View previous topic :: View next topic |
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
Trackways were laid in wet areas like the Somerset Levels using stones as the base and brushwood or, more formally, planks (as for boats?). A similar principle could apply to island construction. Unless some of these offshore islets are remnants or termini of trackways/ causeways, partially underwater or eroded.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Boreades

In: finity and beyond
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper wrote: | Millstones and coracles are both round. |
So are Polo mints, pancakes and papadoms. Your point is....?
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
If you read it, the millstones et al. will make sense. Sort of.
The intro says (I think) the book took its inspiration from the greatest seafarers of all time, Polynesians ... people in canoes navigating, apparently successfully, the open ocean are almost universally ignored or just referred to en passant.
[The way to 'tackle' the book, for me at least, was to marvel at the authors' scholarship, the cross-cultural myths, and let the overarching theme carry you along. The chapters are quite short and it can be read in short stages as on a journey.]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
|
|
|
|
So are Polo mints, pancakes and papadoms. Your point is....? |
I was merely trying to assist with your enigmatic comment:
But millstone might just have been a name for a type of ship. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Ishmael

In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
The islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, off the southern coast of Newfoundland, are connected together by a most convenient causeway (one of hundreds of similar causeways that litter the harbors and bays of Newfoundland in an abundance unremarked by mainstream earth science).
Geologists assure us that the causeway between these two French islands is entirely natural in origin, and offer an explanation for its origin that is eminently rational, despite the feature being present virtually nowhere else in the world where two islands are in such close proximity in the open ocean. Nevertheless, natives of the islands insist that the causeway that unites their community is not natural at all, but was effected by the enormous number of ship wrecks which occurred between the islands.
It is my suspicion that the local inhabitants have it right. But of course, that the wrecks in question were deliberate.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
Boreades wrote: | There are quite a few legendary floating stones.
St. Declan’s forgotten bell floated after him on a stone. St. Patrick’s leper floated from Britain to Ireland on the Saint’s portable altar. Floating stones are mentioned by Adamnan in his Life of Columba, also by Tinmouth in his vita of St. Justinanus, while the Book of Leinster narrates that four saints crossed the ocean on a flagstone. The legend of how St. Piran floated on a millstone from Ireland to Cornwall is well known.
There is also similar tradition of floating stones in the Pacific. The founders of Ponape, in the Caroline Islands, came from Yap on floating stones.
One could easily assume that being able to float stones was a magical power that the Celtic Saints demonstrated to prove to the "Old Folk" that they were the new kids on the block. A bit like Moses and Aaron with the snake/rod tricks.
But millstone might just have been a name for a type of ship. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
The west is now trying to obscure the origins of our chronology, with CE replacing AD. Christian chronology must go, it has served its purpose, it has connotations of the British Empire. The origins of the chronology must be mystified.
The Romans pulled off the same trick by introducing to the world a pacifist Christian chronology, alongside a history of Saints engaged in voluntary conversions, martyrdom, incredible pilgrimages. This obscured the military origins of the Roman empire.
St Paul was a conman in the sense that he was the apostle single-handedly given the mythical role of transporting Christianity from East to West.
Christianity is a western state imperial religion that has later sought to obscure its origin in Eastern mysticism. Christianity has travelled west to east, not the other way round.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|