understanding Stonehenge(s)

[Widdekind]

Inspired by Francis Pryor's making of the British landscape & Rupert Soskin's documentary standing with stones, i perceive an important parallel, between British pre-history; and Viking history.

Historically, the Vikings farmed stony soils, riddled with rocks, which required considerable investment of energy, to sweep aside the stones, and rake to remove the rocks. Only then, could the land be put into production.

Seemingly similarly, after the ice age, as melting glaciers withered away, they dropped colossal quantities of assorted stones, across the countryside, of pre-historic Britain. The estimated half-million neolithic sites in the British isles (5000 in County Sligo, which is 1% of the land area of the British isles) represent neolithic farmers "sweeping" the landscape of stones, somewhat similar to sweeping a kitchen floor of dirt. The stones were "swept" into piles, but only by COMMUNITY effort. Thus, the stones were erected into COMMUNAL structures, such as standing stones, at which recurring rituals routinely reinforced psychological sense of solidarity.

Thus, the PRACTICAL purpose was putting into production, previously unproductive plots. That is why sites often evidence enlargements & expansions -- as successful settlements increased in population, more and more land was cleared (of forest & glacial rubble), requiring the construction of more and more megalithic monuments, whose PRACTICAL purpose was to pile up, and dispose of, the thousands of thousands of tons of glacial rubble.

PRACTICALLY speaking, cairns can be considered akin, to piles of dirt, on swept floors, which fact i state, solely for sake of supreme simplicity, to make things memorable. Such said, sweeping up MEGA-tons of glacial gravel and rubble, required enormous investments of energy, with massive amounts of manpower, requiring coordinated COMMUNAL efforts, which were then memorialized, in monumental MEGA-liths, as if to demand, that nobody ever forgets, how much muscle-power and elbow grease, the ancient ancestors invested into the British landscape, for sake of their progeny.

 

[longknife]

I'm sorry but we all know an alien race came here and set up the stones as a galaxial guide for interstellar travel.

 

[Widdekind]

same to you, x2

 

[WinterBorn]

Inspired by Francis Pryor's making of the British landscape & Rupert Soskin's documentary standing with stones, i perceive an important parallel, between British pre-history; and Viking history.

Historically, the Vikings farmed stony soils, riddled with rocks, which required considerable investment of energy, to sweep aside the stones, and rake to remove the rocks. Only then, could the land be put into production.

Seemingly similarly, after the ice age, as melting glaciers withered away, they dropped colossal quantities of assorted stones, across the countryside, of pre-historic Britain. The estimated half-million neolithic sites in the British isles (5000 in County Sligo, which is 1% of the land area of the British isles) represent neolithic farmers "sweeping" the landscape of stones, somewhat similar to sweeping a kitchen floor of dirt. The stones were "swept" into piles, but only by COMMUNITY effort. Thus, the stones were erected into COMMUNAL structures, such as standing stones, at which recurring rituals routinely reinforced psychological sense of solidarity.

Thus, the PRACTICAL purpose was putting into production, previously unproductive plots. That is why sites often evidence enlargements & expansions -- as successful settlements increased in population, more and more land was cleared (of forest & glacial rubble), requiring the construction of more and more megalithic monuments, whose PRACTICAL purpose was to pile up, and dispose of, the thousands of thousands of tons of glacial rubble.

PRACTICALLY speaking, cairns can be considered akin, to piles of dirt, on swept floors, which fact i state, solely for sake of supreme simplicity, to make things memorable. Such said, sweeping up MEGA-tons of glacial gravel and rubble, required enormous investments of energy, with massive amounts of manpower, requiring coordinated COMMUNAL efforts, which were then memorialized, in monumental MEGA-liths, as if to demand, that nobody ever forgets, how much muscle-power and elbow grease, the ancient ancestors invested into the British landscape, for sake of their progeny.

And to feed themselves.

Are you saying their alignment to the sun, moon & star paths is by accident?

 

[MikeK]

Inspired by Francis Pryor's making of the British landscape & Rupert Soskin's documentary standing with stones, i perceive an important parallel, between British pre-history; and Viking history.

