Posted on 07/28/2005 4:13:48 PM PDT by blam
Mystery Man of Stonehenge
Who was he and where did he come from? And what was his role in the making of the great monument? The discovery of a 4,300-year-old skeleton surrounded by intriguing artifacts has archaeologists abuzz
Early one Friday in May 2002, a crew from England's Wessex Archaeology discovered two graves that predated the Romans by more than 2,500 years. When the sifting and analysis was done, 100 artifacts had been retrieved—the richest Bronze Age grave ever discovered in Britain.
There were two male skeletons, the most important of which was interred in a timber-lined grave on its left side, facing north. The legs were curled in a fetal position, common in Bronze Age burials. An eroded hole in the jawbone indicated that he'd had an abscess; a missing left kneecap was evidence that he'd sustained some horrific injury that'd left him with a heavy limp and an excruciating bone infection. A man between 35 and 45 years of age, he was buried with a black stone wrist guard on his forearm of the kind used to protect archers from the snap of a bowstring. Scattered across his lower body were 16 barbed flint arrowheads (the shafts to which they presumably had been attached had long since rotted away).
The archaeologists started calling him the Amesbury Archer, and they assumed he had something to do with Stonehenge because the massive stone monument was just a few miles away. Because of his apparent wealth, the press soon dubbed him the "King of Stonehenge." "Most people would not have had the ability to take such wealth with them into their graves," says Mike Pitts, author of Hengeworld, who calls the find "dynamite."
More info at the below linked article. An analysis of his bones indicates that he was from an area in Switzerland
Thank you for posting this and then referring to the other thread which I missed. I just love reading these stories, a nice break from nasty politics!
When it comes to the people who made Stonehenge, no one knows who they were. Or what they were doing.
They were british from bolton. You can tell by the bad dentistry.
Thanks, me too. I learn a great deal from FReepers posting on these threads. We have at least one professional archaeologist FReeper who reigns us in when we begin speculating to much, lol.
Ping.
Beware when archaeologists are abuzz. One never knows what they may do next!
We'll eventually find out who they were.
Oh drat! "people are grateful...."
What I find the most amazing is the fact that this guy (Taggert) lives just a short distance from where the 9,000 year old skeleton was found.
"Those Taggert men were known to be stay at home types." LOL
Wonder if the person who owned this skeleton was related to the 4000 year old Caucasian mummies found in China ?
What's interesting is at the time of Christ's birth, many glorious civilizations had risen and fallen, and the Romans had their large empire. In their entire history, the only interesting thing the British had done up to that point is pile a bunch of rocks on top of each other.
Imagine if you went back in time to 1 A.D. and told a Roman that in a few millenia, we would have airplanes and the language spoken aboard them would be that of the peoples of Britain.
"Those illiterate barbarians are going to take over? Impossible!" he would reply.
Maybe in 2,000 years, Sierra Leone will be the dominant cultural influencer of the world. It would be no weirder than the British rising from where they once were.
Did Bill Clinton offer to do him?
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