Stonehenge mystery solved..

[Kosh]

"My tombstone is bigger than yours!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052901973.html

[skepticalbip]

It's amazing how much we keep finding out about Stonehenge. The article was rather misleading on what it was though. It makes is sound like it was little more than monument and grave site for a ruling family. It was much more.

Stonehenge was a solar and a lunar calender. It also identified and tracked a fifty-six year lunar eclipse cycle (oddly, a cycle we didn't know about until it was discovered by decoding it from the structure of Stonehenge.) Stonehenge was apparently an important religious site and an observatory for scientific investigation of the heavens in addition to the grave site for important people that the article hypes.

I suspect that we haven't yet found all the secrets of Stonehenge.

BTW: thanks for the link... I am sorta a Stonehenge freak. It's much more interesting to me than the Egyptian pyramids that don't seem to have much of a purpose other than as tombs.

[Lógos Sokratikós]

Reading the article the question "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" pulsated in my mind. Was it built FOR burying members of the ruling family, or were they burried BECAUSE it was an awesome place to be burried? I find it similar to QEII having her picture taken with the cross-bearing orb: "God I scratch your back and you scratch mine". Power.

[Kosh]

Reading the article the question "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" pulsated in my mind. Was it built FOR burying members of the ruling family, or were they burried BECAUSE it was an awesome place to be burried? I find it similar to QEII having her picture taken with the cross-bearing orb: "God I scratch your back and you scratch mine". Power.

Good Point (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWANZjTwAaQ)

[Lógos Sokratikós]

Heee hee!

[GenesisNemesis]

You're all wrong, it was aliens. Cuz the stones were too big!

[Revolutionary]

I didn't realize that even Stonehenge was built by undocumented workers. Were they Mexican?

[4321lynx]

Why it was built is just part of it. How it was planned is another part.


A new study claims our Neolithic ancestors employed a sophisticated knowledge of geometry to build Stonehenge that rivalled that of Pythagoras, 2,000 years before the eminent Greek was born. After five years of detailed research, respected landscape archaeologist Anthony Johnson believes the world famous Wiltshire landmark was designed and built using advanced geometry.

http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146413478

Then there is the question of the transport of the stones (the original, smaller stones -- the Prescelly Bluestones -- came from the Prescelly Hills in West Wales, some hundreds of miles away, part of the way by sea, it is thought).
And then there is the question of erecting the huge sarsan stones & capping some of them with lintels....

But there is awhole library of books on that.

[Lógos Sokratikós]

You're all wrong, it was aliens. Cuz the stones were too big!

It was consciousness. You don't realize the power of electromagnetic or quantum fields !

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/3807/bestrnrnightmarethorby8.jpg

How do you explain gravity-defying prehistoric hair? Huh, big boy?

[budgie]

The undocumented workers merely buried the upright stones and placed the lintels on the ground coincidentally over the uprights. Then they removed the excess dirt and...voila...stonhenge. Why not, the labor was cheap...

-jim

[DNAReplicator]

So, the towering stone edifice rises from the English landscape – the true origins of the behemoth shrouded in mystery. Sometimes cited a purely religious monument, the truth is that it has played a central role in the rich ceremonial rituals that were central to the culture in Britain at the time.

Was it a place of worship, a ceremonial centre or a burial ground? The answer appears to be a complex mix of all three. We can be sure that the remains of the rulers of the land are to be found buried beneath the great stone slabs.

Many of the most important burials in the monument appear to belong to members of the same family. This would fit with there having been unbroken dynastic succession over a long period.

But not all the burials were necessarily rulers. Important officials, such as priests, musicians and storytellers were also honoured through burial at the monument. Their presence speaks of a rich cultural heritage during that period in Britain’s history.

Also, the proximity of the monument to the administrative centre also leads some credibility to claims that the rulers that were buried there had dominion over vast empires, that today are all but forgotten.

Yes, Westminster Abbey is a fascinating place.

[Protinus]

So, the towering stone edifice rises from the English landscape – the true origins of the behemoth shrouded in mystery. Sometimes cited a purely religious monument, the truth is that it has played a central role in the rich ceremonial rituals that were central to the culture in Britain at the time.

Was it a place of worship, a ceremonial centre or a burial ground? The answer appears to be a complex mix of all three. We can be sure that the remains of the rulers of the land are to be found buried beneath the great stone slabs.

Many of the most important burials in the monument appear to belong to members of the same family. This would fit with there having been unbroken dynastic succession over a long period.

But not all the burials were necessarily rulers. Important officials, such as priests, musicians and storytellers were also honoured through burial at the monument. Their presence speaks of a rich cultural heritage during that period in Britain’s history.

Also, the proximity of the monument to the administrative centre also leads some credibility to claims that the rulers that were buried there had dominion over vast empires, that today are all but forgotten.

Yes, Westminster Abbey is a fascinating place.


Someone from This is Spinal Tap was interviewed recently and he thought that there was only one person who put up the stones, and his name was Duncan.

What I am truly fascinated with is that modern archeologists can help us define and redefine things...who cares if NatGeo funds it. If we can't wonder how a neolithic man and his family contructed their world, then how can we???...I would say, how do we advance without the soul of archeology within our grasp and therefore our need to redefine ourselves?