Historically, the Vikings farmed stony soils, riddled with rocks, which required considerable investment of energy, to sweep aside the stones, and rake to remove the rocks. Only then, could the land be put into production.

Seemingly similarly, after the ice age, as melting glaciers withered away, they dropped colossal quantities of assorted stones, across the countryside, of pre-historic Britain. The estimated half-million neolithic sites in the British isles (5000 in County Sligo, which is 1% of the land area of the British isles) represent neolithic farmers "sweeping" the landscape of stones, somewhat similar to sweeping a kitchen floor of dirt. The stones were "swept" into piles, but only by COMMUNITY effort. Thus, the stones were erected into COMMUNAL structures, such as standing stones, at which recurring rituals routinely reinforced psychological sense of solidarity.

Thus, the PRACTICAL purpose was putting into production, previously unproductive plots. That is why sites often evidence enlargements & expansions -- as successful settlements increased in population, more and more land was cleared (of forest & glacial rubble), requiring the construction of more and more megalithic monuments, whose PRACTICAL purpose was to pile up, and dispose of, the thousands of thousands of tons of glacial rubble.

PRACTICALLY speaking, cairns can be considered akin, to piles of dirt, on swept floors, which fact i state, solely for sake of supreme simplicity, to make things memorable. Such said, sweeping up MEGA-tons of glacial gravel and rubble, required enormous investments of energy, with massive amounts of manpower, requiring coordinated COMMUNAL efforts, which were then memorialized, in monumental MEGA-liths, as if to demand, that nobody ever forgets, how much muscle-power and elbow grease, the ancient ancestors invested into the British landscape, for sake of their progeny.

And to feed themselves.

Are you saying their alignment to the sun, moon & star paths is by accident?

Inasmuch as the Vikings were seamen (= navigators) it might be the positioning of the rock piles had a casual secondary purpose.

 

[WinterBorn]

Inspired by Francis Pryor's making of the British landscape & Rupert Soskin's documentary standing with stones, i perceive an important parallel, between British pre-history; and Viking history.

Historically, the Vikings farmed stony soils, riddled with rocks, which required considerable investment of energy, to sweep aside the stones, and rake to remove the rocks. Only then, could the land be put into production.

Seemingly similarly, after the ice age, as melting glaciers withered away, they dropped colossal quantities of assorted stones, across the countryside, of pre-historic Britain. The estimated half-million neolithic sites in the British isles (5000 in County Sligo, which is 1% of the land area of the British isles) represent neolithic farmers "sweeping" the landscape of stones, somewhat similar to sweeping a kitchen floor of dirt. The stones were "swept" into piles, but only by COMMUNITY effort. Thus, the stones were erected into COMMUNAL structures, such as standing stones, at which recurring rituals routinely reinforced psychological sense of solidarity.

Thus, the PRACTICAL purpose was putting into production, previously unproductive plots. That is why sites often evidence enlargements & expansions -- as successful settlements increased in population, more and more land was cleared (of forest & glacial rubble), requiring the construction of more and more megalithic monuments, whose PRACTICAL purpose was to pile up, and dispose of, the thousands of thousands of tons of glacial rubble.

PRACTICALLY speaking, cairns can be considered akin, to piles of dirt, on swept floors, which fact i state, solely for sake of supreme simplicity, to make things memorable. Such said, sweeping up MEGA-tons of glacial gravel and rubble, required enormous investments of energy, with massive amounts of manpower, requiring coordinated COMMUNAL efforts, which were then memorialized, in monumental MEGA-liths, as if to demand, that nobody ever forgets, how much muscle-power and elbow grease, the ancient ancestors invested into the British landscape, for sake of their progeny.

And to feed themselves.

Are you saying their alignment to the sun, moon & star paths is by accident?

Inasmuch as the Vikings were seamen (= navigators) it might be the positioning of the rock piles had a casual secondary purpose.

So you think they moved these stones, some of which are 30' long and weigh 25 tons, to have more room for crops, and they casually positioned them into place to face the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset exactly? So the piles are just one step up from being haphazard heaps of stone?

lol

 

[percysunshine]

And to feed themselves.

