Posted on 01/30/2007 12:55:42 PM PST by RDTF
New excavations near the mysterious circle at Stonehenge in South England have uncovered dozens of homes where hundreds of people lived -- at roughly the same time 4,600 years ago that the giant stone slabs were being erected.
The finding strongly suggests that the monument and the settlement nearby were a center for ceremonial activities, with Stonehenge likely a burial site while other nearby circular earthen "henges" were areas for feasts and festivals.
The houses found buried beneath the grounds of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site are the first of their kind from that late Stone Age period in Britain, suggesting a surprising level of social gathering and ceremonial behavior, in addition to impressive engineering. The excavators said their discoveries together constitute an archeological treasure.
"This is evidence that clarifies the site's true purpose," said Michael Parker Pearson of Sheffield University, one of the main researchers. "We have found that Stonehenge itself was just half of a larger complex," one used by indigenous Britons whose beliefs centered around ancestor and sun worship.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Druid Eminent Domain
Did they happen to find Janet Reno too?
Harry Harrison "Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died"
http://www.harryharrison.com/
INTRODUCTION
Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died is an expanded version of Stonehenge. Or, to be more accurate, it is the original version of Stonehenge...
In an Authors' Note in the original edition of the novel, Stover and Harrison say:
"Above all we want to entertain with a rousing adventure story.
But entertaining is the means by which we aim to accomplish a serious pedagogical end:
to dramatise the case for a non-astronomical interpretation of Stonehenge;
Of course, its characters and events are imaginary - but the anthropological thinking behind the storyline is meant to be taken as a deliberate contribution to the continuing debate over Stonehenge.
They also point out the difference between their approach and that of other historical novelists:
"In most other historical novels the setting is nothing but a setting, a painted backdrop of exquisitely researched detail.
This is just so much wallowing in historical content, with modern personalities in ancient dress cast up in the foreground.
What we are after is pattern, the cultural pattern of a vanished society -
Britain in the middle of the second millennium BC:
The tribal politics of the Yerni and the technology of stone-working that Inteb brings to bear in their name have been used not as ornamentation but as key concepts in the reconstruction of a prehistoric culture."
In his own book Harry Harrison, Leon Stover says: "We determined that we were not writing a historical novel but a novel about history,
whose purpose was to authenticate the past.
Historical novelists do not as a rule aim at this."
they needed something to stand behind when they went pee and so erected Stonehenge in the center of town, accessible by everyone.
Pre-dates the druids by nearly three millenia.
When Helen Thomas was a girl.
They found no dental records, 'tho...
Yet another "New Zealander Builds Hobbit Hole", thread?
The original eminent domain case. I wonder if Arlen Specter would want the courts to consider this case in reviewing future ED decisions.
Did they happen to find Janet Reno too?
No, just her birth certificate.
"All of the houses were scattered with human debris of all kinds."
World's first trailer park!
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