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originally posted by: Doxanoxa
a reply to: seagull
The thing that gets me is this: It's never been truly pulled down or destroyed, over thousands of years.
No one has ever said "politically incorrect, best pull it down".
originally posted by: Doxanoxa
a reply to: Freeborn
I get that, thanks for the explanation.
Brittany has similar monuments, and a similar 'old culture'.
A related aside: Canterbury Cathedral shop sells a tee shirt with the Green Man on it!
originally posted by: Doxanoxa
Good input thanks.
I'm a little puzzled that it took until the 14thC to shed the pagan icons though.
Also makes wonder still more, if standing stones were disliked by the church, and Stonehenge was bigger than most, why wasn't it disliked more and pulled down?
What did people worship back before the 14thC? Were there still Pagan groups alongside Christian ones?
I know Paganism is a tangible thing these days (there is /was an Internet radio station) and in Greece some worship the Gods for example.
Also why did the Farmers start putting the stones back up in the 19thC?
The stones are enigmatic, and so with our reaction to them perhaps!
Given the presumed later Neolithic date for the pit group, the size of the features, and the scale at which the circuit of pits has been implemented, it is difficult to identify directly comparable groups of features within the British Isles. In respect of clustering of large pits, those associated with, generally earlier, flint mines may invite consideration (Field and Barber 1998; Barber et al. 1999; Mercer 1981). In some instances, such as Cissbury hillfort, large pits associated with mining do form linear alignments; presumably following seams of flint within the boundary of the later Iron Age hillfort (Barber et al. 1999, 29). More locally, work by Booth and Stone (1952) and Stone (1958) record the presence of flint mines near Durrington. However, the illustrations provided by Stone demonstrate that these features are significantly narrower at the entrance than those described above (Figure 21). When considered spatially, Stone's features are also unlikely to be directly linked with the arcs of massive pits presented within this article. While it is not impossible that flint extracted from these pits may have been used on an ad hoc basis, the structural arrangement of the pit group around Durrington Walls, and their apparent link to the area of the henge monument, suggest that such a prosaic interpretation is not sufficient as an explanation for these features.
originally posted by: Freeborn
a reply to: KilgoreTrout
Just had a quick scan thorugh the report and as usual it seems over burdened with technical data and more frustratingly academicese.
I understand the need for the former but struggle to stop my eyes glazing over with the latter.
I suspect that is done more to frustrate and deter amateurs and plebs like myself than out of necessity or desire to make it sound interesting.
I've bookmarked the report to read and digest bit by bit later on and then see if I can make any sense of it all.
Now archaeologists have uncovered dramatic new evidence that suggests our Neolithic ancestors were inspired to construct the megaliths as devotional monuments by the natural phenomenon of lightning strikes. A geophysical survey around one of the stones has astonished archaeologists by revealing a star-shaped pattern formed by one, or possibly multiple, earth-shaking lightning strikes. New technology has exposed a clear pattern covering an area of up to 20 metres in diameter, buried until now beneath peat bogs.
The single stone, within “site XI”, is about 2.8km from the famous Callanish great circle in the island’s Loch Roag area. Geophysical techniques have mapped buried features and the new evidence shows that this 1.5-metre-high stone was originally part of another circle with the lightning strike pattern at its centre. The stones’ original positions have been revealed as magnetic anomalies in the survey.
“We’re really excited,” said professor Vincent Gaffney, one of the archaeologists. “This was completely and utterly unexpected. Seeing the evidence for a massive strike, right in the middle of what now seems to be a stone circle, is remarkable.”
He added that such a lightning strike may have hit an upstanding feature – perhaps a tree or a rock – in “a prehistorical equivalent of an act of God”: “It does rather look as if lightning was part of the game in creating this stone circle.”