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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A fellow researcher is visiting Cadiz and is open to doing a spot of digging. With his camera. We're all agreed Cadiz is a hotspot but we;'ve never discovered quite why or how. Get those little brain cells working and as Tony used to say, 'We've only got three days.to do it. Maybe more, depends on the crew and the weather. And the producer's drink problem.'
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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My Glastonbury lecture continues to divide the critics
Ron Burcham 23 hours ago
Bullshit |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A major theme of the Glastonbury lecture is the 'Venus Pool', large tidal pools which are a) incredibly rare and b) always 'natural' according to archaeologists and geologists. We say different. Here's the latest, in the Arran Islands, a prime spot for ancient navigation on the western seaboard of Europe.
This is a remarkable feature and a major attraction for the visitor. It is a natural rectangular shaped pool into which the sea ebbs and flow at the bottom of the cliffs south of Dún Aonghasa on Inis Mór. Access to it is gained by walking east along the cliffs from Dún Aonghasa or more easily by following the signs from the village of Gort na gCapall. |
You'll have to decide whether you agree with the Official Guide but, on the other hand, it sure don't look like any Venus Pool we've listed so far.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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It looks like this one had a lid!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Well, you've gnomically identified the problem. It is far too geometrically regular to be natural but far too geometrically regular to be a cormorant pool either. The obvious solution is to suppose, as the official text suggests, that it is a tourist attraction, except there is no chance that such a thing would be designed for tourists. Both the Venus Pools I am familiar with, on Lihou Island and Little Sark, have been minimally adapted for tourist swimming purposes (as was the one on Burgh Island) but, again, there seems no chance of that here since it would be a major investment in very recent times. Now clearly it has to some extent been made tourist-friendly but why make it rectangular when the whole point is to present it as a natural wonder!
Of course a striking shape would be beneficial to cormorants trying to find it but then why aren't the others? I remain mystified.
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My advice to your researcher is to do some very easy and basic research. Bring up www.floodmap.net for Cadiz, then increase the sea level to the period of history they are interested in. Very quickly they will note that the Island is deep under water, so anything from before Roman times may not be seen where one might expect it. Then focus on the areas which is above water; otherwise you are wasting your time. If they really do their work they will find the Hypogeum; but it is difficult to get to!!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Welcome, Andreas. Posts are made at great intervals and everyone treats threads as sequential (not clustered) so it is necessary for you to quote whatever it is you are replying to (unless it's the last one), since otherwise nobody would know what it was. I assume it was this
A fellow researcher is visiting Cadiz and is open to doing a spot of digging. With his camera. We're all agreed Cadiz is a hotspot but we've never discovered quite why or how. Get those little brain cells working and as Tony used to say, 'We've only got three days.to do it. Maybe more, depends on the crew and the weather. And the producer's drink problem.' |
I don't think anyone here knows what a hypogeum is and will probably disagree with you when you tell us.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We are always on the lookout for artificial intrusions that everyone else says are natural, in megalithically-significant places, eg Balos at the northwestern-most corner of Crete, facing the Peloponnese. See anything you fancy? The causeway, by the by, is constructed using what geologists are pleased to call natural cement.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Balos............
Ballast..........
Ships Ballast.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I raise this important point in my Glastonbury lecture (since nobody else ever does). When transporting heavy materials from A to B there is no guarantee that B will have heavy materials required in A. Therefore ballast will be needed for the return journey. This ballast will essentially be shipped free of charge from B to A. Therefore everybody will be on the lookout for material in B that may not be needed in A but if it's going to arrive anyway ... what the hell.
In my lecture, I show this to be granite blocks in the case of the Western Channel metals trade. We could probably find out what it was in Balos (and some pungent observations on the theory itself) from our Shipping Correspondent, Boreades, but he's doing a Donald Crowhurst re-enactment at the moment.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Mick Harper wrote: | A fellow researcher is visiting Cadiz and is open to doing a spot of digging. With his camera. We're all agreed Cadiz is a hotspot but we've never discovered quite why or how. |
Looking up the Catalan Company I came across the Hermos river and found it's the Gediz river (second largest river in Anatolia, says Wiki) but 'the ancient names of Hermos and Hermus are sometimes still used'.
I no longer take much notice of etymology but according to online etymology, caduceus is from Greek kērux ‘herald’. Could Cádiz be a form of 'Hermes'?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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By coincidence I am watching Elizabeth R and we've come to the Drake Singes King of Spin's Beard episode. Now Cadiz, being the oldest city in Europe (o.n.o.), should have silted up thousands of yonks ago but there it is, still Spain's main port. Seville was supposed to be but was silting up. We've always been obsessed about why the Megalithics and Big Tides are always so strongly associated but since (I think) Cadiz doesn't get much in the way of tides, perhaps we ought to be more obsessed with mercantile silt hydraulics generally.
PS I have left in a cricket joke to see whether Hatty 'corrects' it.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Tides are hard to predict in the Gulf of Cádiz, partly due to the Atlantic-meets-Med effect, whereas Seville is sheltered (and silted up). The inner bay of the gulf is protected from the surge, the outer bay's a corridor of uncertainty.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Drake Island is in the news. This is a tiny islet in Plymouth Sound and is held to be a place of mystery [fill in stories about pirates, smugglers and Frenchies, including Spanish Frenchies and Nazi Frenchies]. Nobody is interested in the real mystery
The island was initially known as St Michael's -- named after a twelfth century chapel built there |
Stop me if you've heard this one before but the island is virtually uninhabitable and the chances of a chapel having to be built on it in the twelfth century is close to nil. Megalithically, on the other hand.....
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Mick Harper wrote: | When transporting heavy materials from A to B there is no guarantee that B will have heavy materials required in A. Therefore ballast will be needed for the return journey. This ballast will essentially be shipped free of charge from B to A. Therefore everybody will be on the lookout for material in B that may not be needed in A but if it's going to arrive anyway ... what the hell.
In my lecture, I show this to be granite blocks in the case of the Western Channel metals trade. We could probably find out what it was in Balos (and some pungent observations on the theory itself) from our Shipping Correspondent, Boreades, but he's doing a Donald Crowhurst re-enactment at the moment. |
Hello boys, I'm back!
Rumours of my Donald Crowhurst re-enactment (or any resemblance to that man) are greatly exaggerated. I didn't get where I am today by sailing in circles in the Southern Atlantic and then committing suicide. Crowhurst was sadly more ambitious and optimistic than skilled and experienced. As evidenced by not even being able to get his boat (the Teignmouth Electron) to its start line without hitting immovable objects and knocking holes in the boat.
I have, instead, been re-using the well-known phrase of another Donald, the one and only Donald Rumsfeld.
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. |
This is in connection with the many mysterious anomalies and abnormalities to do with the Health Informatics currently being published on our current #1 (Top of the Pops) health issue. More to follow, elsewhere, perhaps in the Health forum. The "usual suspects" have got form. Serious form. This goes way back to the "theoretical mathematical modelling" used to justify government policy for several previous medical hysterics (foot and mouth, swine flu, avian flu, SARS, etc)
Meanwhile, to get back onto the blocks ... consider this normal.
M'Lady and my extensive dedication to the History of the Wine Trade has recently taken us on a tour of alcohol production and exporting establishments along the western coasts of France, Spain and Portugal.
On the way, we learnt that many old streets in Bordeaux and Porto are lined, not with gold, but with bricks from Britain. Oh and the brick warehouses as well. After the initial surprise, it's not a surprise as (of course) many of the family empires were based in Ireland and Britain, so sending & selling something in exchange for the booze was a win-win.
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