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Way Out West (Pre-History)
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Wireloop


In: Detroit
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thirty-three different ways of saying "street".

No doubt.
Consider the word 'river'. In Welsh the word for river is 'afon'. Right next to Stonehenge there is the Avon (afon) River, or quite literally, the RIVER RIVER. Obviously this river very early on was simply known as The River...having no specific identity other than...ummm....River (afon). I might also dare say, because of this peculiarity, that the Afon, as far as language is concerned, seems to 'predate' the Thames.

The Afon flows directly north/south, cutting through the town of Salisbury, and IMHO was the transport for the builders of Stonehenge. Anybody entering the mouth of this river at Christchurch Bay would inevitably end up at Stonehenge at the same longitude at which they entered. Put the huge stone on a boat and let the water do the work.

Stonehenge is all about positioning.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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This is, of course, the orthodox view. In fact recently a group of TV archaeology re-enactors (one of the fastest growing industries in Britain today) attempted to recreate the moving of a Sarsen blue-stone from Preselli in Wales to Salisbury Plain. Unfortunately the "sarsen" slipped off the boat and now lies at the bottom of Pembroke Dock. This was a shame as I was looking forward to these hapless gits getting a boat loaded with a twenty ton rock up the Wiltshire Avon which is, every time I see it, a trout stream quite incapable of being used for any navigable purposes.

Interesting though about the north-south orientation. "Chalk-streams" and "winterbournes" (and any water feature close to megalithic sites) are always worth closer inspection.
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Wireloop


In: Detroit
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This is, of course, the orthodox view

I wasn't aware of that ( I just used Google Earth to scope the land), but not all things 'orthodox' are lead, or by the same token as far as my limited knowledge of Stonehenge is concerned, nothing really is 'orthodox'.
However, I thought that the mainstream view was that the stones were transported 1/2 way via the Bristol Channel, and the other 1/2 via land.

There are of course 2 'Avon Rivers' as far as I know in Britain.
One in Bath, one in Salisbury.
We are talking about the same river, correct?

Also, is there any evidence that the water level of this river was higher at some point?
I just can't let go of its extremely close proximity to Stonehenge/Durrington, and its direct north/south path.
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Mick Harper
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We had a discussion about "avons" over on the other site, I'll try and dig it up. If your Avon flows north-south then it must be different from the Avon of the Kennet & Avon Canal which is east-west. But interesting that you should confuse them (or I have) because by my reckoning both Avons must flow pretty near Stonehenge. Perhaps the word avon is itself more significant than being merely the Welsh word for river. Could someone post up a suitable map of the area (my cyberskills are not up to it.)

Durrington is becoming a huge subject right now -- Dan is Our Man on this, I seem to remember.
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admin
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Here are some bits and pieces from the other site that don't entirely flow but might shed light. (I think, Wireloop, you were absent without leave at the time of these discussions.)
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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They say "Waulud's Bank is unique... oh, but it's a bit like Durrington Walls near Stonehenge". Having (finally) seen the Time Team Special on Durrington Walls, I can't see much of a resemblance.

I can't fathom the programme: about one of their favourites, Mike Parker-Pearson's project to explore the theory that the journey into ancestorhood after death was ceremonially represented (or enacted) by a journey from the "wooden henge" inside Durrington Walls, down to the river and across to the "stone henge" of Stonehenge.

Of course, everything was interpreted in terms of this particular theory. They made it out to be something new, but it has been on telly before... except that it was Woodhenge-to-Stonehenge. Woodhenge is a matter of metres outside Durrington Walls, but they didn't mention it once! (The Durrington Walls-to-Stonehenge version is in Francis Pryor's Britain BC.)

Parker-Pearson mentioned, in so many words, that the ditch on the inside of the henge bank is as if to keep something in rather than out and that there was therefore something very special about the place. But then he said they had found houses inside (albeit rather small ones), which seems rather mundane to me! And idea of the "sacred grove", Stage One headstones or whatever they are (concentric rings of post holes) inside the sacred enclosure is knocked rather flat by the rings of post holes at Woodhenge just outside the enclosure. (i.e. the "sacred" and the "secular" are to be found both inside and outside the enclosure.)

They applauded themselves for discovering the first ever Neolithic road, from the enclosure to the river {No surprise to anyone here, I suspect.} and said it was evidence that Durrington Walls and Stonehenge formed a single complex, connected via the road, the river and the Avenue. But if they expected people to actually go there, wouldn't they have to connect to the highways regardless?

Remember: Stonehenge is not a ring of standing stones.

The vast majority of animal remains is of pigs. {I have read that the Celts had a particular thing for pigs... though that book said the Celts were Germans.... On the other hand, pigs are supposed to come from China... and there are those Tocarians over there...} And some had bad teeth, as if they'd been fed on honey or something. Lots of arrowheads about, too.

Sounds like an enclosure for keeping the special pigs penned; a few huts for their tenders; maybe a gatehouse; and an artificial forest where newbies can bag their first kill (fat pigs, easy to kill, good to feast on): a venue for coming-of-age ceremonies.
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Mick Harper
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This is all virtually identical to my conclusions when I watched the programme, insofar as I remember them.

