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The Sweet Track (Megalithic)
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Hatty
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Masonic aprons seem merely ceremonial, perhaps like veils they have esoteric associations of hiding or protecting something secret. Smiths, another important Megalithic occupation, also wear aprons made of leather or hide (hide again).

The giantesses spilling rocks from aprons probably refers to cairns. Often it's the devil who spills rocks. St Radegunde, the most Megalithic of all the 'saints' (literally Big Wheel) also dropped stones though hers seemed more orderly.

Can't remember if it came up in TME but Olwen (= 'white track') was chased by a group of ruffians and as she ran her white flowers dropped from her apron, a reference to wayside markers. Nowadays walkers are guided by white arrows painted on trees.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Is this the origin of the egg-and-spoon race? Still popular in annual village fetes and school sports days.

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Mick Harper
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Archaeologists have stumbled on something that we disclosed in The Megalithic Empire.

http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=6301&forum=2&start=0
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Meanwhile, the Irish are doing something useful with their oldest known roads; mulching them into compost to sell in garden centres.

In 2005, a 3,000 year old Bronze Age wooden road was uncovered in Mayne Bog in Coole, Co Westmeath. Described by An Taisce as “a major, timber-built road of European significance”, this was an archaeological find of huge importance.

According to John Waddell, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at NUI Galway, the Mayne road (or “Togher”) is, in terms of size, age, and antiquity “truly of European significance and on a par with those preserved in dedicated heritage centres like Wittemoor in Lower Saxony, Flag Fen in Peterborough (UK), and Corlea in County Longford”.

Professor Waddell’s mention of Corlea is interesting. The Corlea Trackway (Bóthar Chorr Liath) is an Iron Age structure near the village of Keenagh in Co Longford. At least a kilometre in length, it was wide enough for two chariots to pass each other side by side and it has been dated to 148BC. Corlea has an interpretive centre which has, for the past 21 years, employed four people seasonally from April to September and, attracting over 5,500 visitors each year, it is now Longford’s leading tourist attraction.

With all of the considerable respect due to Corlea, the find in Westmeath puts Corlea in the ha’penny place. Whereas Corlea is a trackway, the Mayne Togher is a proper road, up to 6 metres wide and 675 metres in length but, An Taisce notes, “it was seen to extend beyond both recorded limits”. Mayne is also a thousand years older than Corlea.

Mayne Bog is worked by Westland Horticulture, which extracts peat from the site. Despite carbon-dating the find to 1200 to 820 BC, the National Monuments Service – for some reason – did not issue a preservation order or record the road in the Register of Historic Monuments. Apart from two minor excavations, no serious archaeological work has been done on the discovery and – crucially – no legal impediment has been put in place to prevent the destruction of Mayne Togher.

For the ten years since the find, Westland Horticulture has – entirely legally – continued to mulch something as old as Newgrange into compost for window boxes. At least 75% of the road is gone now. Dr Pat Wallace – former director of the National Museum of Ireland – has described this as “an international calamity”.


I'm glad to be able to report I'm not guilty of aiding & abbetting by association, because we've not bought any Westland Horticulture compost.

http://avondhupress.ie/centenary-3000-years-irish-history-mulched-potting-compost/
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Mick Harper
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It takes a lot to shock me but I am shocked. When I destroy the Book of Kells I will now do it with a gay heart and a lilt in my stride.
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Mick Harper
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Here's a sweet track in Bohemia with some familiar tropes.
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=44663
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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That reminds me of some Devon lanes, where centuries of heavy farm(?) traffic has worn such a groove in the surface that some parts are c.6ft below the fields on either side.
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Mick Harper
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There's a book out called Watling Street: Travels through Britain and its Ever-Present Past. [Can someone read it for me?] But reading the review of it in the Guardian I came across this sentence "It remains one of the great highways of modern Britain, running virtually unbroken from Dover to Anglesey". Can anyone see the oddity of this?
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Mick Harper
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Wiki informs me I have moved to a more appropriate address

M J Harper 2 Cross Leys Shipston-on-Stour

As I said to the postie, there are bound to be two leys where they cross. Though ships on the Stour presumably means there will have to be a ford at this point. So possibly a corruption of ships-stopped on Stour.
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Boreades


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You should tell them about the ancient drovers roads.

I'm both impressed and annoyed by Bruce Smith. His work on ancient drovers roads is both thorough and incomplete. He's covered many parts of the country (Warwickshire, Northants, Bucks & Beds, Oxfordshire, Hereford & Glos, South/Mid Wales, Leics, Herts, Scotland, Yorkshire, East Anglia) but seems to have an aversion to coming darn sarf.

http://localdroveroads.co.uk/
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Mick Harper
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Stane Street is the modern name given to an important 90-kilometre-long (56 mi) Roman road in England that linked London to the Roman town of Noviomagus Reginorum, or Regnentium, later renamed Chichester by the Saxons. The exact date of construction is uncertain; however on the basis of archaeological artefacts discovered along the road, it was in use by 70 and may have been constructed in the first decade of the Roman occupation of Britain (as early as 43-53 AD). [Wiki]

That's not what John Aubrey thought

It ran from Bellingsgate (Billingsgate) to Bellingshurst (Billingshurst)

Belin ... Roman god, is he? Stane Street ... modern name, is it?

It goes through Dorking graveyard ... is eminent in Ockley parish ... and then they made a great fire to make the Devil think the sun was up ...

Into the dawn sun, were they, the Romans?

and the Devil let fall a lapful of stones which made the hill at one of the causeways

Oh no! He was helping out the Romans too.

It runs in an exact straight line.

Oh, right, that definitely makes it Roman.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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later renamed Chichester by the Saxons.

Chichester is Roman for sure. Why would it have been 'renamed by the Saxons' when no Saxon archaeology has been unearthed there (in contrast to, say, Chichester's 'spectacular' Roman bath house or the famous Roman villa at Fishbourne)?
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Mick Harper
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A number of our Megalithic assumptions came together in this passage I just read

In 1840 Bartholomew Fair was suppressed. The Fair had been founded in the twelfth century by the monk Rahere, said to have started life as Henry I's jester ...
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Mick Harper
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It Takes One To Spot One Dept

The Megalithic Empire
Comments 2 days ago

Moronvideos1940
Sporadic presentation....he jumps from topic to off topic incessantly .... Can't keep up.... Mumbo Jumbo man .....Five minutes of watching and it was over for me .....
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Hatty
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Online etymology says earliest use of megalithic is 1836 while megalith, about twenty years later, was "backdated from megalithic".

Both are surprisingly late. The given word-formation is mega- + lith, Greek for big stone. But Greece, though chocko with marble pillars and columns, is noticeably low on 'big stones'. Could megalith have a non-Greek source?

If so it is more likely to be related to seafarers and navigators aka Venetians/Phoenicians. The Hebrew word migdal, meaning 'tower', is derived from 'big' (gedol in Hebrew) and literally translates as 'Who is as big?' (cf. Michael, or 'Who is like God?'). Lighthouse in Hebrew is migdalor -- migdal + or. Or = light.
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