Featured Title:
Redhead, the new thriller by Ian Cook 'a compulsive read' |
 |
| John Michell: From Atlantis to Avalon |
 |
| Login |
|
Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As a registered user you have some advantages like your own home page, fewer ads, and your contributions link to your page. |
| Who's Online |
There are currently, 126 guests and 3 members online.
You are a guest. To join in, please register for free by clicking here |
| |
Moderated by : Andy B , TimPrevett , coldrum , Klingon , MickM , TheCaptain , bat400 , davidmorgan , Runemage , SolarMegalith , sem
The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Stones Forum >> Stonehenge Lintel Awareness Campaign
|
 |
| Page 4 of 9 ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 ) |
| Author |
Stonehenge Lintel Awareness Campaign |
Dragonsinger
Joined:
09-05-2012
Messages: 21
from Bradford
 OFF-Line
|  Posted 15-09-2012 at 12:50
Hi Lintleman
"that technical and societal advancement run parallel"
I did not mean to suggest or infer such a thing and in fact I subscribe to your views about the roman society since hand in hand with enginering superiority we had the barbaric circuses and the two came together (literally) in the Circus Maximus. As far as it's failure goes there is a theory that says it's own technical succsess led to its downfall. This implicates the supply and distribution of water to the city of Rome by lead pipes as poisioning the population and preventing inteligent decisions by the rulling class thereby allowing the succsessfull barbarian attack.
In fact you may have hit upon a point regarding the abandonment or decline of Stonehenge. If the cultural developement lagged sufficiently behind the technical developement, I put it this way because the technical developement is still partly visible for us to see today, we could have gotten loss of interest and general apathy regarding the monument and since the resources needed to allow it's continued use and functioning would be an even greater strain on the general population than even supporting our current political classes it would be easy to let it simply fade away.
As far as cognitive archaeology is concerned I can only guess because as we let those with displayed (degree or doctorate etc) higher cerebral functions take charge or manage things we move further and further from the perceptions of the majority of society. Even this forum is occupied by those of us with a certain set of mindsets. Inquisitive, persistant, argumentative etc and it is an excellent forum for debate since we tend to listen and evaluate before we speak (well, OK, write) and we are OPEN to ideas including the one that we may be dead wrong.
I'll let Runemage hav the last word here;
"there are no one size fits all solutions when it comes to discussing megaliths or any of the other Mysteries subjects. Most have several very possible solutions but there's no way of proving which could be the right ones. Likely, maybe but definite, no."
As far as the lintels horizontality goes perhaps we are ascribing too much to asthetics for the reason. Perhaps it was practicality which caused it. Picture the lintels at lord knows what height above the gound and the high priests (a possible explanation for that phrase in this) walking round them for dramatic effect. next day the campfire conversation goes like this:
Yeah , well OK it was dramatic and spectacular, but do you realise what it costs in terms of food, skins and time to train one of these characters. That's the third one this year we've lost we have GOT to level off the top of those damn stones.
Also the suggestion that there was a gap in the lintels leaves us with a horseshoe shape. A possible echo of the lucky or protective element of horseshoe shapes?
Anyway think it over
Regards
Jim
 Profile
 Reply
|
Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
OFF-Line
| Posted 15-09-2012 at 17:08
Lintelman
... the notion that technological advancement runs parallel with societal advancement. It is often expressed in words like 'progress' and 'evolution'. Looking at the Roman Empire, it was technologically advanced by comparison to the characters who finally knocked it on the head, and they could only have done that because, I suggest, it failed for non-technological reasons.
... But we can't automatically assume that their society 'advanced' in the survival stakes. After all, what happened to the knowledge they acquired? In what form did it later manifest itself? What we see now might have been a technical evolutionary aberration or a cul de sac. Maybe there was a sect that had become obsessed with geometry, an early bunch of Pythagoreans. Unless a serious, objective study is made, along the lines of cognitive archaeology maybe, we are only guessing.
davidmorgan
I reckon there are loads of other unknown factors one needs to put into the equation - e.g. population density, life expectancy, diet, changing social interactions due to sedentism, etc, etc.
