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Sea Stacs : what are they and why are they? (Pre-History)
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The main task of the Applied Epistemology Library is to hold orthodoxy to account without falling into the toils and coils of alien invasions, conspiracy theories and mystery civilisations. Unless the evidence points to any of these things. Fortunately orthodoxy does most of our work for us and all we have to do is to take what they give us and then feed in the correct paradigm for the one they were taught when they were young and still think to be self-evidently true.

One of AEL's pet beefs is with Official History's view that Civilisation starts with writing and that therefore anybody without writing practically lives in trees. We say it's almost the other way round: that the invention of writing put a stop to civilisation, or at any rate a different kind of civilisation. Have a read of this, straight from the archaeological coalface, and run with it as far as it'll go.

Archaeologists who have a head for heights
DIANE MACLEAN

A NEW archaeological survey of sea stacs off the Western Isles has uncovered evidence suggesting that the rocky outposts were inhabited from a much earlier period than previously thought, potentially revolutionising current thinking about who used the stacs and why.

Hundreds of sea stacs in varying shape and size protrude above the sea along coast of Lewis, in the Western Isles. Some stacs are joined to the mainland by a rocky promontory, while others are completely surrounded by water. If a fragment of land is wider than its height it is considered to be an island, but otherwise it is a stac.

Using the appropriately titled abbreviation STAC, members of the Severe Terrain Archaeological Campaign test their advanced climbing skills to conquer these sheer cliffs and access hitherto inaccessible sites. Established two years ago, the group uses information collected from oral history and old maps before visiting stacs that once showed signs of previous human habitation. "You get onto the stacs and have a root around," says field archaeologist Ian McHardy. "We try to understand what's there and also do a detailed map of each stac."

Until now little has been known about the stacs, although they were thought to be predominately Iron Age and used for defence. The Iron Age was certainly a period of conflict, as can be seen by the number of brochs and wheelhouses on Lewis, so it made sense to think that the buildings on the stacs came from this period and were for this purpose. These new findings may change this assumption.

"We found a much bigger range of time period for people using the stacs," confirms McHardy. "On one stac, Dunasbroc, we found high-quality pottery and some beautiful leaf-shaped flint arrowheads. We can't confirm until we get a specialist to analyse the pottery, but it looks like being of late Neolithic period."

This period -- between 3,000BC and 2,500 BC -- would put the use of the stacs much earlier than previously thought. While exciting in itself, it wasn't the only surprise the STAC members found on Dunasbroc.

Along the contour of the walls they uncovered a small platform that showed signs of being repeatedly burnt. Its function is still a mystery, and McHardy finds it easier to say what it wasn't used for. "It is in the wrong place for a beacon," says McHardy. "Where it is situated would have been hidden by the headland. And it can't be a kiln. Why would anyone want to build a kiln on a hard-to-reach sea stac?" Which leaves them with a tantalising theory.

"One possibility that we're looking into is that it could have been a cremation pyre," says McHardy. "We know from burial tombs of the same period that they cremated people and this could link the two." They are awaiting tests on a partially burnt bone fragment found close to the site before they can begin talking about their theory with any confidence. If the bone does prove to be human, then this would add to our knowledge of how people from the Neolithic period ritualised death.

Another stac that stays in McHardy's memory is Stac a Chaisteil. "It was the most difficult to access, we needed to absail down to get to the base and then climb up 30 metres," remembers McHardy. "It took an hour to get on and off every day, but we did find a block house (a precursor to the broch), which is rare in the Western Isles."

As the first and only project of its kind in Scotland, STAC is opening up a number of different sites for exploration. McHardy enthusiastically points out that there are more places - especially in Shetland and Orkney - that could benefit from an archaeology team who have been trained in rope safety and climbing. Their eye-opening discoveries can only ensure a bright future for archaeologists in Scotland seeking a bit of adventure.

Archaeology News
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DPCrisp


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A funeral pyre on the very edge of the human realm? Yeah, why not.

But it also sounds like a lighthouse to me.
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Mick Harper
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Yeah, lighthouse seems much the most reasonable explanation. The fact that it is 'repeatedly burnt' suggests that it was lit at specific times to guide specific boats in. Being 'hidden by a headland' rather supports this interpretation, I would have thought.

However there is a much more radical interpretation for stacks in general. It's an established theme in the Applied Epistemological Library that the megalithics were prepared to put in a huge amount of initial work building permanent navigational structures so long as they a) would last indefinitely and b) didn't require people to maintain them. So a lighthouse i.e. someone lighting a bonfire every night in an out-of-the-way place is highly unmegalithic. Which is not to say that it might not have paid the locals to do it for local reasons.

What IS megalithic is the sea-stacs themselves. What price that they are not 'odd geological formations' at all but engineered geological formations?
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DPCrisp


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Mick Harper wrote:
What price that they are not odd geological formations but engineered geological formations?

