MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Who Built The Stones? (Megalithic)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... , 12, 13, 14  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The most basic question is: can geologists tell man-made concrete from natural stone? You'd think the answer would be a resounding "Yes". If not, you might settle for a resounding "No". If not, you'd be thankful for a "We're not sure, we ought to be able to but in practice..." However, as Borry indicates, the answer you get is "Is that the time, I must be off" i.e. careful ignoral.

We ran into this when we were trying to convince people that Glastonbury Tor et al were artificial. Geologists weren't even to be drawn on what piled up natural material looks like! Though they have come up with some wondrous names for it. It's in the (very) Late Holocene, you know.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The earliest written mention of 'sarsen' is in the 1640's. Most likely down to John Aubrey in his 'Topographical Collections of Wiltshire' or somesuch, I'd hazard a guess. It wasn't widely used until the 1870s onwards.

According to Wiki, sarsen is taken 'from the Wiltshire dialect' but Etymonline says it may be nicked from Cornish lore

The same word was applied to the ancient leavings outside Cornish tin mines, also known as Jews' pits, those being the terms that came to mind once to describe any ancient features, based on the Bible.

We noted an apparently Jewish association with the causeway connecting Marazion to St Michael's Mount and the main street in Penzance is Market Jew Street but there don't seem to be many traces of Jews in Wiltshire, the heartland of sarsens. Wiltshire bacon is probably not kosher.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

More on according to Wiki:

The word "sarsen" is a shortening of "Saracen stone" which arose in the Wiltshire dialect. "Saracen" was a common name for Muslims, and came by extension to be used for anything regarded as non-Christian, whether Muslim or pagan.[3][better source needed]


Note the "[better source needed]". The source [3] that the Wiki editor doesn't like is http://www.sarsen.org/

That might be because Sarsen.org isn't a "proper" academic site, and it has shown an interest in crazy things like ancient causeways and alignments.

Yes, but what are sarsens made of?

Sarsen stones are sandstone blocks found in quantity in the United Kingdom on Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire; in Kent; and in smaller quantities in Berkshire, Essex, Oxfordshire, Dorset, and Hampshire. They are the post-glacial remains of a cap of Cenozoic silcrete that once covered much of southern England.


OK, it's made of "silcrete". But what's that made of?

Silcrete is an indurated (resists crumbling or powdering) soil duricrust formed when surface sand and gravel are cemented by dissolved silica.

So if you mix sand and gravel with a dissolved silica cement, you have a "natural" form of concrete.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Isn't it more likely that 'sarcen' is a local rendering of 'sandstone'?
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

In Megalithic Empire we pooh-pooh all ideas of hunting (for food) on the grounds of simple inefficiency, ergs expended versus ergs gained. Thus 'falconry' to us is a way of training birds-of-prey (even domesticating them) to keep away wild birds of prey or, since corvids do that, more likely assist with various other duties of animal management. As per, orthodoxy disagrees with us

In case you didn’t know it, falconry is hunting using a bird of prey such as a hawk or a falcon. Falconry is an ancient practice, dating back to 4000 to 6000 B.C.

That is useful since the spread clearly amounts to 'we don't know'. But that is not why I am bringing you the latest from medium.com. It is this

Many of the sayings we commonly use today can be traced back to this form of hunting.

While not endorsing the actual etymologies, I could not help but wonder how such words and phrases would enter the language if falconry was, as advertised, merely the plaything of the idle rich

fed up
under your thumb
wrapped round your little finger
hoodwinked
haggard
waiting with bated breath
end of my tether
A boozer
rouse
codger/caddy

https://medium.com/knowledge-stew/modern-sayings-that-came-from-falconry-203d196e3466
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I could not help but wonder how such words and phrases would enter the language if falconry was, as advertised, merely the plaything of the idle rich

My first impression was some or even most of the terms can be quite plausibly associated with animal training or domestication, and may have leached into falconry rather than derived from it.

Out of curiosity I checked the official etymology of 'haggard' and was told it only pertains to falconry from the 1560s. 'Hag' as we say in TME is related to hedge but etymologists say haggard is from French, hagard, meaning distressed, distraught, haunted which seems to suggest falcons didn't have a happy time.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

This got the full page treatment in the Guardian this weekend and while I'm not knocking it as a therapeutic and life-building exercise, which it clearly is, I was interested in it à propos the above strictures on the limitations of hunting as a food source.

Maori hunter helps women swap food banks for rifles
"Nothing's guaranteed except knowledge like this. No matter what, I can go out there and feed my family."

First of all, a rifle was essential. This was not available during the time of hunter-gatherers and the only period I can think of when hunting-for-food and the rifle overlapped was eighteenth century poaching. When presumably firing off a gun at the dead of night was unavailable too. But it got me thinking about poaching. Is it hunting and is it for food? The more one does think about it the more unlikely it seems, yet it always dominates accounts of rural law and order.