Gentlemen,
One of the most important measures we Moderns have to gauge our 'Progress' has been in counting the centuries by War or other calamity.
In the last century alone there were at least 150 conflicts of various intensity - some of which fundamentally changed the course of History.
We learned to fly in 1903, but you'd really have to search around to find someone who knows that date.
But, at least in America, gaffers and schoolchildren alike all know 7 December 1941.
A few weeks ago, on the death of Neil Armstrong, a young women said in passing that she remembered that story being 'way back' in 1981. (?!)
Landing on the Moon was among the most incredible, defining moments of all time.
But should we possess the Atomic Bomb?
In reviewing the Neolithic, we are essentially examining a skeleton. That this bone is nicked (scratched) in a certain way indicates thus & such an injury. Here we see how it was treated and that the individual lived on, and the like. Therefore those people had so-and-so capability.
But this is all we have.
There are no words, no guts, no footprints.
We infer behavior by the things they left behind and the physical development / advances they made over time.
Some of what we see is very linear - one event or item must follow the other.
But the Cultural advancements must, by their very nature, be two steps away from our understanding.
We are beginning to see that the Neolithic Peoples in the UK and elsewhere were a lot more sophisticated than we thought as few as 50 years ago. My view is that this advancement kept pace with Cultural Growth, in terms of the time it took for these things to be absorbed, unlike today. Exponential growth of development hadn't yet reached a pace where it could be measured in a single lifetime.
This is all true, more or less, until the advent of Electricity.
Who among the older of us can fully employ the astounding capability of a 4-G Android Smart Phone, when it was only a very few years ago that we were attempting to find the 'On' button of a computer? Who is sad that the VCR is long-gone? What's a Vinyl Record?
To paraphrase George, it's quite probable that the Neolithic was hardly a "Golden Age" of Humankind. But they had the time to develop and assimilate their advancements at a rate that allowed the Culture to keep pace. Once this rate becomes too fast to absorb efficiently is when things start to get confusing.
We don't know why this culture failed and their knowledge lost. War? Plague? Invasion by the ignorant? Boredom?
All guesses.
Rome's collapse was the end result of a long, slow decline of the infrastructure, pressure from far-flung regions, and a static center. We know this because people wrote it down.
We wouldn't see this in a skeleton unless there was a history book in the grave.
The thing that fascinates us about the Neolithic, so near in relative terms, is that we Don't know about the Cultural Engine that propelled it, and perhaps never will, because all we have is the euphemistic skeleton and a few grave goods.
Neil
____________________________
Profile
 Email
Reply
|
sem
Joined:
12-11-2003
Messages: 1710
from Bridgend,S.Wales
OFF-Line
| Posted 15-09-2012 at 22:49
"There are no words, no guts, no footprints."
Sorry to be an argumentative, honorary (no that's not honourable!) Welshman Feanor, but here in Wales there are loads of footprints. At Goldcliff near Newport they are reckoned to be Mesolithic and just down the road from me at Kenfig Beach are footprints which were dated to about (if my memory serves me correctly) 4300BC.
I've only just re-formatted my computer, but when I find the various links I'll PM them to you.
Best wishes
Sem
Profile
Reply
|
Runemage
Joined:
15-07-2005
Messages: 2412
from UK
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 01:52
Just a little more to throw into the mix, please as always pick up on anything you find relevant and discard the rest.
As for what the society was like during Stonehenge's construction and use phases, has or will anything come from the Durrington Walls project?
Also, we tend to be very insular when looking at SH and forget there was a whole country or rather several countries full of people with their own societies, some of whom travelled there and can't have failed to bring their own beliefs.
The Ness of Brodgar in Orkney which predates SH is turning up some fascinating finds almost on a daily basis during dig season and is thought to have been THE centre for Neolithic culture and advancement and the layout and number of their buildings changed significantly over time. It's been postulated that because of contemporary pottery finds at both sites that the people who lived there and erected those strange buildings travelled to SH and oversaw its construction. That's if I've remembered that bit correctly from the programme Neil Oliver did about it.
