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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| One of the main arguments against the Prescelly theory is that the stones would have to sail on the open sea, which would have been dangerous. |
This St Piran legend tells of the (mill)stone floating. Are there cork-producing trees in Ireland as in Portugal?
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I suppose 'Kil' could be 'cell'. I wonder if the blue stones are supposed to be sky stones. Kil may be related to Sil as in Silbury (thinking of ciel and celestial). Don't know about 'Mysteries' but there's surely a connection between earth and sky in a hill of the size of Silbury. |
Another aerial-ish theory from the same book: (I promise the last!)
'Michael Dames concluded that the mystery of Silbury can be explained only when we recognize that the hill itself is intended to represent the womb of a pregnant woman. Seen from above, with its oddly-shaped surrounding moat, Silbury resembles a Sheila-na-gig seen in profile -- a woman squatting in the birth position, with her legs open. Dames believes that Silbury was the scene of a Stone-Age religious rite. At harvest time, when the corn was ready to be cut, country people would climb to the terrace just below the summit of the hill, to watch the spectacle of the goddess giving birth, with the aid of Diana, the moon. At eight o'clock on Lammas Eve (August 7th), the moon rises over Waden Hill; it falls across the thigh of the mother and indicates the vulva; at ten o'clock it touches the left knee, and at eleven thirty, the baby's head -- the reflection of the moon in the moat -- appears to emerge from between the mothers legs. A few hours later it falls on the breast, and the reflection of moon in the water simulates flowing milk. (A legend reported by Aubrey says that the hill was raised 'while a posset of milk was seething'.) The child held on the belly is now feeding, and the corn can be cut. The earth mother has given birth.'
So there you go....
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | There is no track. There can be no dead ends. You can never be absolutely certain that you are going the right way. The 'track' is simply a ley-line, a sequence of landscape features arranged in a straight line that ends at Avebury, and which it is your job to recognise and follow. |
This doesn't make sense. You've got a state-of-the-art engineering corps capable of erecting massive stones and yet you can't build a decent road? Pull the other one.
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| Claire, does your Colin Wilson person have anything on dragons? |
Not really. But interestingly enough, after discussing the theories of Lethbridge and another, Guy Underwood (see below) he discusses John Michell, Chinese feng-shui and the path of the dragon...
Guy Underwood (retired solicitor, JP and local councilor) was interested in dowsing prehistoric sites. He was testing a theory that barrows and other prehistoric sites were crossed by underground streams... (Apparently Carnac is built over parallel underground streams.) He concluded they were, but that there was another type of 'magnetic force' -- in fact two types, also acting. He called the narrower type 'track lines' -- parallel lines of magnetic force -- and the other type 'aquastats' -- two sets of parallel lines running parallel. ... (I can transcribe the detail if anyone is interested) The prehistoric sites were selected, in his opinion, by these magnetic forces.
I'm guessing, from the reference to him, that John Michell's theories (and the path of the dragon) are already well known here?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| But, there's one place where you can't use the cup-and-maze system and that is when you are actually in the vicinity of Avebury itself. Now veering northwards or southwards might take you past Avebury itself. So something special replaces the cup-and-maze system around Avebury. |
Why would a system of anything be needed? In the vicinity of Avebury you would be able to see where you were heading...Windmill Hill. Once you have an obvious landmark signposts would be superfluous.
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Grant
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| So something special replaces the cup-and-maze system around Avebury. |
The stones themselves? Avebury is enormous.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Claire wrote: | | He was testing a theory that barrows and other prehistoric sites were crossed by underground streams.... |
No good having land without a reliable water supply so it's necessary to know exactly where to find this precious resource of course. (Not a problem in the Chilterns where springs ooze everywhere but must be more complicated in the chalk area to discover the water course). Irrigation is as essential in chalk uplands as in a desert; indeed my first sighting of Silbury Hill for some reason brought the great pyramids to mind.
The source of the Thames is often said to be situated at Seven Springs in the Cotswolds, also the source of the River Churn, after which Cirencester.or Corinium is named; though the Churn is regarded as a tributary of the Thames this is still, rather surprisingly, open to debate. Churn is said to be pronounced Korinn which recalls previous discussions on the significance of 'core' words like corn, horn and kern(el) and cygnet relating to 'king' (OE cyning). Swans are associated with the Thames and Avon rivers, most are indeed specifically royal birds; are they only in southern England?
