[HN Gopher] Stonehenge may have been built in Wales and then rel...
___________________________________________________________________
Stonehenge may have been built in Wales and then relocated
Author : samizdis
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-02-12 09:30 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| jll29 wrote:
| Maybe they found a rounding error in the location calculations
| only after the site was half-finished.
|
| Late errrors in projects are always costly.
| tim333 wrote:
| Apparently they were up for about 400 years in Wales. Project
| ran late I guess.
| lukeramsden wrote:
| I bet it was still more within delivery parameters than HS2
| is.
| cesis wrote:
| It also might be off-site construction.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-site_construction
| Theodores wrote:
| Stonehenge is a gift that keeps giving. Everyone has their
| opinion about it, which is more of a mirror on them than anything
| to do with the stones.
|
| For a joke there should be a Stonehenge week on YouTube where
| scores of armchair historians research and invent parallel
| narratives.
|
| It is fascinating how any mystery can be projected on to a Pagan
| religious belief that does not have to be specified further.
|
| Even if it was nuked from orbit TV crews would continue their
| documentaries.
| lowdose wrote:
| I don think it is really the case but it could be Stonehenge is
| the result of the first FOMO. Either build or burn on the stones.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| What I most enjoy about this is that it appears to corroborate
| historical records of the wizard Merlin.
| adambcn wrote:
| Yes, legend says Merlin used his magic to move Stonehenge from
| Ireland to England https://voicesfromthedawn.com/stonehenge/
| ycombigator wrote:
| Countdown to "War of the Blue Stones" initiated...
| tempodox wrote:
| Fetching popcorn for Game of Stones...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| wait, wasn't this one of the plots of the original Mary Stewart
| Merlin books, hmm no on reflection Merlin built a standing stones
| circle to bury his father Ambrosius Aurelianus, not sure if it
| was supposed to be at Stonehenge he built it.
| dusted wrote:
| I read this as "built by whales", immediately thought of the
| Gojira song and now I'm disappointed.
| Maursault wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee60DLk0-bU
| usrusr wrote:
| Stop it! It doesn't help me at all obsercoming my urge to make
| up some bad joke about how Docker was or wasn't involved in
| that migration project!
| tabtab wrote:
| The Prince of Whales: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-
| wales-48622001
| INTPenis wrote:
| How were they able to accurately match a cross section of a stone
| that's been in the ground for 5000 years and one that's been
| above ground in the weather for 5000 years? Wouldn't those have
| wildly different wear and tear on them?
| tim333 wrote:
| I don't think those sort of stones change shape much even over
| 5000 years.
| londons_explore wrote:
| You should always be very suspicious when a team of archeologists
| with a TV production team finds something new and revolutionary
| on the exact topic they were making a TV program about...
|
| Seems a bit too convenient!
|
| Especially when the evidence is a muddy hole nearly the same
| shape and size as a rock 150 miles away...
|
| Oh, and look - it just so happens to be on the only farm you
| could get permission to dig on!
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Here's the bona fides of the archaeologist quoted in the
| article:
|
| https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/people/mike-parker-pearson...
|
| BA, PhD, FBA, FSA, FSA Scot, MIFA. Professor of British Later
| Prehistory.
|
| Do I believe him or a random software engineer on HN who thinks
| it might be "a bit too convenient"? Hmm. Tricky one.
|
| I know a guy who crossed the Channel on a tiny little
| narrowboat meant for 3ft-deep canals. The entire thing was
| filmed. The TV programme hammed it up and made it seem like an
| entirely haphazard endeavour. Of course it was playing to the
| camera. That doesn't mean he didn't cross the Channel. He did.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| >Do I believe him or a random software engineer on HN who
| thinks it might be "a bit too convenient"? Hmm. Tricky one.
|
| One has a vested financial interest, the other is objectively
| and mostly apathetic. You really believe that one isn't
| beyond Propagandizing their work if it means paying off the
| mortgage?
| f430 wrote:
| > Do I believe him or a random software engineer on HN who
| thinks it might be "a bit too convenient"?
|
| The pedantry from HN users on topics outside their domain is
| getting ridiculous now.
|
| The other day they were experts on semiconductor fab
| processes calling it an "assembly line of blue collar workers
| at an automotive factory" while someone who worked in this
| industry corrected them and were downvoted to oblivion.
|
| I don't know where they get this ego from? Maybe they think
| writing software automatically qualifies them to be a
| polymath.
|
| Most of them probably googles furiously when they realize
| their ego is under attack to quote journals or out of context
| quotes to double down on their ignorant views and "win" the
| argument. Double points for downvoting the opposition with
| multiple nicks ;)
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Adding a bunch of letters to the end of your name doesn't
| make you less susceptible to the allure of fame and money. In
| fact the type of person to add alphabet soup to the end of
| their name might be even more susceptible!