We don't tend to use the sea and rivers much today whereas in the Neolithic it was a primary route for travel, transport and likely trade and I feel we may well overlook the amount of journeys the people of that time could easily make. We tend to think of their society as fixed tribes in each area without much communication between them and I'm wondering if a greater proportion than we credit were actually multi-skilled and transient.
As for the flat lintels at SH for observation purposes, did that not also apply to the top of henges throughout the country? Obviously they would constantly erode with weather and use so it could have been a common sense step to construct one in a chosen spot which would be permanent.
It's also rather wondrous that something built so long ago can fire the imaginations of people worldwide from all walks of life.
Rune
Profile
Reply
|
Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 04:17
Quote:
|
On 2012-09-15 22:49, sem wrote:
"There are no words, no guts, no footprints."
Sorry to be an argumentative, honorary (no that's not honourable!) Welshman Feanor, but here in Wales there are loads of footprints. At Goldcliff near Newport they are reckoned to be Mesolithic and just down the road from me at Kenfig Beach are footprints which were dated to about (if my memory serves me correctly) 4300BC.
I've only just re-formatted my computer, but when I find the various links I'll PM them to you.
Best wishes
Sem
|
|
______________________________
C'mom, Sem -- 'Footprints' was a euphemism and you know it!
There's a ton of actual Footprints out there from a lot longer ago than the Mesolithic.
Sheesh - grant me a little prosaic license, will you guys?
(But yes! Do send me the links!)
________________________
EDIT: By the way Sem - in keeping with our little long-running Welsh joke - one twig of my family tree is from there; left in 1639 from the village of Truro. The irony is that there's a town here on Cape Cod (where we've lived since 1640) named Truro.
Now go clear your throat and call it a language!
[ This message was edited by: Feanor on 2012-09-16 05:44 ]
Profile
Email
Reply
|
Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 05:29
Rune,
I for one am not keeping Stonehenge insular from the rest. It was a well-visited Center for ... something, certainly. But life went on just fine across the far-flung Island around (and without) it.
There's a ton of information about regular people revealed from the Durrington digs. This is how, for example, they are able to associate the similarities between dwellings in Orkney and the South, albeit they built with stone on the Islands.
It is through these finds that we're able to make a definitive association between it and Great Henge. In point of fact, it is now thought that the Stones at the Henge were fashioned to mimic wood because of the Timber Circles at Durrington.
Life is perishable and so is wood. But make the imperishable Stone at our famous Cemetery look like wood, won't you?
And while you're at it, be sure those bloody lintels are level to the curvature of the Earth - there's a good fellow.
One of the things that strikes an emotional nerve is how the central hearth is situated in the houses found at Durrington. Just before the fire-pit are two slight depressions in the hard-packed chalk. This is where who knows how many generations of persons knelt there to tend the coals.
Preparing meals, heating water, taking the chill off, or just singing their babes to sleep at night.
Those old, worn little knee-shaped depressions in the chalk speak volumes about the simple, universal things in life that we can all readily identify with.
Rivers were their highways, there's little doubt. And since the Orkney's are islands and geographically difficult to reach, it follows that inter-coastal travel was a virtual certainty among their many accomplishments. The very old societies in Ireland and Anglesley are also easy proof of this.
The more we learn, the more we realize that theirs was a very fluid society, and they traveled around the realm a great deal, trading, passing news or just plain visiting family and friends.
The Orkney constructs are not all that 'strange', Rune. They built them like that because the weather there is utterly horrid on a good day, and they had these little closed communities to better associate with others. Who wants to go 1000 feet away in February to borrow a cup of goat-fat when you can just wander barefoot down the cozy corridor to Mr & Mrs Ugge's place. Have a nice cuppa while you visit and complain about the days-long storm raging outside.
Additionally, at this time it's a bit of a stretch to assume that the people of the Northern Islands 'Oversaw' the constructs of the South. They are older, it's true, and may well have made some contributions. But there are some rather valid hints that, though SH remains unique, it finds certain echoes from Brittany, Spain and the Basque Region. There's a lot of thought going on with this right now, Neil Oliver's program notwithstanding.
