Posted on 06/13/2006 7:27:54 AM PDT by billorites
A geology team has contradicted claims that bluestones were dug by Bronze Age man from a west Wales quarry and carried 240 miles to build Stonehenge.
In a new twist, Open University geologists say the stones were in fact moved to Salisbury Plain by glaciers.
Last year archaeologists said the stones came from the Preseli Hills.
Recent research in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology suggests the stones were ripped from the ground and moved by glaciers during the Ice Age.
Geologists from the Open University first claimed in 1991 that the bluestones at one of Britain's best-known historic landmarks had not come from a quarry, but from different sources in the Preseli area.
The recent work was conducted by a team headed by Professor Olwen Williams-Thorpe, who said she and her colleagues had used geochemical analysis to trace the origins of axe heads found at Stonehenge and this backed up the original work.
| There has been a great reluctance to allow facts to interfere with a good story Dr Brian John |
"We concluded that the small number of axes that are actually bluestone derive from several different outcrops within Preseli," she said.
"Axes found at or near Stonehenge are very likely to be from the same outcrops as the monoliths, and could even be made of left-over bits of the monoliths."
The research
Dr Brian John, a geomorphologist living in Pembrokeshire, said he always thought the idea that Bronze Age man had quarried the stones and then taken them so far "stretched credibility".
But he said the debate would go on until someone was able to prove beyond doubt what happened one way or the other.
"This is very exciting, and it moves the bluestone debate on from the fanciful and unscientific assertions of the past," he said.
"Much of the archaeology in recent years has been based upon the assumption that Bronze Age man had a reason for transporting bluestones all the way from west Wales to Stonehenge and the technical capacity to do it.
"That has been the ruling hypothesis, and there has been a great reluctance to allow facts to interfere with a good story.
"Glaciers may move very slowly, but they have an excellent record when it comes to the transport of large stones from one part of the country to another."
Can anyone hear the word 'Stonehenge' without thinking of Spinal Tap?
and...
Archaeologists Figure Out Mystery Of Stonehenge Bluestones
IC Wales | 6-24-2005 | Western Mail
Posted on 06/24/2005 1:14:46 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1429888/posts
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/574946/posts
Tests Reveal Amesbury Archer "King Of Stonehenge' Was A Settler From The Alps
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Posted on 02/08/2004 3:40:04 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1074020/posts
Since I have no idea what your "spinal tap" reference is to I guess I for one must be counted as not thinking of it.
The present head is not the original head, but is cut down from the original head to about half the proportionate size. In addition, the neck is not smoothly faired into the body anymore but was chopped to fit the present head. The original head was of a lion, there being enough material in the original yarddang outcrop, and when the muzzle either broke off due to weathering, or was cut off to put the human face on, most likely when the body was buried in sand as it was until recently, the proportions of the rest of the body were ignored.
That's the theory. One wonders what secrets the Sahara holds to be discovered, that may relate to a civ which carved the Sphinx originally. There's grist for a great novel in that, somewhere. I have one related to al Shamiya Desert, perhaps I should do one for the Sahara?
I don't know what the theory is. That is my hypothesis, which I came up with before any of these Egyptologists bothered to mention the obvious facts.
There are a lot of nutjobs in academia. A glacier built stonehenge, aliens built the pyramids, the sphynx is a million years old, etc. Anything to sell books. Publish or perish.
Well, first of all, Egyptologists don't ascribe to that theory, it's what Schoch, West, and Bauval came up with. Bauval was the first to connect the arrangement of the great pyramids to the arrangement of the stars in Orion's belt. Secondly, Egyptologists don't like it when conventional 'wisdom' is challenged. The site known as Obiados (sp?) is impossible to explain with conventional notions regarding the Giza plateau and whom carved the Sphinx and placed the foundational stones for it and the pyramids.
I don't buy the Orion's Belt hypothesis any more than the layout of the City on Mars. Do you happen to know the story of the origin of the third pyramid, the smaller one?
[Menkaure, also known as Mycerinus, ruled from 2490 - 2472 B.C.. He was king of the smallest of the three pyramids at Giza, and is believed to be Khufu's grandson.]
Yes, but that isn't who built it, and relating the story of how it was built, financed, would be grounds for suspension.
"And, if a glacier moved them over to Stonehenge, how many Blue Stones have been found 'strewn along the route' from the outcropping?"
The hogs ate 'em.
[ya gotta be a hillbilly to 'get' that].....;D
That was some danged intelligent and orderly glacier, I'll give it that.
"Can anyone hear the word 'Stonehenge' without thinking of Spinal Tap?"
Only if the volume is set at "11".....:)
Stonehenge is actually a calendar and outpost built by the men of Numenor in the Second Age of the World, probably after the arrival of Tar-Minastir and his forces c. 1700 S.A.
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