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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Stones Forum >> New Theory - Henges - Engineering in Prehistory
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New Theory - Henges - Engineering in Prehistory |
AnewMerlinian
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|  Posted 16-06-2006 at 04:29
Profane
Your entire vision. Of all these holy places, mechanized... even the people, drones.
That's not a world worth living in. Step away from your computer. Sit in the park. Watch the people. We're not drones.
Michael Young
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coldrum
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| Posted 16-06-2006 at 17:11
Though I like the archaeology,I know what you mean.
I can go to these places and I might know the archaeology behind them and wonder about what the people did there,but I end up just enjoying where ever I'm at,and it doesnt matter if it's raining either.
I tend to just let the surroundings take me over.
I can think about the archaeology later.
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AnewMerlinian
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| Posted 17-06-2006 at 09:07
JCAntunes:
A turntable-treadmill would work, and was, I think, within reach of their techology; should they have wanted to build one. The ideal way to have gone about it, would have been to build the stator ring out of driven wooden pilings, (having perhaps 3' beneath the ground, 6' above). The turntable could be supported on heavy spars about 1' off the ground, with lighter spars 1' from the top serving as push/tether points for the people or animals working it. The materials for the bushings would be a nagging problem, as large sheets of copper may have been beyond their technology, and greased leather would have deteriorated...
I remember that I too, had thought that people could be employed generating electricity on health-club equipment... without spending as much time with the plan. I expected, in my mind, that some people would call it ''the matrix''. But I was, in effect, toying with it as "my idea", just as you, with your patent, see this as "yours". And that gives one a psychological cushion, a feeling that even if we turn the wheel, we are in control. Such a feeling would be absent for many others.
My response to the idea of a clockwork hengeworld was unplanned. Now, I was seeing that type of thinking from the outside, and this was educational. It's just not life as I know or expect it to be, and it would ruin many fine people. One can make the rationalization that the machine serves society---that it has no desires of its own. But all-serve-the-machine-serves-all hasn't worked very well in human history. The machine serves who controls it, and controls who serve it.
I think part of what you're facing here, is that with the world spiraling into a mechanistic vortex, many of us are looking back on old times with a sort of assumed nostalgia. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there was a classic episode of old Star Trek, where the entire population of a planet was teleporting into their own past, (to escape their dying star). In a sense, that's what we do here. We see a time coming where humanity will have little purpose, (we wont be needed as ''coppertops''), and so look back on a time...
Returning to that time, in discussion, the henges are over-built and, often, under-rooted to serve as practical stator rings. Too much effort for the result. If they were intelligent enough to do this, they were also intelligent enough to do it better, if turntables were what they had in mind.
Please accept that these were religious and cultural centers, built during the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras; (the boundry is academic). Into the Bronze Age, barrow burials were being placed in their proximity, sometimes holding people with religious array. Their response to subordinating these to a worldly purpose would, I think, have been outrage.
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"For the stones to move the giants must dance." I know that's not the way you worded it, it just comes so close to old fashioned folk wisdom.
Legends... reach back through time to a place where they were either true, or believed. And they persist because someone wants to believe them. Sometimes they branch: ''Merlin moved the stones not by magic, but by using machines.'' "Merlin worked his magic with a wheel of twelve spokes''. Is a legend the truth? Well, life is more fun with a sense of, possibility ... ;-)
I hadn't heard your branch before. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. You're a skilled draftsman JC. There are other projects more worthy of your attention.
http://www.wheatgoddesses.com/merlin_s_wheel.html
Coldrum :-)
Sometimes one must forget two things to remember a third.
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JCAntunes
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| Posted 18-06-2006 at 18:13
Is it difficult to accept that people in that time could think like us?
Tell us what do you think about DaVinci Code!
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AnewMerlinian
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| Posted 18-06-2006 at 23:10
Well there's a problem with that JC. I didn't go see The DaVinci Code. I don't think of the DaVinci Code... So I can't be one of the "us" you intended.
However, your vision is getting its hearing. I am critisizing it. It is a frightening and dehumanizing virtuality. And I'm trying to talk you out of it. Maybe that's the worst crime of all, eh? You've summoned an "us", which I suppose makes me one of "them", which given the movie reference would be a cynical, power-hungry, murderous cleric.
What I always wanted to be, I assure you...
But I did use the words "us" and "we" myself, so let's take a look at this. We're shaped by our environments and our experiences, and the modern Western citizen grows up surrounded by machines, things that whir and spin... (sometimes we want to get away from it all.) This makes it easy for "us" to think in industrial terms.
They, by comparison, back in the day, didn't demonstratably have any machines more complicated than the bow, and the potter's wheel. One can project more, I'd like to too---without proof, which is not being forthcoming---but you're imagining an industrial revolution back then. They weren't intellectually prepared for that. Their minds understood the nuances of their environment and livelihoods, just like ours do. But it was a different environment, different livelihoods.
But in a way, I'm giving them more credit for being like "us" than you do. Your vision is roughly equivalent to removing all the pews from all the churches, installing generators and having the congregation turn them. Not content with that, you'd do the same in the cemetary. (Those barrows are, often, graves.) The reaction? People would refuse to consider it. They'd shake their heads and leave you alone. Until and unless it actually happened. Then there'd be uproar.
[ This message was edited by: AnewMerlinian on 2006-06-19 01:02 ]
[ This message was edited by: AnewMerlinian on 2006-06-19 01:32 ]
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cropredy
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| Posted 19-06-2006 at 11:24
Anew merlinian,
You said to jca., that the barrows were graves, and because many finds of bones and funery materials are commonly found, all accept them as this, but, it is possible that they were something else before they were graves ?
And that a later set of people adopted them for their burial sites?
I too can't imagine the almost mechanical world of giant ropes etc, but on a smaller scale, similer to windmills, I can imagine the round barrows and bell barrows been employed on a mechanical basis , with oxen or similer walking around them, perhaps then if the family who owned and operated them dceased, they were intered in the mounds and a new one was built ?
Kevin
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JCAntunes
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| Posted 19-06-2006 at 16:25
Cropredy, that is the idea that I imagined after my discovery. I thinked also that they could even burie the owner of the henge there has a homage for his work.
But imagine if they used that technology to work the stones and build something even bigger, with more religious meaning, such as the pyramids!...
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AnewMerlinian
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| Posted 20-06-2006 at 23:40
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On 2006-06-19 11:24, cropredy wrote:
it is possible that they were something else before they were graves ?
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Doubt it. ...It's "possible", unless it's already been demonstrated otherwise. Digging one's way into an established and settled earthen mound, like these would have been, would have left tell-tale marks, (a clear divide in the earth between that of the undisturbed barrow and that of the grave, with a compressed border between them), which would be visible to a trained archaeological team. I'd rate this a long long shot, (although I liked the idea of burying the miller with the mill:-).
But having barrows support turntable-treadmills is clumsy. The best way to build one of those would be on open, level ground. A dome of earth only complicates things.
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