Best,
Neil
_________________________
Profile
Email
Reply
|
Runemage
Joined:
15-07-2005
Messages: 2412
from UK
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 15:36
Hi Neil,
The Orkney constructs are not all that 'strange', Rune. They built them like that because the weather there is utterly horrid on a good day, and they had these little closed communities to better associate with others. Who wants to go 1000 feet away in February to borrow a cup of goat-fat when you can just wander barefoot down the cozy corridor to Mr & Mrs Ugge's place. Have a nice cuppa while you visit and complain about the days-long storm raging outside.
Ah, I think maybe you've misunderstood the ones I meant. Not the Skara Brae cosy living accommodation complete with smallest room plumbing, but the unique and odd Ness ceremonial complex between two major circles and enclosed inside an almost ridiculously thick wall, (don't know about a flat top!) so all goings-on were hidden from bystanders. At least one of the buildings has a hearth in the entranceway, so you are purified by fire before you get any further. Extreme central heating maybe  or a discouragement to any visitors. http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=17401
Profile
Reply
|
Dragonsinger
Joined:
09-05-2012
Messages: 21
from Bradford
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 16:46
Hi guys
I don't know when deforrestation of the Orkneys and Shetlands took place but the houses were stone built because stone was all they had to build with.
If you are admitting that long distance travel by sea was fairly common then who is to say that the Orcadians did not also contribute to the other megalithic cultures mentioned? No one is saying that they sent a contract gang of navies and a navie boss to these places but why not a consulting engineer?
I did see the programme mentioned and quite frankly the complex is nearer in size and concept to the rgyptian pyramid complexes and it knocks Stonehenge sideways, BUT, I would like to deal with one mystery at a time so it will be a while before I pay it any serious attention.
Rune you are quite right about the other cultures and on a personal note the Wessex cultures, there have been more than one, are often simply being used as a shorthand instead of saying the peoples of the neolithic/paleolithic/bronze age etc.
Regards
Jim
Profile
Reply
|
Lintelman
Joined:
23-08-2012
Messages: 33
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 18:04
Dearest Neil,
You have said, 'My view is that this advancement kept pace with Cultural Growth, in terms of the time it took for these things to be absorbed, unlike today. Exponential growth of development hadn't yet reached a pace where it could be measured in a single lifetime.'
With your sufferance I shall do a bit of discourse analysis on this statement to get my point over. You speak of 'advancement', 'growth' and 'development'. To me these words are based on a post-enlightenment construct. They are bound up with the idea that the human race is engaged in a never ending process of betterment, getting cleverer and cleverer ever day in every way. Okay, there may be a few small glitches with the occasional world war, but, in general the followers of this notion (pretty well all of us in the west) assume that this process is inherent in our existence. Suppose it isn't. Suppose you live in a society where betterment does not exist, either in material items or in intellect.
In such a culture, why would you bother to build Stonehenge? It would be madness indeed to insist that the stone lintels were horizontal. There has to be a reason that can justify the effort. So, I argue that these people were, even then, dropping into the rut that we now find ourselves.
By the above argument, I believe I have demonstrated that it is possible to reveal small aspects of their cultural outlook. I suppose it is a sort of detection process. Am I wrong? If I'm not, then there must be a point in doing more than just making wild guesses.
Profile
Email
Reply
|
Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 22:25
Dearest Jack,
I confess to being forever stymied by arid Anglo humoUr.
Have I just been roundly scolded?
Neil
Profile
Email
Reply
|
sem
Joined:
12-11-2003
Messages: 1710
from Bridgend,S.Wales
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 23:33
Feanor
Not only have you been roundly scolded by the English, but also by the honorary Welsh for suggesting that Truro is in Wales.
Mind you, Cardiff to Truro to Brittany was probably a leisurely stroll in the Paleolithic and may well have left some footprints.
Best wishes
Sem
Profile
Reply
|
PeteG
Joined:
21-11-2002
Messages: 287
from Avebury
OFF-Line
| Posted 16-09-2012 at 23:44
er, wasn't Cornwall once known as West Wales?
Profile
Reply
|
Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
OFF-Line
| Posted 17-09-2012 at 03:51
WoW!