Are you saying their alignment to the sun, moon & star paths is by accident?

Inasmuch as the Vikings were seamen (= navigators) it might be the positioning of the rock piles had a casual secondary purpose.

So you think they moved these stones, some of which are 30' long and weigh 25 tons, to have more room for crops, and they casually positioned them into place to face the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset exactly? So the piles are just one step up from being haphazard heaps of stone?

lol

Yep. Same as the pyramids.

 

[Widdekind]

...

And to feed themselves.

Are you saying their alignment to the sun, moon & star paths is by accident?

no -- the alignments are important, amounting to a kind of calendar-clock, which could keep track of time... not so much time of day, as w/ a sun-dial... but time of year (season), tied to the Solstices

 

[Widdekind]

...

So you think they moved these stones, some of which are 30' long and weigh 25 tons, to have more room for crops, and they casually positioned them into place to face the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset exactly? So the piles are just one step up from being haphazard heaps of stone?

sorta -- logically, the primary practical purpose, of "sweeping" stones from the soil, relocating rocky rubble, into "concentrated constructions" of said stones... was to improve plots & parcels for planting / pasturing

yet, secondarily, those megalithic monuments also include alignments, to (say) Summer / Winter Solstice sunrise/sets... so that the monuments amount to a kind of calendar-clock, for tracking time of year...

thus, the movement of the massive megaliths, achieved several particularly practical & important purposes, including clearing land for food production; and also tracking time-of-year, for planting at appropriate dates, also again for food production... ultimately, the very practical purpose, of food production, underpinned the megalithic monuments

also, i want to emphasize, that the "collected concentrated constructions", of the megalithic monuments, embodied an immense amount of muscle-power and energy investment... which was, archeology convincingly confirms, associated with family lineages, of ancestors. The megalithic monuments amounted to mausoleums, for families... whose legal social cultural claim, to ownership of the land, was the megalithic monument, made by their ancestors, representing some sense of "my great-great-great... grand-parents improved this particular plot & parcel, therefore society acknowledges my claim, to this particular property". In some sense, painstakingly improving property, generated an inheritable claim, to ownership, of (specifically) those improved properties

 

[Widdekind]

SH = season-tracking calendar clock "computer" ?

Gerald Hawkins proposed, that, by moving "markers" around the Stonehenge (SH) circuit of Aubrey Holes, including the 4 Station Stones, eclipses could be predicted. By inferring the existence, of ancient "markers", and (implicitly) "Druid" (wanting worthier words) priest-like persons moving those markers; SH can be construed to have been a "muscle-powered mechanical calendar clock".

Now, archeologists largely dismiss Hawkins' proposal -- perhaps b/c the Aubrey Holes were apparently filled in, when the Station Stones (and inner Sarcen structures) were in use. Never-the-less...

Logic
-----
(1) SH is aligned to the annual Summer Solstice sunrise (and Winter Solstice sunset), ergo SH is obviously associated with noting annual yearly time
(2) the Sarcen Trilathons increase in height, from NE (= SS sunrise), to SW (= WS sunset), ergo their height variation mirrors day-length variation, from summer to winter (and on back around)
(3) the Sarcen Trilathon circuit suggests, by implication of symmetry, a total of 12 Trilathons (in a suggested 6 pairs), ergo the 12 Trilathon uprights each (plausibly) represent 12 solar months
(4) in analogy, the ancient Greeks & Romans kept solar agricultural calendars, composed of 10(+2) or 12 months; and, those months were paired, represented as equal numbers of masculine vs. feminine Gods, e.g. Janus (M), Februa (F), Mars (M), Aprilas (F), Maia / Juno (FF), Julius / Augustus (MM)
(5) solar calendar months have 30 days; the outer Sarcen circle has 30 uprights

The Romans kept a 12-month calendar; but, the shortest two months, about the time of the Winter Solstice, were specially set aside, as a composite "ghost double month", of 60 days, unassigned to any other deities. Perhaps mentioning the Roman equivalent, of the "dark underworld God-couple of winter" was taboo ? Anyway, the Roman calendar was (basically)

10 months x 30 days
65 days of "Winter Solstice celebrations"​

Ipso facto, plausibly, the SH Trilathon uprights were "month stones"; and the Sarcen circle uprights were "day stones"; and, "Druid" priest-persons, plausibly, moved a "month marker" around the Trilathon circuit; and another "day marker" around the Sarcen circle; the combination of which represented "day & month". Those months were paired in "Divine Couples" of "God with Goddess", whose marriage ties were represented by the lintels overlying, and connecting, their two Trilathon uprights.