The story about the "sacred river route" has an interesting "history". For years and years nobody ever bothered with the local rivers because they're nothing special and don't even go particularly close to Stonehenge (cos it's on a chalk plateau). However, as time passed, it was discovered that the Blue Stones were mined in South Wales so a minor industry grew up explaining how they got the Stones all the way from Wales. (Complete with a re-enactment of the journey using neolithic equipment which finished up with a large boulder slipping to the bottom of Milford Haven...whoops.)

But the tough bit was getting the megaliths up onto Salisbury Plain. So naturally some bright spark said "How about floating them up the local rivers?" To which, instead of some other bright spark saying, "Dinna be daft, mucker, you couldn't float a teatray up those tiddly streams", another even brighter spark said "Yeah, that'll do."

(They would naturally have staged another re-enactment but unfortunately it only got as far as Milford Haven.)

But still the local streams were now firmly "in the picture" and were dredged into (no pun intended) for the usual stuff about geezers in long white smocks processing along sacred ways, sacrificing virgins and so forth.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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"Of course, the river wouldn't have looked like this back then," they said. "Not so managed."

"Why the hell not?!" I exclaimed.
My VCR didn't answer.
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Mick Harper
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"Not so managed."

A very curious comment indeed. All the local rivers are "managed" as trout streams (a very major and profitable local industry) which entails leaving them exactly in their natural state. However if they mean "managed" in the sense of embanking, flood control and so forth then clearly the ancient rivers would have been even less suitable for naviagational purposes than they are now. The wildly expensive Kennet and Avon Canal had to be built in the nineteenth century precisely because of the difficulties navigating anything from west to east in southern England.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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There are of course 2 'Avon Rivers' as far as I know in Britain

There are 8 Avons - 4 in England, 3 in Scotland and 1 (the Afan) in Wales. So where does 'river' come from? Maybe a river was a 'watery drover's road' (cf. the A/S term 'whale-road' for sea) or a 'watery stonemason's route'. The Hebrew for stone, eben, is very like Avon.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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According to Etymonline

Stonehenge
c.1130, Stanenges, lit. "stone gallows," perhaps so called from fancied resemblance to old-style gallows with two posts, with the second element related to the verb hang. Some antiquarians suggest the notion may be of "supported in the air, that which hangs in the air" (cf. henge-clif, for L. præruptum), in ref. to the lintel stones, but the order of the elements and the inflexion is against this. An ancient name for it was the Giant's Dance.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Hatty wrote:
According to Etymonline

Stonehenge
c.1130, Stanenges, lit. "stone gallows," perhaps so called from fancied resemblance to old-style gallows with two posts, with the second element related to the verb hang. Some antiquarians suggest the notion may be of "supported in the air, that which hangs in the air" (cf. henge-clif, for L. præruptum), in ref. to the lintel stones, but the order of the elements and the inflexion is against this. An ancient name for it was the Giant's Dance.

Ok. If Henges are Gallows, and if Gauls is just another rendering of Gallows, then are the Gauls the builders of the Gallows?
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Duncan


In: Yorkshire
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Ok. If Henges are Gallows, and if Gauls is just another rendering of Gallows, then are the Gauls the builders of the Gallows?

Who are the Gauls? Caesar conquered the Gallic tribes in modern France before coming to Britain in 55 BC. THOBR tells us the natives of France speak French. Therefore if the Gauls built the Gallows then the French built Stonehenge. THOBR argues that the English built Stonehenge. The orthodox view i.e. what we teach our kids in schools and universities is that it was built by the Neolithic farmers over 4000 years ago. Modern genetics reckons these people came from Spain so the Spanish built Stonehenge. Anyone for tapas?
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Mick Harper
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Actually I rather hedged my bets re the building of Stonehenge. The "builders" of Stonehenge were undoubtedly local dudes in the sense that it woud have taken hundreds of able-bodied locals (yokels) to do the heavy work. These people are undoubtedly English-speakers as per THOBR. However the "designers" of Stonehenge -- and by implication the people operating the Megalithic system -- could have been anyone (even English-speakers). The distribution of megalithic remains, along the western littoral of the European mainland, leads me to suppose that the Megalithics were the Goicelic-speakers (aka "the Celts" in orthodox-speak) but I am highly suggestible on the point. As Dan so ruthlessly exploits.

On the question of the identity of the Gauls I tend to assume that these were not French-speakers but the ruling elite of France. Since Caesar gives us the clear impression that the Gauls operated on both sides of the channel, and the Druids certainly did, I am of the tentative opinion that the Gauls were also Goidelic-speakers, living en masse in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales etc but operating as a thin veneer in the rest of France, Britain, Belgium, Northern Italy etc.

When an opinionated person like myself says 'tentative' he really means "Dunno".
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Duncan wrote:
Who are the Gauls? Caesar conquered the Gallic tribes in modern France before coming to Britain in 55 BC. THOBR tells us the natives of France speak French.

Yes. The natives of Gaul spoke French. That stands to reason. But the natives of Gaul (the territory ruled by the Gauls) were not necessarily the "Gauls" themselves.

Therefore if the Gauls built the Gallows then the French built Stonehenge.

No. Therefore, if the Gauls built the Gallows then Stonehenge was built by the rulers of the French.

Now, if the builders of Stonehenge were English then it follows that the English ruled France. But please don't pay much attention to me. I don't believe anything I say.
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