Depends whether there was any alum shale about!
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Mick Harper
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As you yourself have noted, while there's a lot of prime facie evidence that alum mining changes the coastline, there's plenty of evidence too of the one without the other. We might go a teensy bit further than the evidence allows and speculate that alum mining would have taught the Ancient Brits how remarkably easy it is to change chalkly/limestone coastal features. Or, if you prefer, they discovered that when altering coastal features they discovered what useful by-products were thereby engendered.

It is interesting that orthodoxy is gradually catching up with us when it comes to re-evaluating the sophistication of pre-historic trading networks.
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DPCrisp


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Or, if you prefer, they discovered that when altering coastal features they discovered what useful by-products were thereby engendered.

They shudda found various grades of sand, various ores, probably coal... but my mind is still boggling at the nine months' burning required to produce alum in the first place...

'Ere, flint seams are visible in the chalk cliffs, but they mined them in the conventional, elaborate way. (Grime's Graves et al.) Maybe we can put a date on the start of coastal mining.
Come to think of it, the Great Orme copper mine is up a cliff face... Where was tin first found?

Compare The Needles, at the edge of Alum Bay, in the Isle of Wight. With reference to the start of this conversation, notice the lighthouse at the end of the Needles.



The Needles, at the edge of Alum Bay


Worm's Head in Gower, at the opposite end of Wales from Great Orme's Head.


(Also note that we are told Alum Bay was so called because alum was not found there, but this picture, named "alum-coloured-sands" was taken (near) there.)


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Mick Harper
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Yes, of all the anomalies I've come across in ancient history, the fact that it takes six months (is the date I have) of constant burning to turn alum rock into anything worthwhile, takes the biscuit. And yet orthodoxy regards the whole boring business as being a simple case of "Oh, right, so someone must have burned the stuff for six months just to see what came out at the end." And let's not forget that what comes out at the end is itself an apparently useless something-or-other that needs a whole lot of other steps before it does anything really useful. And just to cap it off "really useful" only means "Yeah, well, it makes dyes hold better and stuff, it's...er...only quite useful."

So what is the true genesis of the process? Only two possibilities spring to mind:

    a) that the Ancients had a sufficiently sophisticated grasp of chemistry to figure that reducing x might very well produce y and were prepared to do the necessary experimentation or

    b) burning alum shale produces other useful by-products in the short term (say, a day or two) that led to serendipitous discoveries in the long-term (say, six to nine months).
Re: your photographs. If these are entirely natural features, we would expect their like to turn up randomly across the world. But I get the distinct feeling that they turn up around the British (and other "megalithic") coasts more than elsewhere. Of course this might just be because I'm British or the British take more interest in these things etc. But it would be highly agreeable to have a preliminary statistical survey. Well, chaps and chappesses, do these coastal features look familiar to ya'all in Canada, US, Australia etc?
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DPCrisp


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    b) burning alum shale produces other useful by-products in the short term (say, a day or two) that led to serendipitous discoveries in the long-term (say, six to nine months).

Oil shale can be burned as fuel...

'Ere, if shales are sediments of silts so fine that they can preserve the impact craters of raindrops and yet they contain oil, then don't we know for sure that oil does not come from insect remains, which are not fossilised in their billions in the shale? (Wikipedia says they reckon there's as much oil in shales as everywhere else.)

Is there an alchemical cosmology that says Fire divides Earth and multiplies Air or anything like that? How did they cotton on to excluding air to make charcoal, extract oil from wood and all that kinda thing? (Distillation and sublimation use closed vessels, too.)

Were refined or extracted essences in general taken to be more efficacious or valuable, so they were actively sought out? Did they get enough experience of tinkering with things to fully expect useful extracts to come from anything and everything {Kinda self-fulfilling when you decide what the residue is useful for.} and therefore a research and development industry was quickly set up?

But I get the distinct feeling that they turn up around the British (and other "megalithic") coasts more than elsewhere.

Well, weather and geology combine to make stacs, or a lack of them. Weather and geology combine to provide conditions conducive to technico-economic success, or a lack of them.
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Mick Harper
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Well, weather and geology combine to make stacs, or a lack of them. Weather and geology combine to provide conditions conducive to technico-economic success, or a lack of them.

You are opening a larger can of worms in order to close one, Dan. First of all you'd have to show that weather and geology really are conducive to technico-economic success. And the reverse appears to be true since cradle civilisations arise in remarkably unfavourable areas of "weather-and-geology" i.e. alluvial river valleys in hot deserts, loess areas of continental extremes, high mountain plateaux etc etc.