That would work for 10m x 30d/m = 300 days. Then, associated with the Winter Solstice -- cp. Mike Parker-Pearson, NGC Stonehenge Decoded, HC MysteryQuest: sounds of SH -- another special "Roman-like Winter-Solstice celebrations marker" was moved, through the combined Blue-Stone horseshoe plus Blue-Stone circle, winding its way amongst the more massive Sarcen stones. Archeology shows, that there were once circa 60-70 Blue-Stones, in both of those combined circuits; plausibly, there were once exactly 65 Blue-Stones, for the remaining 65 days of "Mike Parker-Pearson's proposed profound WS pig feasts".

What about leap year ? Plausibly, the 4 Station Stones were "year stones"; and, some special prominent part, of those "Mike Parker-Pearson WS celebrations", involved moving a "year marker" to the next Station Stone. Then, every 4th year... when the marker was moved to the special 4th "leap year stone"... on those years, an extra day of WS celebrations occurred... by moving the "WS celebrations marker", from the last, 65th Blue Stone (as normal)... to the Altar Stone, which was the special extra 66th leap-day stone.

Station Stones = year stones (x4)
Trilathons = month stones (x10)
Sarcens = day stones (x30)
Blue-Stones = Roman-like winter-solstice celebrations-day stones (x65)
Altar Stone = leap day stone (x1)​

Merely moving a few markers, around the Sarcen structures of the SH of circa 2000 BC, makes SH a "muscle-powered calendar clock", keeping an ancient Roman, Julian-like calendar, accurate up to the first (lowest order) leap year correction. Note, the next leap year corrections (every 100th year is NOT; every 400th year IS) are not detectable, within one human (or even one aged "Druid" lifetime). Without full-fledged formal writing, SH's Bronze Age British "Druids" plausibly did not know about those subtle nuanced effects, any more than did Julius Caesar. Over the thousand years of its use, to circa 1000 BC, the SH muscle-powered mechanical calendar clock computer, kept a Julian-like solar calendar -- as a "Bronze Age British Big Ben" keeping a "Salisbury Mean Time" -- gradually growing over a week out of whack. Possibly pertinently, when that ancient "Brutus of Britain calendar" became more than one week out of whack, circa 1000 BC, then the SH site seems to have been abandoned.

The western-European ancient Italian calendar, overlays onto the Sarcen-stage of the SH site, completely perfectly. The eastern-European Greek calendar, with a full 12 months per year (and 4-years per Olympiad), still is informative, immediately implying that the ancient Bronze-Age British calendar was composed of couples of "God Husbands & Goddess Wives", sorta (say) "Zeus-Hera", "Hades-Persephone", "Poseidon-Ceres", "Ares-Demeter", "Hephaestus-Aphrodite".

Per Roman comparison, plausibly, the "Mike Parker-Pearson WS celebrations" began, on the WS sunset; when the year-stone was moved. Then, 65 days of special celebrations ensued, including plausibly more work, on more megalithic monuments, including SH, and/or other nearby sites. From the first night/day, all would have known whether to expect (or not) an extra day of such celebrations, when ancestors were honored, and their burial barrow-mounds enlarged, expanded, extended. If so, then all of the massive monuments, at and near SH, were built between modern months of Dec-Feb.

 

[whitehall]

Stonehenge was built for the same reason the Pyramids, gothic cathedrals, the Lincoln memorial and the Reichstag was built. They are all symbols of political power. No magic, just engineering skill.