I just checked GE.
My sincerest apologies to those Welshmen whom I may have offended.
(Not you, Sem)
All these years I had thought Truro was in Wales.
Silly me.
Oh well ... Cornwall is very cool too.
[ This message was edited by: Feanor on 2012-09-17 03:54 ]
Profile
Email
Reply
|
Lintelman
Joined:
23-08-2012
Messages: 33
OFF-Line
| Posted 17-09-2012 at 12:52
It would be totally unacceptable, Neil, for me to scold a man who lives so far away from us here in East Wales. I was merely hoping to make a point. How's the weather over there in Far West Wales?
Jack (in Welsh London)
Profile
Email
Reply
|
Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
OFF-Line
| Posted 17-09-2012 at 16:57
OK ... Alright. Sheesh.
I believe we were discussing "Cultural Advancement". Clearly you ladies & gents have done some research, but have little first-hand knowledge ...
Please allow me give a brief lesson.
First we go to a quaint little country and make friends. Then we insist on helping lift the country out from its dreadful 3rd-World Status. Then we'll flood you with money and make you dependent on us for televisions, urban rap music and narcotics, while native workers are paid 10-cents an hour to assemble $600 i-Pads.
After a while, a thankless portion of the populace will grow resentful, so we'll have to arm you to defend against all those backward-thinking reactionaries. While this is going on we'll send in big corporations to 'assist' in managing your natural resources. Then the IMF will loan you more money to build schools and construct the new Corporate Processing Facilities for all those lovely Natural Resources.
After several disagreeable incidents involving Rebels at the factories, a nervous IMF will call in its loans and you'll be forced to come to us to help pay down this mountainous debt.
We smile and hand you the money on condition that you quell those dastardly revolutionary forces wreaking havoc in the once-forested countryside who threaten your economic stability.
Now pulled in several directions, your government will become shaky, and our media will call it 'Corrupt' and 'Oppressive', so, correctly responding to the Will of the People, we will, regrettably, be forced to arm the insurgents in order to bring Democracy back to the war-torn country. Naturally, we'll send along 50,000 helpful Advisors.
When all the natural resources have been depleted to make breakfast cereal, dog food and disposable paper napkins back home, we'll be compelled by righteous conscience to back away from a people we had naively thought were our friends.
See? I know all about Cultural Advancement.
Now, back to the Neolithic, already in progress ...
Neil
_______________________________
Profile
Email
Reply
|
Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
OFF-Line
| Posted 18-09-2012 at 18:17
Quote:
|
On 2012-09-16 18:04, Lintelman wrote:
Dearest Neil,
... I shall do a bit of discourse analysis on this statement to get my point over. You speak of 'advancement', 'growth' and 'development'. To me these words are based on a post-enlightenment construct. They are bound up with the idea that the human race is engaged in a never ending process of betterment, getting cleverer and cleverer ever day in every way. Okay, there may be a few small glitches with the occasional world war, but, in general the followers of this notion (pretty well all of us in the west) assume that this process is inherent in our existence. Suppose it isn't. Suppose you live in a society where betterment does not exist, either in material items or in intellect.
In such a culture, why would you bother to build Stonehenge? It would be madness indeed to insist that the stone lintels were horizontal. There has to be a reason that can justify the effort. So, I argue that these people were, even then, dropping into the rut that we now find ourselves.
By the above argument, I believe I have demonstrated that it is possible to reveal small aspects of their cultural outlook. I suppose it is a sort of detection process. Am I wrong? If I'm not, then there must be a point in doing more than just making wild guesses.
|
|
Following my little tirade, I will now address the issue posed by Jack.
(Brace yourselves - it's another Essay!)
I can't remember if Neandertal had spears or not. If so, it would have been toward the end of their cycle.
Homo Sapien-Sapien had been around for quite awhile when our cousins breathed their last, and I have always thought that perhaps the elders taught their youngers, for they certainly knew each other.
So the New-Comers watch these stocky 'brutes' toss a stone-pointed stick at the Mammoth, and say: "I can do that better."
So they do, and over time invent the bow and arrow.
