Comments on Walking Ancient Landscapes (British History)

[Hatty]

[Ishmael]

Is "angel" the compound of the words "Henge" and "El"?

Eng = Ang = Place where straight lines converge

El = Right?(???)

Ang-el = Right angle?(???)

Does "El" mean something different relating to geometry?

Wireloop is the one to tell us!

[Hatty]

[Ishmael]

We've already established by virtue of Michael Straight and May Day that England (Hengeland) is fundamental to the megalithic system.

[Rocky]

Was Medieval England more Merrie than thought?

[Mick Harper]

That is largely my view. On every statistic the great change came not when cities were introduced but when agriculture finally ditched the open field system. In England, you can choose between the Tudor Enclosures and the Victorian ones for the take-off.

[Grant]

Archaeologists have discovered a 7,000 year old structure in London.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jan/06/ancient-timbers-mi6-headquarters

There's a lovely bit of careful ignoral in the article when the discoverer says:

[Ishmael]

How the Ancients Navigated the World
By Christopher F. Ash

Time's come for me to reveal to you all the essentials of the old system by which the ancient mariners explored the whole of the Earth and left their mark upon the landscape in the form of place names still with us today.

Before the development of longitude, sailors lacked a means of pin-pointing their location at sea by means of coordinates. However, they did not lack all means of positioning themselves north to south. The system for doing so worked by use of a network of lines. The lines were called "Straights".

Now, here's the thing.

There were only 365 lines. One for each day of the year. Each specific line corresponded to the day on which the sun rose above the angle of that line.

To identify the line, it was named after the day. But the day itself was identified not in accordance with a date but in accordance with a name.

So the line spanning England was the "Michael Straight".

Every straight, however, had a mathematical relationship to every other straight. This was the angle required to calculate one's course at sea. If one wished to follow the Straight of St. Michael, one needed to know the angular offset of the sunrise on the morning of Michael's day from the sunrise as it was on the current morning. If you knew this angle, you could maintain your course along any Straight regardless of the current time of year.

In fact, quite complex feats of navigation could be performed by tracking one's speed in knots and shifting to a different Straight at a measured distance along the line.

Of course, the lines and angles though were meaningless, absent a start point. That had to be known as well. These start points were limited in number. In the old world they are all marked with the name "Land's End."

Each land's end is linked to a large number of lines -- up to 365 of them. But here's the key: Each line is anchored to a single destination on the opposite side of the ocean.

That destination is named for the line.

Thus it is that the New World is peppered with place names such as "Straight Lucia", "Straight Martin" and "Straight John."

On the other side of the New World there is "Straight Francis" -- which may suggest our mariners sailed the Pacific or perhaps that the lines were used to cross the continent by land as well.

So it is that in Newfoundland, legend has it that Saint John's was so named for its harbor having been discovered on the day of the Feast of St. John. But we now know this is but a muddle of the facts. St. John's was not discovered on the day of St. John; it was discovered at the termination point of the Straight of John.

St. John's is identified as such for its being the termination point of the John's Straight as extended from Land's End at the base of the Michael Straight in Britain. This same line extends across the Avalon Peninsula and then across Cape Breton to touch land again at the most hospitable harbor in the new world: The harbor of St. John New Brunswick.

This is why there are two cities on Canada's East Coast named for St. John -- because one line happens to run through two hospitable harbors.

To reach those harbors, one need take one's bearings at sunrise over Land's End at the base of the St. Michael line, having set sail from Plymouth, and follow the John Straight across the Atlantic.

The line itself identifies the destination.

[Ishmael]

I'm surprised this post has garnered so little attention. I really believe I have put together many of the loose ends we've long been discussing.

Some progress since my first post.

I did my first check of the St. John line with my globe an a piece of string. I've subsequently checked in Google Earth and discovered the line terminates in Europe not in the UK but in Spain. The line appears to terminate (or initiate) at a harbor in north-west Spain named Ferrol -- or possibly A Caruna just to the south.

A Coruna, incidentally, is the place where from the famed Spanish Armada is said to have originated.

[Mick Harper]

Speaking for myself, Ishmael, it is not that I don't recognise this to be first class and highly important work (at any rate potentially), it is just that I am writing a book on the subject and it is absolutely fatal to whore after new gods when dealing with the old ones. Even when, as I am sure you will argue, the new is not at all forcing out the old. It is a question of eye-on-ball.

However, just to ginger you up a little, should you ever get round to composing a tight little essay on this subject (with copious maps natch) then you will be given an appendix of your very own in the book. I have not asked Hatty, my collaborator, to countersign this proposal since there is not the least chance of you ever completing the task.

PS I think you'll find it is not Ferrol (ie the iron port) but Finisterra (Land's End) and Land's End's everpresent companion Leon next door that is the start of the John's Straight.

PPS Hatty will give you some Spanish stuff.

[Hatty]

The notion of a chain of places being linked by saints' names isn't new e.g. the Michael Line but the breadth of Ishmael's vision is on a much grander scale.

A most peculiar 'saint' called Pantaleon seems to occur across the board. According to legend none of several methods of execution, including hot lead which sounds like smelting, were successful until he elected to die through beheading. A shadowy figure called Saint Hermolaus protected him. His relics were kept at Saint Denis in Paris, his head at Lyon. I can't quite make head nor tail of him though perhaps 'universal' Pan is a clue and Leon tail-end?

[Mick Harper]

I have just heard t'bloke on t'telly say that the complete immolation of a human body (which apparently was a fairly routine business in the Neolithic) required 1500 to 1700 degrees (cue picture of presenter conducting an experiment with a pig and a bonfire). This is higher than is required for iron smelting, n'est-ce pas? In other words the normal reason given for iron not replacing bronze (that the Ancients couldna get the fire hot enough) must be a bunch of bollocks.

[Hatty]

Apparently the body itself raises the temperature. Perhaps its fat is a kind of fuel?

[Mick Harper]

Quite so. Also the explanation for spontaneous human combustion. The point I am making is that since human beings had been observing this for several thousand years it may have occurred to one of them to wrap iron ore in fat (or whatever).

But of course the true explanation for bronze's long dominance was because copper and tin require long distance transportation to come together and the Megalithics had a monopoly on long distance transportation, so made sure their metallurgical monopoly was bronze-only.

[Hatty]

The town of Margate, on the Isle of Thanet in Kent, has a recreation ground called Dandelion Field, a rather trite name except it is the site of a medieval castle, Daundelyon or Dandelion Court, on the other side of the Canterbury Road (the Pilgrims' Way) opposite the sea-gate or port cut out of the chalk cliffs. It may be that lions did not only guard western seaboards.

Dandelion is always said to be French, dent-de-lion, though dons, dun(e)s and dans don't seem to fall into the same trap. This district of Margate is called Garling which apparently means 'Green Hill'. Interestingly, Dent-de-lion Road continues into Crow Hill Road.