’ person that runs through all of the concentric circles of the surviving generations. 

It MAY be that there was a ceremony of sorts that might have used the ‘cup’ person’s blood in the cup, and some from each generation in the appropriate circle.  I doubt it was anything painful or threatening or anything like that. 

Maybe they are BIRTH circles, for that matter. 

A child is born; that’s the cup. 

That child is surrounded by his/her siblings; that’s the first circle, the one closest to the child. 

The next circle would be parents and their siblings.  Third would be grandparents and THEIR siblings.  

To expand it further, another circle could represent the village or the clan or whatever, those who lived together in a community. 

You know, I kind of like that idea. 

AND, if the communities are stable and stay in the same place for long periods of time, like generations, there’s no reason those same cups and rings couldn’t have been used, in reverse (so to speak), when that person died. 

Since I’m a fiction writer, and a little old gramma lady in her tumble down cottage on Main Street USA in the middle of nowhere, and I know absolutely nothing about what I’m talking about and don’t particularly care, I don’t have to prove ANYTHING.  I don’t have to be RIGHT, just creative.