They get pretty good at it and before long food is less of a constant issue. Rabbits or Bison - none are safe from those pointed stick-bearing bipeds!
They have been eating wild grains and berries off the land for a while before it dawns on them to maybe grow their own. Agriculture is born. This requires a segment of the group to stay in one place to tend the crop, while others' range the landscape to continue hunting.
So these types of things go on till there's settlements all over the place, certain creatures are domesticated and food isn't the all-or-nothing concern it used to be.
This allows them to sit around the communal campfire, so to speak, and talk about all that cool stuff they see in the Earth & Sky.
The point is, that Humans are hardly static and are constantly looking for new things and ways to improve the things they already have.
From beating clothes against a stream's rock, to loading them in the Maytag.
We see patterns - indeed we look for them - whether they are manifested in Nature or in the abstract. It's a mammal-thing, I guess. Sometimes we see patterns where there are none in reality, and sometimes we see them buried amid other things.
The shape of a leaf, the spiral of a shell, or the dot-to-dot pictures in the night sky.
The Sun has a Pattern in its movement and can always be relied upon to be precisely where it's supposed to be.
The Moon's patterns are more difficult, yet in its way, compliments the movement of the Sun.
Stars, Sun, Moon, and even those 5 weird Wanderers all have Patterns as they travel across the Sky. These Patterns are constant and seemingly Immutable.
We live our lives, doing all the things that make us Human; love, work, rear children, etc.
Then it all ends in Death and we are left with the things this person told us or what they left behind.
So what happens when we die?
Well, I have no idea what they thought happened, but what we see in the Record is that they thought about it a great deal. To the point where they must have considered an After-Life to be perfectly logical.
Somehow the Sky is involved in this, and over time they built a culture that included the concept of Death & Ancestry as a major factor. The evidence is rife.
This concept evolved from the very simple, to an extremely complex understanding.
"Advancement"
You cannot have a Neolithic Statement Monument if you have nothing to say about yourself. You cannot have anything to say without a unified culture of some stability. You cannot have stability if you’re on the move for a hundred generations. You cannot be on the move for generations and be bothered to look up at the Sky for meaning because you’re too busy tearing the hides off animals to keep warm.
Therefore, when the signature apex of your technology is crowned by a flint arrowhead, you can bet it’s gonna be a while before you get around to codifying a Life-and-Death belief-system so sophisticated that it’s absolutely imperative that you build Durrington and Stonehenge.
Technological advancement can be hit-or-miss, but advance it does, for better or worse. 'Evolution' in this case is developmental, not biological.
Of the several astonishing engineering achievements at Stonehenge, among the most compelling is indeed the absolutely horizontal Lintels.
Was it because they needed to carefully mark where Deneb was going to be? Did they need to suspend Tin Mirrors from them? Was it merely esthetic?
Beats me ...
But the fact remains that they did it with great effort, and Stonehenge itself is a wonderful example where 'Developmental Evolution for Betterment' can be illustrated from one Phase to the next - all in keeping with whatever their Belief-System may have been.
None of this is a Wild Guess, for the evidence is right there in front of us.
Best Wishes,
Neil
Profile
Email
Reply
|
Runemage
Joined:
15-07-2005
Messages: 2412
from UK
OFF-Line
| Posted 18-09-2012 at 22:55
Hi Feanor,
Very good observations but I'd like to take another look at the way you portrayed the nomadic lifestyle.
You cannot be on the move for generations and be bothered to look up at the Sky for meaning because you’re too busy tearing the hides off animals to keep warm.
I'd disagree as anyone watching over flocks at night, an essential task, was well suited to find many of the patterns in the skies as well as designated tribal skywatchers.
We've just been fortunate to have received a lot of information about the nomads of Kazakhstan, their lives and particular their death and afterlife rituals. It's eye-openingly astonishing to peek into their culture, do follow a lot of the links that are in the latest articles on our sitepage, http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=32155#47901
particularly this one http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/news/documents/news-433-1.pdf
In all the descriptions you read of the megaliths worldwide, it's said they were constructed by farmers who because they were settled in one spot had time on their hands. Stone circles, stone rows, burial mounds aligned to the cardinal directions, everything you'd expect to find from a society that was settled, but over this vast area, they were nomadic.