 

[rightwinger]

Stonehenge was built to be a tourist attraction much like large balls of twine and the worlds biggest Jackalope

Ancient travelers used to pay to see it........much like today

 

[percysunshine]

Stonehenge was built to be a tourist attraction much like large balls of twine and the worlds biggest Jackalope

Ancient travelers used to pay to see it........much like today

So...sort of a stone aged Epcot center. Hmmm...


It also could have been an uncommercialized science experiment.

 

[longknife]

Let's face it - most ancient monuments were erected by those who wished to enhance their power over the people they ruled.

Stonehenge is no different. Priests who ruled with more power than tribal leaders, called for the construction in order to show their powers of divinity - to predict when one year ended and another began. Symbolic of rebirth according to their religious precepts.

Pyramids were also a symbol, not only of the divine power of the pharaoh but the priests who claimed he - and all the other believers - would live well in the underworld.

Mayan, Olmec, Inca constructions were the exact same thing - symbols of priestly power over the people.

The mystery is - and always will be - how they quarried those massive blocks of stone and moved them so far without the wheel. And just how much manpower was involved.

 

[percysunshine]

Let's face it - most ancient monuments were erected by those who wished to enhance their power over the people they ruled.

Stonehenge is no different. Priests who ruled with more power than tribal leaders, called for the construction in order to show their powers of divinity - to predict when one year ended and another began. Symbolic of rebirth according to their religious precepts.

Pyramids were also a symbol, not only of the divine power of the pharaoh but the priests who claimed he - and all the other believers - would live well in the underworld.

Mayan, Olmec, Inca constructions were the exact same thing - symbols of priestly power over the people.

The mystery is - and always will be - how they quarried those massive blocks of stone and moved them so far without the wheel. And just how much manpower was involved.

Stonehenge...an eccentric scientist astronomer caught the clan leader having sex with a goat and extorted him into building his experimental aparatus.

Pyramids...the scientist astronomers were actually priestologists and threatened the Pharaoh with eternal damnation if he did not build the planetarium.

Mayan/Olmec/Incas....The scientist astronomers were sociopathic serial killers who needed a hobby and convinced the tribal leaders that sacrifices on top of a geometric shape were cool.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Whatever else you believe, its fascinating and beautiful.

Its smaller than I expected. As you come over one hill, there it is atop the next hill, silhouetted against the sky. Just stunning. Go see it.

 

[oldfart]

...

So you think they moved these stones, some of which are 30' long and weigh 25 tons, to have more room for crops, and they casually positioned them into place to face the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset exactly? So the piles are just one step up from being haphazard heaps of stone?

sorta -- logically, the primary practical purpose, of "sweeping" stones from the soil, relocating rocky rubble, into "concentrated constructions" of said stones... was to improve plots & parcels for planting / pasturing

yet, secondarily, those megalithic monuments also include alignments, to (say) Summer / Winter Solstice sunrise/sets... so that the monuments amount to a kind of calendar-clock, for tracking time of year...

thus, the movement of the massive megaliths, achieved several particularly practical & important purposes, including clearing land for food production; and also tracking time-of-year, for planting at appropriate dates, also again for food production... ultimately, the very practical purpose, of food production, underpinned the megalithic monuments

also, i want to emphasize, that the "collected concentrated constructions", of the megalithic monuments, embodied an immense amount of muscle-power and energy investment... which was, archeology convincingly confirms, associated with family lineages, of ancestors. The megalithic monuments amounted to mausoleums, for families... whose legal social cultural claim, to ownership of the land, was the megalithic monument, made by their ancestors, representing some sense of "my great-great-great... grand-parents improved this particular plot & parcel, therefore society acknowledges my claim, to this particular property". In some sense, painstakingly improving property, generated an inheritable claim, to ownership, of (specifically) those improved properties

I think your reasoning holds up well for Neolithic tombs which were built of thousands of undressed stones common to the area. But how do you connect that to the massive quarried stones at Stonehenge and especially in Brittany and Galicia?

 

[Widdekind]

Stonehenge was built for the same reason the Pyramids, gothic cathedrals, the Lincoln memorial and the Reichstag was built. They are all symbols of political power. No magic, just engineering skill.

