Many years ago I was a member of the English Civil War Society and that was where I first heard the story about the Cerne Abbas Giant being a satire on Cromwell who was sometimes referred to as "The Modern Hercules".
Back in the 1980s there was a TV series called Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World and it featured a scientist who had done a geophysics survey of the Giant and found that there was a missing part underneath its left arm which made it look identical to a statuette of Hercules.
It also has a bit about the Uffington White Horse and shows how the image of a horse on coins had become debased over time as the coins were presumably copied over time in a sort of "Chinese Whispers" distortion.
no subject
Back in the 1980s there was a TV series called Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World and it featured a scientist who had done a geophysics survey of the Giant and found that there was a missing part underneath its left arm which made it look identical to a statuette of Hercules.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l7mL--5iQk
It also has a bit about the Uffington White Horse and shows how the image of a horse on coins had become debased over time as the coins were presumably copied over time in a sort of "Chinese Whispers" distortion.