Way Out West (Pre-History)

[Duncan]

[Mick Harper]

The two branches of 'Celtic" are a bit of a nuisance for both schools. If they were already branched before their arrival in Europe then the mystery of their origins is, as it were, doubled. On the other hand if, as Applied Epistemology would probably demand in the absence of anything else, one is an offshoot of the other then there is the question of how they got separated. It would be neat if we could bifurcate using the sea but, as you say, both branches cross the sea.

On the question of comprehensibility, I am reliably informed that Scots and Irish Gaelic are essentially the same language, that Welsh and Cornish are distinguishable but not very (it being difficult to reliably know what Cornish is), but I have no information as to whether Bretons can happily converse with the Welsh. There is the secondary matter of whether we can rely on historical accounts that the Bretons are merely Cornish/Welsh relocated AD. And of course the Celtiberians are a complete enigma.

My bones tell me (and the Celtic Revival tells me) that the Gaels (q-Celtic) are the only branch that goes places -- the Welsh are incredibly hopeless at any collective endeavour -- and would be my candidate for Megalithic Man. I'm not sure I entirely agree with you about Denmark being Megalithic -- this is Dan's Big Beef -- but in any case the wider spread of Megaliths (to include North Africa, Malta etc) would reflect the trading/political compass of the Gaels rather than where they necessarily lived. In my view the very close affinity (even within the British Isles) between lots-of-megaliths and lots-of-'Celts' is too strong to ignore. Though too weak to be dogmatic.

[DPCrisp]

[Keimpe]

[Mick Harper]

Look, let's get this gardening almanack stuff out of the way once and for all. Farmers are simply not interested in the date (except the last date for applying for their subsidy cheques). They go by soil temperature and catkins and stuff like that. The idea that they need to know anything exact (and will pay zillions of megalithic pounds to find out -- and then presumably spread the news by messenger outside Salisbury Plain) is just so ludicous that only archaeologists would dream it up.

Much the same is true of anybody who does need to know the date since all you have to do is to count 365 from the last date and add a day now and again. Why build bleedin' Stonehenge for the purpose?

As for people saying, "Hey, kameraden, let's build a stupendous monument to commemorate 12495 BC but make sure it's so enigmatic that even in 14501 years time they still won't know what the fuck it's all about," well, puh-lease, do me a flavour.

Yes of course they are accurate calendars but the only reason you need accurate calendars is for navigation and surveying over long distances. Stonehenge, as John Michel has amply demonstrated, is the place where the Irridium Rod of the Megalithic Yard was kept (in the form of the cross-pieces across the trilithons) and where most of the major observations were made (or at any rate standardised).

As for the Brazilian stuff, this is old hat. There's long been known to a major "Megalithic" trail through the jungle. As you know, the Aryan-Altaic-Semitic languages all originally came from America: the first crossing the North Atlantic by boat and using the Megalithic maritime system to spread north-west to south-east from Britain to India; the second lot used the Bering Strait route and settled east to west from eastern Siberia to Finland; and the third lot made the short-sea crossing from the the tip of Brazil to West Africa and settled in a south-west to north-east swathe from there as far as the Tigris-Euphrates.

They all mixed 'n' matched the basic methodology. John Neal has amply demonstrated that all the world's measures (including Aztec temples) are built using local adaptations of the "English" ie Stonehenge measuring system.

[Komorikid]

Not only Neal but also Knight and Butler have proved that all modern measurements (inch, foot, metre ... that's right, imperial and metric) are all directly related to the Megalithic Yard and this specific accurate distance could be reproduced anywhere in the world by celestial observation of Venus. The system of measurement is based on a circle of 366 degrees not the later derived 360 degree one. This system is not only accurate on Earth but also has Megalithic Yard ratios in the Earth-Moon-Sun distances.

[Mick Harper]

Bad news that the Megalithic Yard is directly related to the metre as well as the foot. The metre, as far as I know, is genuinely artificial (a mixture of Froggie estimates about the size of the earth and some later messing about) so it looks as though any measure can be 'directly related' to the Megalithic Yard if you try hard enough.

[Komorikid]

Nothing new under the Sun
The modern metric system is for all intents and purposes a product of French invention but the basis on which it was extrapolated were well know and used regularly in ancient times.
They merely re-jigged a measuring system that had been forgotten. The standard Ancient Egyptian Cubit was virtually an exact 500mm and most measuring device at the time were based on a Double Cubit. The ancient measures were in fact based on the geodetic measure of the Earth. The volume of liquids in both imperial and metric are also part of the same equation. All the distance, area and volume measures we use today all have their basis in the Megalithic Yard.

[Mick Harper]

Well, yes, I'm sure you're right, Komoro, but the question is how directly is 'directly related'. Neal goes to five decimal points to establish that (let's say) the Aztecs actually used the Megalithic Yard in their own system. But the French did not use either the Megalithic Yard or the British foot (or the Ancien Regime French measure) directly to fashion the metre. They started de novo on the basis of how far from the equator to the pole and dividing by a million (or whatever).

Of course it is true that the Revolutionaires used the old system as an approximation in the sense of "Mes amis, we need ze measure that approximates to a man's step like ze rosbifs' yard" but that is not the same as 'directly related'. Even using the same measure, eg the earth's circumference, as the basis for measurement does not make for a 'direct relationship', though it would be useful to be able to establish that this was in fact the case.

It ought to be acknowledged however that in all these matters (including things like where to put the zero meridian line) there are strong suspicions that the eighteenth century Enlightenistas knew far more about the ancient ways than they were letting on.

[Ishmael]

[Duncan]

[Mick Harper]

Yes, sorry, Dunc, one of the penalties of taking stuff from one place (and of yesteryear) and plonking them down here is that context gets a bit mangled. However, as I remember it, ths was a little piece of coat-trailing mischief-making on my part because it formed part of a treasure hunt which, in fact, took place a few months later.

However I can say the original genesis of the American origins was this:
1. The widest spread language grouping in the world today (today being defined as before 1500) is the Aryan/ Semitic/ Altaic 'super-family'.
2. Being a super-family means that all three language groups must have originated in the same place
3. Plotting their distribution on a world-map makes no sense if this common starting point was anywhere in the Old World (try it).
4. But it does if they all started from the New World.

[Duncan]

So where does Africa fit in?

[Ishmael]

[Duncan]