Rune
Profile
Reply
|
tiompan
Joined:
09-01-2005
Messages: 2658
OFF-Line
| Posted 18-09-2012 at 23:15
The recent Stevens and Fuller paper also suggests that the builders of Stonehenge were not growing cereals which like the majority of megalithic structures was not aligned on the cardinal points or solstices .
George
Quote:
|
On 2012-09-18 22:55, Runemage wrote:
Hi Feanor,
Very good observations but I'd like to take another look at the way you portrayed the nomadic lifestyle.
You cannot be on the move for generations and be bothered to look up at the Sky for meaning because you’re too busy tearing the hides off animals to keep warm.
I'd disagree as anyone watching over flocks at night, an essential task, was well suited to find many of the patterns in the skies as well as designated tribal skywatchers.
We've just been fortunate to have received a lot of information about the nomads of Kazakhstan, their lives and particular their death and afterlife rituals. It's eye-openingly astonishing to peek into their culture, do follow a lot of the links that are in the latest articles on our sitepage, http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=32155#47901
particularly this one http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/news/documents/news-433-1.pdf
In all the descriptions you read of the megaliths worldwide, it's said they were constructed by farmers who because they were settled in one spot had time on their hands. Stone circles, stone rows, burial mounds aligned to the cardinal directions, everything you'd expect to find from a society that was settled, but over this vast area, they were nomadic.
Rune
|
|
Profile
Reply
|
Feanor
Joined:
11-05-2011
Messages: 316
from Cape Cod Massachusetts, US
OFF-Line
| Posted 19-09-2012 at 04:13
Rune,
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I'm reading that you may have inadvertently taken my remarks out of context.
You cannot have a Neolithic Statement Monument if you have nothing to say about yourself. You cannot have anything to say without a unified culture of some stability. You cannot have stability if you’re on the move for a hundred generations. You cannot be on the move for generations and be bothered to look up at the Sky for meaning because you’re too busy tearing the hides off animals to keep warm.
No doubt I was unclear.
1) 'Ripping the Hides ...' indicates a near hand-to-mouth existence. Fire and shelter are a big deal. Emphasis on tool-making. There's a lot of pressure from other groups going after the same game as you.
2) 'On the Move', i.e. Nomadic hunter/gatherers learning to cope with food on the vine, so to speak. Not necessarily unsophisticated, just not settled down yet. Seasonal settlers at best.
3) 'Statement Monument'. Built by a now-settled, unified people with a farming/husbandry culture, practicing a solid belief-system.
We're talking about probably 60,000+ years in those three brief, very broad sentences.
Obviously, the three weren't distinct, but morphed by degree into the next system, with a ton of sub-sets dependent upon their location and environment.
The people Ripping The Hides looked into their campfire and may have wondered if the Sun was made of the same stuff.
They were speaking among themselves.
The people On The Move no doubt asked some very intuitive questions about the environment as they understood it.
They were speaking to other groups.
The people who built Statement Monuments were speaking to the World.
Neil
Profile
Email
Reply
|
Runemage
Joined:
15-07-2005
Messages: 2412
from UK
OFF-Line
| Posted 19-09-2012 at 16:13
Apologies if my misinterpretation's the case 
I'd just thought this popular view 3) 'Statement Monument'. Built by a now-settled, unified people with a farming/husbandry culture, practicing a solid belief-system.
is now challenged by at the very least the new info that's appeared from Kazakhstan. Statement monuments built by nomads practising a solid belief system.
Maybe that needs to be category 2.5
Rune
Profile
Reply
| |
| Go to Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
|
|
|
|
|
IMPORTANT NOTES: This site uses COOKIES. Please do not use this web site if you do not agree to our Terms and Conditions of use.
If you plan to visit ancient sites in person, please make sure you follow our Charter.
Articles, photographs and comments are the property of their respective authors or contributors, please contact them for permission to reproduce. Site design ©1997-2012 Andy Burnham.
|
Main News