In the second place, the features you have highlighted would appear to be -- unless you can produce something to the contrary -- universally inimical to settlement and extraordinarily hazardous to navigation.
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DPCrisp


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You are opening a larger can of worms in order to close one, Dan.

I just wouldn't be surprised to find that they essentially arise from the same source.

We don't know that we had a can of worms -- a correlation between megalithic cultures or other ancient superpowers and sea stacs -- to close. Sea stacs can only form or persist where the rock has medium hardness (too soft and they'd crumble or slump away, too hard and it wouldn't be carved into chunks), but a bit of a browse turns up stacs at various points on Pacific America, Australia, New Zealand...

Hmm... I was far from exhaustive, but that does seem to leave Britain rather on her own... (though the Baltic and the Med are too calm to get them, I expect).

First of all you'd have to show that weather and geology really are conducive to technico-economic success. And the reverse appears to be true since cradle civilisations arise in remarkably unfavourable areas of "weather-and-geology" i.e. alluvial river valleys in hot deserts, loess areas of continental extremes, high mountain plateaux etc etc.

Petrol doesn't make sparks but it dun'arf burn. Maybe the "good life" is not conducive to starting civilisations, but civilisation is a great strategy for exploiting the "good life". And European coastal geography is still strikingly more "interesting" than most.
How are these cradle civilisations doin' now?
Who d'ya mean: "loess areas of continental extremes"?

In the second place, the features you have highlighted would appear to be -- unless you can produce something to the contrary -- universally inimical to settlement and extraordinarily hazardous to navigation.

???

Taking a somewhat broader view... Chalk at the coast, for instance, makes for stacs: it also makes for well-watered grazing and farming land, with access to the sea (by definition, just not via the cliffs)... flint, wood, bone, antler, clay... spring water...

And navigation hazards guarantee that you get good at navigation.
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Ishmael


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DPCrisp wrote:
Compare The Needles, at the edge of Alum Bay, with Worm's Head in Gower, at the opposite end of Wales from Great Orme's Head.



The Needles, at the edge of Alum Bay


Worm's Head in Gower, at the opposite end of Wales from Great Orme's Head.




Do you two realize that, if these shapes are examined in profile, they are a virtual perfect match?

Forget about the shapes as a three-dimensional island and isthmus and just picture them as they appear from the surface of the ocean. Imagine how the white shape of the cliffs appears and compare that with the shape of the island. It's a complete match: Two big bulges, one very much larger than the other, separated by a short series of undulating humps.

I even wonder if there might once have been something painted on the sides of these cliff faces.
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Ishmael wrote:
Do you two realize that, if these shapes are examined in profile, they are a virtual perfect match?


A potentially dynamite point, Ishmael. One of the Great Imponderables about Ancient Times is the degree and extent of landscape engineering. For instance, Britain is in many respects a geomantic landmass and this has led some noble savants (well just me actually) to propose that Britain is itself a geomantically engineered landmass. In other words the Straits of Dover were dug out to create an island of the necessary geomantic dimensions.

But there's no need to go that far (in case you want to avoid the men-in-white-coats calling round). Just adjacent to The Worm's Head in the Gower Peninsula are Lundy Island and the Prescelli Mountains where the Stonehenge Blue-stones were quarried. And, as you all know, Stonehenge is due east of Lundy Island and the Prescelli quarry is due north of it, and the lines joining the three places form a perfect five, twelve, thirteen Pythagorean triangle. So no doubt the Worm's Head was carved there in some sort of mathematical arrangement that I shall leave those of you with decent maps and a head for figures to work out.

And of course it is well known that the Great Orme is far and away the most important area of megalithic economic activity in the whole wide world. So unless Nature naturally carves out this particular Ishmaelian design, clearly the Megalithics must have done it for her.
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DPCrisp


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Mick Harper wrote:
And, as you all know, Stonehenge is due east of Lundy Island and the Prescelli quarry is due north of it, and the lines joining the three places form a perfect five, twelve, thirteen Pythagorean triangle. So no doubt the Worm's Head was carved there in some sort of mathematical arrangement that I shall leave those of you with decent maps and a head for figures to work out.

Well, fuck me...

    G = Great Orme's Head
    L = Lundy Island
    P = Preseli
    S = Stonehenge
    W = Worm's Head

Lundy-Preseli-Stonehenge: As Mick said, ΔLPS is a 5:12:13 triangle with the line LP running due north and the line LS running due east.

W is (pretty much) equidistant between L and P, giving the ΔLPW angles 30°, 30°, 120°. So W pretty much bisects angle LSP.

Preseli-Stonehenge-Great Orme: ΔPSG is a 3:4:5 triangle! If you go straight from S to P and turn 90° to the right, you'll hit G.

Worm's Head-Stonehenge-Great Orme: ΔWSG is very close to half a square with the right angle at W, which is nearly equidistant between G and S.