According to Magdalena Midgley's Megaliths of Northern Europe, in the eastern regions, of the vast megalithic culture, in modern Scandinavia, most people were buried in small (sometimes stone-slab-lined) graves; only the most prominent persons, were buried, in the big barrows. Such is similar to the Salisbury Plain & SH, whereat the overall estimated number of burials (~1000 ?), accumulated from perhaps 3000 years of use (4000-1000 BC), can only be a small "elite" fraction, of the population of the place. Cp. Winterbourne-Stoke Barrow Man from 3500 BC.

Plausibly like the pyramids of Egypt, the big barrows may have been built, as part of enormous funeral feasts, wherein people were paid, with food, to provide labor, to build the barrow. Or, perhaps prior clients, indebted to the deceased, paid back obligations to the person's surviving relatives, by working for a few weeks, to make the monument.

Either way (or both), the big mounds represent many laborers, sledding in stones, from a large area of land. Prima facie, the big barrows represent some politically-prominent person's display of prestige, demonstrating patronage, applied to improving that large land area. Perhaps such suggests, that the nobles buried in the big mounds, who had paid people to improve those large land areas, were therefore also the owners of those large land areas. Conversely, commoners may have been essentially share-croppers, serfs working land owned by another, basically paid wage laborers, not necessarily land & capital owners.

SH was, at root, a major megalithic monument, demonstrating the "power to pay" people to work to make the monument. SH is the only known site, in all Europe, whereat the stones were dressed and fitted together, with carpentry-like mortise-and-tenon joints. SH was, somehow, special in its own day.

Somewhat separately, i see SH as a "deluxe sun-dial", a set of stones with which to track time-of-year, keeping a calendar closely comparable, to the ancient pre-Roman "Romulan" calendar, which was basically 12 x 30-day-long-months... except 2 "taboo" winter months were set aside, as a single "Winter Solstice vacation", for celebrations of some sort. No "magic", merely keeping a calendar (day + month).

 

[Widdekind]

Stonehenge was built to be a tourist attraction much like large balls of twine and the worlds biggest Jackalope

Ancient travelers used to pay to see it........much like today

SH was special, in its own day -- SH is the only known site, whereat the stones are dressed & joined w/ carpentry mortise-and-tenons. Plausibly, people pilgrimaged to the place, perhaps seeking assistance from the site's "Druid" priest persons, famous for medicinal & herbal knowledge.

 

[Widdekind]

...
I think your reasoning holds up well for Neolithic tombs which were built of thousands of undressed stones common to the area. But how do you connect that to the massive quarried stones at Stonehenge and especially in Brittany and Galicia?

What "massive quarried stones" in Brittany & Galicia ?

As for SH, SH was always, from the first, something special. The Blue-Stones apparently imported from Preseli, in western Wales, were brought to be burial-marker tomb-stone Menhirs, emplaced over the interred, cremated, remains of apparently-politically prominent persons. Cp. the "picture stones" in the Otzal Alps, near where Otzi the ice-mummy was found (HC Digging for the Truth - Iceman Cometh).

Since SH was always something special, then for SH i can claim "single exception" to the general rule, of megalithic monuments being built out of rocky rubble removed for farm fields. The nobles associated with SH seemingly stemmed from western Wales, and perceived a profound importance, in maintaining a memory of the western Welsh origins.

As for Brittany & Galicia, i do not know. i found some site, seemingly suggesting size of the stone, as particularly important, for making a Menhir marker (of some thing). Maybe, in the absence of locally scattered debris; or when super-sized single slabs were wanted; the same were specially quarried out, and sledged to the site, on cattle-drawn sledges, perhaps over roads of rollers (running cross-wise across the road). (You could imagine moving some stone, lashed on some sledge, for a football field length, over a roller road... and then taking time out to reposition the rollers back in front of the sledge, for a subsequent spurt... in such a way, you could manage to move sizey slabs of stone, many miles, tenths (of miles) at a time.)

Perhaps "quarry" implies actually breaking apart an entire projection of bedrock up above the soil surface, which would then qualify as "clearing land of rocky rubble" for farming ?