| fao_ wrote:
| Uhhh, yes. But only in fields where they are not already an
| expert.
|
| What you're referring to is Nobel Prize disease, and that
| is essentially the implicit human assumption that when you
| become an expert at one thing, you're an expert at
| everything. However it notably does not happen when someone
| is an expert at something, because well, they're an expert
| -- they know enough about the field to separate the wheat
| from the chaff
|
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
|
| Like the parent says, I'm not sure why you'd rather believe
| a software engineer on Hacker News -- who unless they are
| unusual, has zero experience with archeology outside of
| watching Time Team occasionally -- versus someone who is
| actually qualified in that field.
|
| This is the kind of thinking that led to the catastrophe
| that was MetaMed -- software engineers and mathematicians
| not realising that they needed to _actually learn things_
| about other fields to be an expert in it (Unlike computer
| science where you can read a few well-curated blogposts and
| understand most of the problems in a week), and deciding to
| go into Medicine with that mindset
| (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed).
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Well, the "kind of thinking" that only certified,
| acronym'd Domain Experts have useful knowledge to
| contribute about complicated problems has led us down a
| lot of fun paths in 2020:
|
| - No, definitely no need to worry about this novel virus
| in China
|
| - No, definitely no need to wear facial covering
|
| - No, definitely no aerosolized transmission
|
| - No, definitely no reason to violate protocol with a
| 1-dose regimin
|
| - No, definitely no evidence of lab-release accident
| (TBD)
|
| On each of these problems, attentive and interested non-
| experts called the correct answer months ahead of expert
| consensus. If your takeaway from 2020 is not "domain
| experts are always right, and there's no need for
| independent research from the outside"... you learned a
| really bad lesson.
| mikestew wrote:
| _If your takeaway from 2020 is not "domain experts are
| always right, and there's no need for independent
| research from the outside"... you learned a really bad
| lesson._
|
| That most certainly is _not_ my takeaway, but perhaps you
| mistyped. What I had reinforced in 2020, however, was
| that though domain experts occasionally make a bad call
| (including you, dear reader), I 'd still take their
| opinion over some random jackass on the Internet spouting
| off about "yeah, but remember when they told us not to
| wear masks?"
| fao_ wrote:
| Most of those were political decisions, not ones made by
| domain experts.
|
| First, the delay of listening to domain experts (In
| america, the firing of any teams and staff that were
| trained in dealing with a pandemic, for example), and the
| delay in shutting down cross-country transportation as
| well as the delay in implementing social-distancing, led
| to the large spread of Coronavirus that is continuing to
| this day.
|
| Secondly, the reason people were informed not to wear
| masks initially was because there was a PPE shortage.
| Part of this was very likely related to the fact that I
| remember reports of people stealing boxes of masks from
| hospitals, and people stockpiling masks early on, which
| led to hospitals that were much less equipped to deal
| with the spread of it and led to higher deaths of
| healthcare workers.
|
| The reason Coronavirus got to the stage where it could
| mutate, at least in Britain, was because the Government
| instituted a policy of blatantly letting people die and
| assuming "herd immunity" would take hold, versus actually
| _listening_ to the domain experts saying that was a
| shitty idea.
|
| If they had listened to them in the first place, and shut
| things down early on, the pandemic still wouldn't be
| going a year later. As you can see in China, Taiwan, etc.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _Most of those were political decisions, not ones made
| by domain experts._
|
| One thing to think about is when domain experts speak on
| behalf of political/regulatory organizations, it's the
| organization making a statement, not the person sharing
| their honest personal opinions.
| f430 wrote:
| Likely parent was triggered by GP's comment and is now
| desperately downplaying expertise as "alphabet soup" and
| is now downvoting all the comments here
|
| Yes, somebody who sacrificed decades of their life
| attaining accreditations and studying said area of
| expertise _clearly_ knows less than a software dev /s
| danaliv wrote:
| The Brits absolutely _love_ their post-nominals.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Case in point: Andrew Wakefield of vaccines-cause-autism
| infamy.
| mhh__ wrote:
| He was a medical doctor, right? I can't be bothered to
| argue it in public but I don't really listen to doctors
| on anything outside what they practice in - they aren't
| scientists and aren't trained as such.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| I'd like to think the English stole it like all the other
| things sitting in London museums. Now put it back to where it
| was!
| meigwilym wrote:
| Coal, steel, water - and now this?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It was the British who stole it, and put it in the British
| Museum. "Great" British imperialism was common to all areas
| of GB, and probably of the UK (though Northern Irish history
| is not in my scope).