Chalk streams and the water meadows of the Thames support a diversity of flora and fauna with such evocative names as water crowfoot, watercress, dragonflies, herons and kingfishers; dragonflies (and damselflies) are particularly easy to spot, the vivid blue shows up best in the shade cast by trees and thickets at the water's edge. There are legends, apparently, surrounding the pyramids of people reporting mysterious flashes of blue light, but this is something Claire would know more about.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| The stones themselves? Avebury is enormous. |
Like lighthouses on land. That makes sense I agree. And the 'calendars' mean you can calculate the time the journey takes.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| He called the narrower type 'track lines' -- parallel lines of magnetic force -- and the other type 'aquastats' -- two sets of parallel lines running parallel. ... (I can transcribe the detail if anyone is interested) The prehistoric sites were selected, in his opinion, by these magnetic forces. |
It would make more sense if the prehistoric sites were selected due to their proximity to water sources surely? The whole of the chalk uplands area is beginning to appear like a massive irrigation project. Perhaps the pyramids had a similar function, helping to make the desert bloom; irrigation systems are supposed to be an 'Arab invention'.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Hopton-on-Sea has no significance whatsoever. Nobody wants to go there. It is only of Megalithic significance because, as it happens, the longest east-west landline in Britain finishes there. But lots and lots and lots of people want to go to the Norfolk flint mines (we know this because Norfolk flints are found all over Britain), and lots and lots and lots of people want to go to the East Anglian ports (to go to Scandinavia). You just pop off the line wherever convenient. |
No disrespect to Norfolk flints but are they worth crossing the entire island for? Conversely, lots and lots of people are interested in Cornish tin.
It makes more sense if the longest and oldest track, the Icknield Way, started from rather than ended in the part of the island most accessible to traders from the Netherlands, Baltic and northern Europe wanting to get to where it's all happening in the south west. Icknield Way is cautiously assumed to take its name from the Iceni. Likewise, the St. Michael Line could just as easily lead to not from St. Michael's Mount.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| This doesn't make sense. You've got a state-of-the-art engineering corps capable of erecting massive stones and yet you can't build a decent road? Pull the other one. |
A most fundamental matter that we must nail down before everything else. We know for certain, because of the archaeological evidence, that Britain has had long distance trade for approximately five thousand years. In order to conduct long distance trade you must be able to get from A to B and back again. You (or your distribution system) must be able to get from Norfolk to Westmoreland and back again to trade flints.
Now consider the history of roads during that five thousand years. Britain has had a decent national road system for about a tenth of that period -- that's three hundred years during the Roman occupation and again in the period 1800-2000 AD. Why so short? That's simple. Roads are enormously expensive to build and maintain. In order to get a decent national road system you have to have a) a unitary government and b) a real determinationon on the part of that government to have a national road system.
Notice, it's got nothing to do with technical ability. Roads are not technically difficult. It is paying for them that is the problem and maintaining them for any length of time is even more of a problem. Unless you've got a way to pay for them, there won't be any. Or at any rate not long distance roads, there will always be local ones because people will always pay for something they themselves need.
This is why the Megalithic System is the way it is. There are no roads but there is a navigation system so that people can use whatever is to hand. Often that will be using local roads going from village to village in roughly the right direction; sometimes, when the circumstances are particularly favourable, it may be something continuous like the Ridgeway, but a lot of the time it is just using your loaf and your experience to just...make your way. Because you know where you're going.
So, as the full system is unveiled, keep asking yourself, "How much would that cost and how long will it last if left without maintenance?" And the answer is nearly always, "Actually not that much if you can get a crowd together and it's lasted so long it's still mostly there today!"
So, just to put the end point in place, the answer to "How not to miss Avebury" is The Cursus. Have a read about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus which is just the ones that archaeologists know about for various reasons, but then remind yourself what the Avebury one looked like in the mid 1800's
| The line may be traced southward, from Marlborough Downs, along a sloping valley which crosses the regular coach-road about Fyfield. Down the Lockridge, towards Alton, there they lie -- called wethers at one place, large stones at other places. At Linchet's, otherwise Clatford Bottom, we have the Devil's Den: a cromlech, apparently. |
Whenever you have a really important can't-miss place in the system, you build one of these chains to intercept people and redirect them to where they have to go. It doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't even have to be continuous, just unmistakable.
