Déjà vu.
In August 1996 during a very low tide three dark green rocks were collected from the beaches of Steep Holm in the Bristol Channel. In an extravagant press release taken up by the media Rodney Legg suggested that they were Stonehenge bluestones that were lost during their trans-shipment from Wales to England. A request to receive and identify the rocks was immediately granted and hand specimen and microscopical petrographical investigation by Drs Ixer and Bevins showed two to be metamorphic green, fine-grained meta-basic rocks and the third a coarse-grained altered amphibolite. All three rocks are unlike anything found within the Stonehenge Landscape or from the Preseli Hills or belonging to any of the established polished stone axe groups. They are glacial erratics possibly from Wales although Welsh rocks of this type are uncommon.
Three years later Mr Legg claimed a fourth fragment had also been found at the same time as the others and that it “has been confirmed as coming from an undressed Preseli boulder”. When challenged to provide the rock for analysis and/or to identify the authenticator of the rock there was and still is complete silence. Dr Ixer publically stated he was not the authenticator writing “like St Thomas until I can touch and see for myself this bluestone ….I will not believe that any stone from Steep Holm has any more connection with Stonehenge than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon”.
In January 2022 Dr John issued a press release with the intended eye-catching title “missing piece of the Stonehenge bluestone puzzle” and further claims…… these should be tested.
“A giant bluestone erratic just discovered near Mumbles, on the south Gower coast, has been hailed as one of the most important glacial discoveries of the last century since it proves beyond doubt that the Irish Sea Glacier was capable of carrying large monoliths of dolerite rock from Pembrokeshire up the Bristol Channel towards Stonehenge”.
Ignoring the amusing question hailed by whom, other than Dr John, much is accurate, the large dark coloured probable igneous erratic was moved by ice, but from whence. If the rock is a dolerite then the Preseli Hills are possible (Dr John’s favoured origin), but more likely the igneous rock is from Skomer Island/Ramsey Island/St Davids Head area, as are other glacial erratics found in South Wales (as described for example by Drs Bevins and Donnelly in their account of the Pencoed erratics).
It would be unjust not to mention that ‘important glacial discoveries of the last century’ include detailed Pleistocene stratigraphy, the use of ice cores and microfossils to give precise chronostratigraphy and much, much more. An erratic find, however gross, is no more than that.
Later Dr John’s press release states
“Many smaller dolerite erratics are known from Gower and other parts of South Wales, but there have been no discoveries to compare with the “giant erratics” that are known from the coasts of Devon and Cornwall.”
Strangely, Dr John has forgotten, does not know, or chooses to discount that three giant erratics were documented in the Bridgend Geological Survey Memoir in 1904 within the Vale of Glamorgan (to the east of the Mumbles hence closer to Stonehenge) with Bevins and Donnelly (1992) noting that they are similar to ignimbrite exposed on Ramsey Island.
Hence the occurrence of these rare large erratics (probably less than half a dozen have been found in the whole of South Wales during 120 years of searching) has been known within both the geological and archaeological communities for more than a century and their significance, or rather lack of it, recognised. The Mumbles’ glacial erratic is another of these very rare occurrences and adds little to any glacial history of South Wales/southern England and potentially nothing to any archaeological one.
Indeed it should be argued that the rarity of these large erratics can only be used to confirm the anthropogenic movement of the Stonehenge bluestones. It would be a very playful god that distributes a single handful of large erratics throughout the entirety of South Wales only then to dump 80 or so (whatever is the number of bluestones at Stonehenge) just to the west of Salisbury Plain.
Sadly for Dr John, Salisbury Plain remains devoid of glacial erratics large, small or even very small ones. This is the defining argument that Dr John struggles to counter.
This unexpected new large glacial erratic, in accord with the knowledge that westward travelling glaciers moved along the southern Welsh coast, is a nice find but is certainly not “one of the most important glacial discoveries of the last century”. That sort of inflation is uncritical, unhelpful and demeans science.
As a post-script Dr Ixer has offered to petrographically describe a hand specimen of the new erratic (as he has done this for Dr John on a number of occasions in the past) but has yet to receive a flowery, positive reply … from Babylon or anywhere.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road