Stonehenge: First residents from west Wales

BBC ^ | 2 August 2018 | Angus Davison

[BenLurkin]

Researchers have shown that cremated humans at Stonehenge were from the same region of Wales as the stones used in construction.

The key innovation was finding that high temperatures of cremation can crystallise a skull, locking in the chemical signal of its origin.

The first long-term residents of Stonehenge, along with the first stones, arrived about 5,000 years ago.

While it is already known that the "bluestones" that were first used to build Stonehenge were transported from 150 miles (240 km) away in modern-day Pembrokeshire, almost nothing is known about the people involved.

The scientists' work shows that both people and materials were moving between the regions and that, for some of these people, the move was permanent.

When their lives ended, their cremated remains were placed under the ancient monument in what is now Wiltshire.

[elbook]

they tell it by ratios of element impurities and radio isotope variances in the bone minerals - corresponding to various locales where the people previously had lived — characteristic (discernible) differences

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Pontiac and TXnMA. Good one for the weekly digest ping, even though it's not exactly the weekend.

Robert Schoch pointed out (there are a couple of very good vids, one on YT, when he was the guest on Joe Rogan's show, and the other on Vimeo I think, Ancient Civilizations of the Sun, something like that) that the Gobekli Tepe site in Anatolia is megalithic, but much higher craftsmanship than Stonehenge, and is more than twice as old.

I had problems getting the Vimeo vid to play, so I went to the online vid ripper, ripped it, and downloaded it to the machine.

[Beowulf9]

This is my post:

“But the site where they quarried the Bluestones is 160 miles from the site they built Stonehenge.

Why did they go that far? Have they any theories?”

It is not about what Stonehenge IS or who built it.

[BradyLS]

“And where are they now - the little people of Stonehenge?”

"In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, there lived a strange race of people: the Druids. Nobody knows who they were…or…wot they were doin'. But their legacy remains, HEWN, into the living ROCK, of Stone'enge…"

[blueunicorn6]

Hmmmmm.

Yes.

I see.

[Hugin]

It was likely the nearest place to quarry stones of that size and type. Or they could have chosen it because they could move them by raft most of the way. There’s also a theory that they may have been broken off and carried by an ancient glacier to someplace nearby. But as Cornwell points out we can only guess as there’s no records.

[Oatka]

The other question is why did they go to that spot so far away and with such trouble?

I understand that Stonehenge is built at one of the very few places in England where they could build a structure to measure the sun and moon phases and keep that unique design. Even a few miles either way would have thrown it off.

[Trumpet 1]

Supposedly, the Earth’s magnetic field is very strong at Stonehenge. Glaciers may have carried the stones to that location.

[arrogantsob]

Gobeckli Tepe is amazing and apparently was built by Martians since it appears to have been created without an urban area.

We just started deciphering the Sumerian tablets a few decades ago so that is a whole new world.

[SunkenCiv]

The archaeology at G.T. is pretty new -- it was discovered as a site around 1963, but drastically mis-dated, probably due to the level of craftsmanship, plus the a priori biases and underlying assumptions. :^)

[SunkenCiv]

The druids were nowhere to be found when Stonehenge was built. :^)

[SunkenCiv]

It is a burial site, that used to be denied, but there are hundreds, probably thousands, of neolithic burials all over the vicinity. Ordinarily, around here, the pioneers used the areas which were difficult to plow for the new buryin' grounds, and kept the flat country for agriculture and/or pasturing. Hilly areas were for orchards and/or pasturing. The folks who built Stonehenge took one look at the Salisbury plain and thought the opposite. That's probably why there's no rhyme or reason to the structures.

[BradyLS]

A dude just can’t have any fun around here! :-D

[SunkenCiv]

Is, is that a nit right there? I’M PICKIN’ IT! ;^)

[SunkenCiv]

As long as I'm pickin' nits -- the Sumerians invented cuneiform, but their language was an isolate, so no one could read it. Cuneiform's pronounciations were figured out using the known language of Persia (glad I finally looked this up, I'd forgotten this) by 1849. Akkadian, a Semitic language (extinct but related to living Semitic languages) followed.

Written Sumerian persisted well after the Sumerians themselves either abandoned their language or were culturally absorbed or wiped out, or some combination, perhaps 1000 years after they'd invented cuneiform. The last use known of written Sumerian was nearly 2000 years ago. Thanks to its phonetic nature, he use of cuneiform was adapted for many ancient languages, and Akkadian cuneiform was used for diplomatic correspendence. The diplomatic archive of Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten (18th dyn Egyptian pharaohs) happens to have survived and is made up of cuneiform tablets.

It's true that it took much longer to clean up Sumerian decipherment, that was accomplished by 1944 by the fairly recently deceased Samuel Noah Kramer. He would have finished earlier, but he wasted a lot of time hanging around some coffee shop with his nitwit friends, uh, scratch that. The Sumerians invented the writing system by 3100 BC, by which time Gobekli Tepe had been abandoned for more than 4000 years.

[Beowulf9]

I know I’m not getting that last part, “That’s probably why there’s no rhyme or reason to the structures”.

I mean, is there anyplace with MORE rhyme or reason than Stonehenge. It is entirely full of rhyme and reason, no?

[arrogantsob]

Kramer’s books are fascinating.

[Adder]

How would they know that...150 miles is a long ways to travel, seems like.

[SunkenCiv]

It's a bunch of rocks standing around, and the Aubrey holes aren't part of a timekeeping system, they are the old "postholes" of the bluestones (some of which subsequently went missing), meaning the whole thing was restructured during prehistoric times. There is no validity to any of Gerald Hawkin's "Stonehenge Decoded" archaeoastronomy nonsense, as even he eventually had to agree.

[Beowulf9]

I read that book! Lol. So that’s what those were, and not predicting eclipses.