|
| Probably safe to argue that one is not from Upper
| Class/Aristicratic stock to avoid ancestral culpability
| though.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I was sceptical but saw the phrase "peer reviewed" and
| "journal". Should I un-allay my suspicions?
| kijin wrote:
| The article doesn't say that the TV crew surreptitiously
| discovered the hole.
|
| It's just as likely that archeologists unaffiliated with BBC
| came up with this theory months or even years earlier, wanted
| funding and a bit of publicity for their pet project, got
| hooked up with BBC, and scheduled the most important part of
| the excavation to coincide with the arrival of the TV crew as
| per the funding agreement. The whole point is to maximize the
| likelihood that an interesting discovery will take place during
| filming. NatGeo does this all the time, and I'm sure BBC does,
| too.
| wswope wrote:
| I'm finding this whole comment thread a bit hard to read,
| because this is at least the third Stonehenge special Mike
| Pearson has done with the BBC at this point, not to mention
| plenty of appearances on Time Team.
|
| You're pretty spot on - this is a well-known archaeologist
| with an established record as a television presenter. From
| what I remember of the previous Stonehenge specials, the
| filming process appeared to be: academic research team does
| the excavation for a few months, camera crew comes in when a
| "big moment" is expected, and also films a rollup where the
| researchers talk over exciting discoveries made in the past
| months while they're there. They've been digging near
| Stonehenge and on associated sites along the river for years
| and years.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah some info: (from
| https://www.irishmirror.ie/tv/extraordinary-stonehenge-
| disco...)
|
| Professor Mike says he had long held the theory that the
| smaller bluestones which surrounded Stonehenge in a wide
| circle during its earliest phase, had started life as a
| monument in Wales.
|
| But finding the site of a stone circle which no longer
| exists, 5,000 years after it was moved, is no mean feat.
|
| The research started in 2010, with excavations beginning in
| 2012 but as they years went by they experienced many set-
| backs involving bronze and iron age circles which weren't
| what they were looking for.
|
| Mike, 63, did a deal with a TV company to film their progress
| in 2015.
|
| Two years later, it was a despondent group led by Dave Shaw,
| who decided to excavate Waun Mawn, an "unpromising" marshy
| site described as "small and unremarkable" which had turned
| up nothing in the geophysics surveys.
|
| ... [goes on to describe finding it]
| dmurray wrote:
| > surreptitiously
|
| serendipitously?
| kijin wrote:
| Uh, yeah. I wonder what kind of typo triggered an
| autocorrect into that word...
| joosters wrote:
| _Oh, and look - it just so happens to be on the only farm you
| could get permission to dig on!_
|
| This is somewhat tautological - _of course_ archaeologists make
| discoveries on the sites they are digging on. It 's very hard
| to make discoveries at sites that you aren't allowed on!
| hanoz wrote:
| _> It 's very hard to make discoveries at sites that you
| aren't allowed on!_
|
| Not as hard as it used to be:
| https://houseprices.io/lidar/SU1025069970
| detritus wrote:
| I know this is a totally non HN-worthy response, but -
|
| That is a fucking amazing resource, thank you!
|
| I've already found two places of interest to check out next
| time I go North to my old stomping grounds in the
| countryside.
|
| Sometimes the future isn't such a terrible place.
| hanoz wrote:
| I'm very pleased you like it! (tis a side project of
| mine). Did you try the 3D button? That's quite fun.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| It's amazing. Could you add a layer to see the "normal"
| satellite view overlaid?
| hanoz wrote:
| The source data is based on a different projection to
| that usually used in web maps so that's not easily
| achieved unfortunately.
| detritus wrote:
| Oh! Well done!
|
| Yes, I did try it, as too the three other people I've
| since shared it with.
|
| I like the point map version too - I've a grab of a
| 'minecarft-looking version' of my home village -
| wonderful!
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I can see the lines left by ploughs in fields! Where did
| you get the data? (Or is there a write-up I've missed the
| link to?)
| hanoz wrote:
| I'm not much of a one for write-ups I confess, but
| broadly:
|
| The raw data comes from the Environment Agency and
| Natural Resources Wales as .asc files, which are just a
| big 2d array of height values in text file, in this case
| covering 1km2 each.
|
| I downloaded all these and wrote a script to produce .png
| tiles using a "hill shading" algorithm, i.e. make pixel
| darker if pixel to top left is taller, using C#.
|
| Once I was getting nice results I rented a hefty server
| at AWS to run it on the whole dataset for 24 hours,
| generating 2 million .png files, then used leafletjs to
| display them slippy map style.