Lundy-Great Orme-Stonehenge: ΔLGS is not a right-angled triangle: it has angles (pretty much) 45°, 60°, 75°. That means LG bisects the angle PLW: i.e. from Lundy, Preseli is on a bearing of 0°, Great Orme is on a bearing of 15°, Worms Head is on a bearing of 30° and Stonehenge is on a bearing of 90°.

(The 60° bearing passes pretty close to Whiteleafed Oak... 75° pretty close to my house... I dunno what' on the 45° line. Is it significant that it's not Birmingham?)

From Stonehenge, Preseli is 24° north of Lundy: St. Michael's Mount is 24° south...

Who can do the diagram?

Preseli, Worm's Head/Rhossili Bay, Great Orme, Needles/Alum Bay: all mines or quarries: sacred places where they penetrated Mother Earth... and extracted her bounty?
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Mick Harper
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Most gratifying, though remember Dan that you are entering the realm of infinite-line-drawing. I spotted at least four potential vagueries in your account:

    1. Preseli Bay is not (quite) the same as Preseli Mountains and/or the Preseli blue-stone quarries
    2. Your account is replete with those very tell-tale phrases, "is (pretty much) equidistant", "pretty much bisects", "is very close to half a square", "nearly equidistant between", "passes pretty close".
    3. You have to take account of the curvature of the earth at these scales.

The phrase "pretty close to my house" reminds us that in the 1960's ley line research was set back by the finding that every Watney pub in London could be lined up statistically i.e. three or more on a line. This was generally ascribed to the thickness of a pencil line on an OS map but actually did lead to a consideration of whether pubs were geomantic (because they tend to be sited historically on ancient thoroughfares). Just as modern Bedfordshire loonies tend unconsciously to choose to live on Sites of Special Megalithic Interest (SSMI's).

...which might include carving lumps off it... Can you elaborate on what you mean by geomancy?

This arose from discussions with John Michel, John Neal (et al) about the significance of the shape of Britain. The extreme school of geomancers holds that the triangular shape of Britain (and its size as measured in English miles) are all highly significant. (And for good measure, so is Ireland and its division into its four provinces.) The trouble with the Geomanters is that they are so obsessed with finding these concordances, they never stop to consider the significance.

For instance, the Preseli-Lundy-Stonehenge Pythagorean triangle (and by the way, the 5,12,13 shape is reproduced at Stonehenge itself, just to make it crystal clear this is no accident) only points to knowledge of large-scale surveying. This is because Stonehenge (and to some extent, the Preseli quarry) can be sited at the required spot. There is no need to create Lundy Island.

Moving up the scale, the St Michael Line points not merely to knowledge of large-scale surveying but also the the fact that Britain must the heart of the geomantic system because while May the First (which is the date when the rising sun shines up the St Michael Line) is clearly arbitrary, the fact that May the First is a World Day means that everyone is taking their cue from the longest surveyable east-west line in Britain.

However, the significant tringular shape of Britain is even more far-reaching (if true, of course). There seem to be only one of two possibilities:

    1. The geomancers ranged the world looking for a landmass that had significant proportions and eventually found Britain.
    2. The geomancers were already operating in Britain and decided to convert it into an island of significant geomantic proportions.

My contribution was to point out that the second is actually possible by a relatively straightforward process (if you're a Megalithomane) of digging out the chalk in the far south-east and dividing Britain off from the Continent. (Yes, chaps, the White Cliffs of Dover is what you get when you complete the job.)

I haven't inspected the St George's Channel between Britain and Ireland (though I just now realised that St George is a variant of St Michael - ie a dragon-slaying knight...can somebody look up the official explanation for the name?) though I expect the Giant's Causeway is the megalithics' artistic signature at the northern end of their handiwork.
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DPCrisp


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1. Preseli Bay is not (quite) the same as Preseli Mountains and/or the Preseli blue-stone quarries

I was going by where MultiMap.com says the Preseli Mountains are.

2. Your account is replete with those very tell-tale phrases is (pretty much) equidistant, pretty much bisects, is very close to half a square, nearly equidistant between, (pretty much) 45°, 60°, 75°, passes pretty close .

I was using a print-out from MultiMap.com, a pencil, ruler and trigonometry. I didn't bother to calculate the margins for error or quote the angles precisely. I thought we could all do without that.

The worst 'fits' between what I calculated and what I said are probably
• 11° & 13° are about equal {"So W pretty much bisects angle LSP"}.
• 45 and 49 are about equal {"W... is nearly equidistant between G and S"}.

3. You have to take account of the curvature of the earth at these scales.

That is beyond me. But it begs the question of how any mapping, ancient or modern, is done. Are you sure the Ancients took account of the curvature of the Earth any better than I did when they sited Stonehenge?
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