When you’re entranced by the mysteries of the neolithic age, held by the puzzles its people have left for us, it’s all too easy to wander into the realm of fantasy. Those who long for a return to the ‘golden age’ of our pagan forebears often describe it as a time of harmony between man and nature, as a simpler and purer age in which mankind possessed powers and knowledge long lost to the dubious virtues of science and (what is frequently dismissed as) ‘civilisation’.

Hmm, really?

It was a simpler age, certainly - in the sense that amputating a leg is ’simpler’ than a course of antibiotics. It was purer if purity is defined in lack of options. And that oft-lauded harmony with nature? Maybe people then simply had no choice. You lived closer to nature because there was nowhere else to be. You were more strictly ruled by the seasons because a lack of technology left you powerless to act otherwise.

There is much evidence that life then was indeed, in Thomas Hobbes’ famous phrase, “nasty, brutish and short”. Preserved bogmen from various ages have shown the high prevalence of disease and ailments such as tooth abscesses. Life expectancy was probably less than half of what we can reasonably expect today. Violence was common, both in war and in ritual. And there is little evidence - and no reason to expect - any form of intellectual activity outside of the rigid and narrow confines of their religious and social systems.

Frankly, I wouldn’t swap one week of my life today for a lifetime back then. Today I enjoy long hours of leisure with incredible choice of how to spend it, the ability to travel and experience cultures outside my own, centuries’ worth of accumulated knowledge and art (and the ability to discover and encounter it - not least because of modern technology such as the internet and cars), true comfort in which to enjoy these things, the safety net of a (mostly) peaceful society, my health supported by modern medicine (knowledge and technology again). Stephen Fry has said that people often imagine that he might have been happier living in the 18th Century, but that he actually prefers to live right now, at the culmination of mankind’s development. I couldn’t agree more.

If we ever hope to understand the lives, abilities, dreams and challenges of stone-age man, we have to be careful not to look backwards through a dark filter of our own prejudices and desires. It seems to me that so many portrayals of a pagan golden age are rooted more in the inadequacies, fears and prejudices of today’s neo-pagans - for example, that their dismissal of modern science and technology stems from the fact that it leaves little room for their fantasies.

Or perhaps ‘beliefs’ would have been both a kinder and more accurate term there. Because what they actually propose is a form of faith.

I would never rule out the possibility that standing stones and circles are somehow connected to a form of ‘earth energy’. Dowsing does seem to work, sometimes, though I’ve never seen a truly rigid test (all ‘evidence’ I’ve seen is anecdotal or impossible to analyse rationally and failures are rarely reported). And there certainly are plenty of mysteries connected with ancient people and the relics they left behind.

But the same can be said for the artefacts, phenomena and beliefs of any religion. Christians, for example, dismiss the need for proof in much the same way that neo-pagans and new-agers dismiss science as being ‘inadequate’ for testing or validating the powers and capabilities in which they believe. It is the failing of science, they claim, that we cannot detect or measure earth spirits or the charges running along ley lines.

Yet without some degree of rationality, without some kind of reliable yardstick, we can never have any confidence that what we believe is actually anything like the truth. I would rather be certain of a few things than put my faith in a great number of unverifiable hunches. And science is the only way we have of reaching a reasonable level of certainty.

Investigating the possibility of so far unexplained phenomena is both valid and fun. To simply believe in them is lazy. To defend them against conflicting evidence, gathered within a rational, self-correcting and logical framework (such is science) is feeble-minded.

But then dismissing science as being inadequate or wrong leaves one free to indulge in magic. Today’s neo-pagans project their own desires and fears onto the monuments of the past. Perhaps it doesn’t matter to them that this brings them no closer to the people of ancient times: in fact, it creates another barrier, masking what little we actually know beneath a veneer of fantasy. You only have to look at today’s Druids to see a theme-park version of neolithic man.

The mystery is important to me, and is what draws me to these sites. Maybe there are powers at work here, but without knowing what they are, any speculation is worthless - worse, it almost guarantees that you cannot get closer to the truth of these sites and monuments because you are imposing on them fabrications of your own. These sites are mysterious because we don’t know. For me, that’s more powerful an attraction than any magic.