But mostly you're on your own, on your ley-line, with your stone-circle compass.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| No disrespect to Norfolk flints but are they worth crossing the entire island for? |
No disrespect to your perceived need for flint tools, Hatty, but we know they were because they are found all over the place. Right back to the late Neolithic. So there must have been a trans-Britain transport system since the Neolithic.
| Conversely, lots and lots of people are interested in Cornish tin. |
Well, they are certainly interested in bronze for which they need tin. And we find bronze objects everywhere so, yes, either tin or bronze or bronze goods must have been traded from Cornwall to every part of Britain. So there must have been a trans-Britain transport system since the beginning of the Bronze Age.
| It makes more sense if the longest and oldest track, the Icknield Way, started from rather than ended in the part of the island most accessible to traders from the Netherlands, Baltic and northern Europe wanting to get to where it's all happening in the south west. Icknield Way is cautiously assumed to take its name from the Iceni. Likewise, the St. Michael Line could just as easily lead to not from St. Michael's Mount. |
Be my guest at theorising. I am just telling you about the Megalithic bit of the puzzle. The Icknield Way might be later than the St Michael Line.
I would have thought straightforward ship transport Cornwall to Denmark would be quicker and cheaper, though it may be that tin is sufficiently valuable to go via the 'safer' overland route.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Mick wrote:
| I would have thought straightforward ship transport Cornwall to Denmark would be quicker and cheaper, though it may be that tin is sufficiently valuable to go via the 'safer' overland route. |
If bronze was as valuable as it is presumed to be in the Bronze Age the safest route was one that offered the least opportunity for your goods to be stolen. The direct route from Cornwall to Denmark WAS the safer route.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Roads are not technically difficult. It is paying for them that is the problem and maintaining them for any length of time is even more of a problem. Unless you've got a way to pay for them, there won't be any. Or at any rate not long distance roads, there will always be local ones because people will always pay for something they themselves need. |
Yes, this is very pertinent even now. Looking at the distribution of stone circles it's clear that Bodmin Moor and its environs would have had to lay on extra assistance to Danish tin-merchants and their ilk, erecting stones would be less costly than attempting to circumvent or drain the boggy terrain.
Every time the traveller reaches a stone circle he can stop to take his bearings and avoid stumbling into a bog. There wouldn't be a guaranteed 'line of sight' stretching far on the moors which are notoriously mist-enveloped.
| So, as the full system is unveiled, keep asking yourself, "How much would that cost and how long will it last if left without maintenance?" And the answer is nearly always, "Actually not that much if you can get a crowd together and it's lasted so long it's still mostly there today!" |
Both are such undeniably correct points that they've raised all manner of perplexed questions; the problem seems to lie in reconciling the primitive nature of the building materials with the sophisticated understanding of geography.
| Whenever you have a really important can't-miss place in the system, you build one of these chains to intercept people and redirect them to where they have to go. It doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't even have to be continuous, just unmistakable. |
Yes, in the chalk upland area they would stand out dramatically. So a ley line is an imaginary line drawn in your head to get from one stone circle to another which by dint of continuous use has become marked by the feet and hooves of centuries of travel from the west coast of Cornwall in order to reach Avebury?
The wiki article points out they follow astronomical alignments which is in line with their purpose of directing the traffic. Has anyone else come up with your explanation? It's so satisfyingly simple and logical.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| If bronze was as valuable as it is presumed to be in the Bronze Age the safest route was one that offered the least opportunity for your goods to be stolen. The direct route from Cornwall to Denmark WAS the safer route. |
Komoro, your air of inappropriate certainty (always pronounced) is latterly becoming alarming and should be attended to.
We have absolutely no idea about the state of piracy in the English Channel in the Bronze and Iron Ages. On the principal of "What is is what was" I would have thought a long trip along a narrow sea positively invites attack. But as I say, I cannot compute what these risks were vis a vis the land route. Since the system may have lasted from c 5000 BC to c 37 AD I expect it varied from time to time.
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