But the New Zealand situation was unusual in one respect. Apparently the main quarry is goat and deer which are considered vermin in New Zealand since they got loose during the early days of European settlement and have overrun the local flora and fauna. Far from 'poaching' the government should be offering bounties. "Send for Robin Hood and his Merrie Men, there have been more escapes from the deer parks." Even in a state of nature, how abundant and how accessible are 'game' animals? Especially game animals who have learned their chief predator is bipeds with bows-and-arrows. Though of course when the Maoris themselves arrived the local fauna hadn't learned this useful survival skill and were soon extinct.

One thing wasn't covered by the article: how did these women get their food from the kill-site to the freezer? Do hunter-gatherers need all-terrain land cruisers?
Send private message
Grant



View user's profile
Reply with quote

Just watched a new Neil Oliver programme on the BBC - A History of Ancient Britain on BBC4.

They've discovered the latest collection of stone buildings on Orkney. No surprises that this impressive structure is a temple despite no evidence of this at all apart from a clay doll and some red ochre drawing on the wall.

In fact not just a temple, it's a "temple complex" in which other nearby buildings are part of a procession from the land of the living to the land of the dead, or some other mumbo-jumbo (just like Stonehenge).

But no-one asks where the people actually lived. If you had the ability to build a massive stone complex in one of the most inhospitable places in Britain, wouldn't you actually live in it?
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Our idea in Megalithic Empire is that it was a navigational college.

My objection to 'for ritual purposes' is not that it is impossible -- strewth, we've just witnessed several imposing structures being used for ritual purposes -- but that Ollie and his mates never admit this is a strictly default explanation. Strewth, we don't all live in Buck House and toddle along to Westminster Abbey. Apparently we all did in the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
One thing wasn't covered by the article: how did these women get their food from the kill-site to the freezer? Do hunter-gatherers need all-terrain land cruisers?


You have woken me from my AEL slumber. Was it this article?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/03/priceless-skill-the-maori-hunter-helping-women-swap-the-food-bank-for-the-rifle

While the Guardian carefully approved of the "empowered" theme, it also carefully ignored the consequences of a sucessful mission. After the kill, what you've killed is literally deadweight. No way mate anyone wants to carry a 100Kg deer (or even a 40Kg goat) very far at all. If you were doing full-Guardianista green-style, or you were deep in the Scottish Highlands, you might have packhorses to carry the load for you. Most of us would have suitable transport (4x4s), if not what you do mate is butcher it on the spot. The choicest parts are that evening's meal in the bush. Then divi out the butchered parts so everyone in the hunting party gets a share of the payload.

Some local knowledge:

It's not unusual in some parts near Château Boreades to meets groups openly carrying hunting rifles, with no bother from the local police. Indeed, we have in the past been host to some folk who drive all the way from Germany to go shooting near here. There must be some special passwords or documentation, because they openly drove through our border checkpoints - with their guns - with no trouble all. "Anything to declare sir? Ya, a load of guns and ammunition. No problem sir." Clearly it's not like most folks imagine or see portrayed on TV dramas.

Which reminds me - we have some green(ish) neighbours actively promoting Rewilding Wiltshire. They get a bit evasive when we try and pin them down on what predatory species they would like to reintroduce, or how they would then be controlled. Their eyes glaze over when I point to the neolithic hilltop enclosures and explain why they were built like that, to keep out predatory species in neolithic times. Rewilded wolves or boar could make a nasty mess of stray walkers that lacked the ‘Priceless Skills’.

As #1 Daughter has been a regular visitor to Tidworth, I can neither confirm nor deny whether she has acquired any of the necessary ‘Priceless Skills’. But she has seen a few bus loads of Ukrainians passing through, themselves being taught some ‘Priceless Skills’. Strangely enough, by Australian troops - it appears that Australia is now a de-facto part of NATO - but that's another story.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
Ollie and his mates never admit this is a strictly default explanation. Strewth, we don't all live in Buck House and toddle along to Westminster Abbey. Apparently we all did in the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages.


Don't know if you've noticed, but Ollie is no-mates these days. Ever since he dared to start uttering non-BBC non-consensus thoughts aloud on his YouTube channel.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Interesting news about The Deerhunter being re-released in Wiltshire. It was the blessed George Monbiot, patron saint of rewilding, that pointed out our big problem these days is that deer populations have exploded everywhere and are currently ensuring that everywhere is being turned into a scrubby monoculture because they nibble new shoots everywhere. His solution was to re-introduce the wolf and the lynx but I prefer your policy of offering B & B to any German with a gun.

Not if they are dressed as nuns and it's 1940 though. Always check.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
Isn't it more likely that 'sarcen' is a local rendering of 'sandstone'?


No.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
Not if they are dressed as nuns and it's 1940 though. Always check.


I concur. My Dad was warned about that when he was guarding a sacred place in 1940 (Headingley Cricket Ground). It was something about paratroopers in black.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

No is not generally acceptable as a refutation, Borry. No matter how authoritative the naysayer.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... , 12, 13, 14  Next

Jump to:  
Page 13 of 14

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group