Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

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".

Errm, actually that is more the the norm than the exception. Check out another amazing site at Avebury:


"By the Late Mediaeval period, England had been entirely converted to Christianity, and Avebury, being an evidently non-Christian monument, began to be associated with the Devil in the popular imagination of the locals. The largest stone at the southern entrance became known as the Devil's Chair, the three stones that once formed the Beckhampton Cove became known as the Devil's Quoits and the stones inside the North Circle became known as the Devil's Brand-Irons.[55] At some point in the early 14th century, villagers began to demolish the monument by pulling down the large standing stones and burying them in ready-dug pits at the side, presumably because they were seen as having been erected by the Devil and thereby being in opposition to the village's Christian beliefs.[56] Although it is unknown how this situation came about, archaeologist Aubrey Burl suggests that it might have been at the prompting of the local Christian priest, with the likely contenders being either Thomas Mayn (who served in the village from 1298 to 1319), or John de Hoby (who served from 1319 to 1324).[57]"

en.wikipedia.org...

This happened to loads of sites. Many smaller stone circles were actually re-created in 19th and 20th century as farmers propped stones back up, presumably not always in the original locations.

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
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!

Brittany has some amazing sites. There's a place called Carnac where there are thousands of stones, you can spend the day exploring. Was a bit busy in the summer though (not to mention 35c when I went), would like to go in winter and have a more chilled look at them.

the ancient people at that local area of a future England (2500 BCE) were pre Anglo/Saxons

the 30ft X 15ft deep. round wells or pools, were likely used as water baths to purify oneself before walking the last 800ft distance to the center refuge or temple 'Durrington Walls Henge' -->

… it is probably from the Peoples' collective memory that Fortresses/Castles were later built and then surrounded by a water-filled Moat (meant to keep outsiders from entering.... much like the ancient hot-tub complex that the Thread talks about

a reply to: Freeborn

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!

I think the megalithic structure were the technology that enabled agriculture.
An interesting book Uriel's Machine.
The story of Enoch being taken in space by Uriel, shown the 'windows' of the seasons.

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!

I perhaps think that the church didn't have sufficient power to get it removed. That would have taken quite some organization of labour, just as it must have done to erect. When it first was erected, those who saw it must have marvelled at the super-human endeavour that it represented. Perhaps their knees quaked just a little bit, wondering what giants they must be.

Much depends upon what you mean by paganism, it's more of a blanket term. Farm workers, much like artisans, had their own rites and rituals necessary to their occupation, and it's successful executions. Calendars are very much central to that. The church may have labelled some of these rites and rituals as pagan, but until the standardization of the calendars, would not have dreamt of interferring.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Many in these rural areas just paid lip service to Christianity.
Traditions, beliefs and practices had been handed down through the generations and its hard to completely eradicate these long held conventions.

Locals would have treat these structures with awe and reverence.

Obviously an over zealous priest may have inspired some to try to pull down some of the stones only for someone to try and restore at a later date, maybe at a time of drought or poor harvests.....or just a desire to return them to their former glory?

Just how similar these are to the beliefs and observations made by Stonehenge people is hard to tell and if we are being honest may never know.

Here's a link to the paper if anyone is interested, intarch.ac.uk...

It's quite technical so I am not entirely confident of what I understand but it does appear to be an important find, and the analysis seems to point to them being unusual for Britain.

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.

a reply to: Freeborn

The church was a land-owner, as such the peasants that worked their land were obliged to do as they were told, but as a land owner the church knew that their power lay in that land's productivity, and equally important, in the labour that they needed to extract that productivity. Happy peasants don't run away. Conversions by the church at that stage are aimed at land owners, and that was in part meant to improve the lot of their peasants, standardizing the Master-Servant relationship along ethical grounds. The church isn't always the bad guy.

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.

a reply to: Freeborn

Ok, I'll throw some "way out there" out there - its a ring/tunnel concentric around the henge itself. How about the remnants of what was once some sort of particle accelerator? The original "high technology" components removed or lost to the sands of time.

Long shot, I know, but, man would it be awesome if some such evidence was found! I believe CERN's LHC and other colliders are a rediscovery of past civilizations' high technology.

a reply to: dogstar23

I tihnk it's doubtful but who knows?
I wouldn't be so arrogant to discount anything outright and I do believe that over time we have lost and/or forgotten bits of knowledge our ancestors had and used.

There are certainly enough accounts of one form of energy or another being encountered at many of these standing stones etc.

Double post.

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.

The language used is used because it is precise. One example one can say 'gravel' but it is a general term there is bank, bench, creek, crushed, fine, stone, lag, pay, pea, Piedmont and Plateau gravel and few others that German and French geologist use and others don't.

The papers are written for other scientists who expect full exact details and not generalities. Summaries for non-professionals are written by journalists and others who absorb such material, simplify it and paraphrase.

The paper is actually quite easy to read - if you have 45+ years experience at reading such! However, I know the feeling if I try to understand a physics or mathematics paper.

The paper gives a lot of options on what might be the point or purpose of those holes.

My computer is currently dead and I'm writing this on my phone and its maddening so will comment later.

a reply to: dogstar23

The thing is dogstar23, the people that built these monuments were on the technological edge of human development for their time, not ours. It's worth appreciating what it takes to manipulate and transform materials in the way they were doing with the 'equipment' that they had. These people were the technological wizards of their day and their technology must have blown the minds of those that didn't possess it. And we kind of know it did because of the mythology that they helped to create. I think we do them and ourselves a great injustice when we don't recognize the vast leaps along the way that have brought us here. Our 'magic' is a continuum from their's.

However, that said, check this out, not the same site, this one is on the Isle of Lewis, way up North.

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.”

www.theguardian.com...

They may not have been able to harness the energy from a lightning strike for any other purpose than spectacle, but it would have inspired awe (and probably fear) into the unintiated. Much like the LHC did at one time.

a reply to: Hanslune



I understand that the report is more for other academics, related professionals and those more accustomed to these types of publications.
Of course there is a need for referenced sources etc and details of all technical data.

But for the rest of us 'ordinary' people it just makes for tedious reading at times and its hard to get enthused by it all.

a reply to: Freeborn

I think also, because it is based largely on a technological survey without an excavation, it is more technical than most papers are.

Hopefully Hanslune will be back to help translate for us.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

I flicked the paper and find the only connection to pre-history available to me was the idea of hunting aurochs, otherwise it was a mass of technospeak.

I do wonder how the paper would add value to others in the field though.

Admittedly I struggle with the concept of Shinola, but I did try (and failed) to reconstruct what they did in my mind's eye.

A a couple of unscientific stats of my own perhaps tell a story -

1. The 18 authors were all male (including the wonderfully Immo Tinks. I always wondered where geophysicists came from, and why).
2. Coincidentally, the word 'interpret' appears 18 times in the paper.

So my story is we have some super bright blokes, using really smart kit, who make up a good reason for doing it, and sell it to the rest of us.

At the end of the day we have no idea what the pits were for, and even a shadow of a half thought that they may have been dug by the modern military.

I certainly buy the 'just in case' argument for not pulling Stonehenge down, I'd pretty much be on that bus.

Though a second thought strikes me that maybe we keep such sites because humans have a need to figure out why they are there.

Love the thought of hunting aurochs though, all the same!