|
| I was originally hosting the tiles on AWS but the egress
| fees were too much so I move them all to a 3EUR/month
| bare metal arm server at Scaleway.
|
| The 3D stuff re-fetches the raw .asc files from the
| source agencies on demand using a AWS Lambda script which
| cuts out the 1km2 of interest and passes it back to the
| web server, which renders it using three.js for the
| surface texture mode, or potree for the pointcloud
| version.
|
| The website itself is built in asp.net core, running on a
| $10/month box at Digital Ocean.
| eek04_ wrote:
| That's really fun. Any chance of data for Ireland? As you
| probably know, "all good things lead to requests for more
| features".
| detritus wrote:
| A friend is asking: "When will it be finished?"
|
| By which he means, "When will it be populated with more
| data?"
|
| I presume he's asking as his particular place of interest
| won't let him view 3d or pointmap views.
|
| Thanks! x
|
| - ed - reading this back, this sounds rude - sorry, just
| caught up in the excitement.
| hanoz wrote:
| The Environment Agency are currently running a programme
| aiming for full coverage (of England) completing this
| year. Once that is ready I'll have to regenerate all my
| map tiles and hopefully have all the remaining gaps
| filled in then.
|
| Natural Resources Wales is aiming for similar by Winter
| 2022 apparently.
| adambcn wrote:
| Is that Avebury?
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| Yes, here is Stonehenge:
|
| https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=SU11914213
|
| Glastonbury Tor 3D:
|
| https://houseprices.io/lidar/ST5125038630/3d
|
| Maiden Castle:
|
| https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=SY669884
| Mikushi wrote:
| Correct, you can see Silbury hill as well as a few of the
| barrows in the area.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Can someone explain the association between the (scammy)
| domain name and the really cool tool? What's the story
| behind it? What am I looking at? That's not their data, is
| it?
| mhh__ wrote:
| One of the best collection of images of the Chernobyl
| disaster is hidden away on some marketing companies
| website. I've lost the link but it just comes up with a
| list of files as opposed to a bunch of web stuff.
|
| I assume it's some IT guys thing.
| pram wrote:
| There is literally an explanation on the website:
| https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar
| hanoz wrote:
| The parent site is also mine. Believe it or not some
| people have occasionally said that's cool too, despite
| the scammy domain name! (It's not _that_ bad is it!?)
|
| The lidar map is kind of a side project within a side
| project. It's the first and so far only experiment within
| the 'Lab' section of the parent site
| (https://houseprices.io/lab) where I had intended to try
| all manner of stuff with mapping and open data etc.
|
| It didn't exactly grow to be another Google Labs in the
| end. It did last longer though.
| mrec wrote:
| The parent site is definitely cool. I'm currently in the
| position of looking for somewhere cheap to move to and
| not really having much in the way of geographical
| constraints, and other UK sites like Rightmove are
| decidedly unhelpful there - they really want you to
| commit to an area first. Being able to just pootle around
| at random zooming hither and yon is nice.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Thanks. Really cool site, great work!
| eridan2 wrote:
| There is any similar site for France or other European
| countries?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I don't know about this data specifically, but the best
| thing you can do is lobby for better open data laws. The
| UK, to be fair, passed laws like this maybe 20 years ago,
| and as a result there's an amazing amount of free data
| available for England and Wales (Scotland is normally
| different).
|
| There's an EU directive supposed to solve this, but it's
| a slow, slow process.
| Loughla wrote:
| Holy shit that's amazing.
|
| Is there a thing like this for the US?
| danaliv wrote:
| Indeed--the archaeologic principle! :)
| simonh wrote:
| Oh and look there just happen to be several bluestones that
| geologically match the ones at Stonehenge still on the site,
| and radiocarbon dating puts the site a few hundred years older
| than Stonehenge so the timeline happens to line up perfectly.
| How convenient!
|
| I'm not saying I believe them for sure, but yours is in no way
| a fair characterisation.
| yread wrote:
| They haven't used radiocarbon that much, it seems that OSL
| was more important
| canjobear wrote:
| How do you radiocarbon-date a rock?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| You date stuff associated with the rock. Digging tools
| found under the rock (eg worked antler). Remains of wood
| that was used to move the stone or line the pits. Remnants
| of possible associated cooking fires. If you find a deer
| skull or bit of leather under a large stone, it is safe to
| say that the two are related in time.
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| >radiocarbon dating puts the site a few hundred years older
| than Stonehenge
|
| Is it really that reliable to make such precise statements?
| simonh wrote:
| Samples at the site were dated to around 3400 BC, which is
| 400 years earlier than the earliest samples from
| Stonehenge. Ive not seen the papers, but given standard
| techniques I expect there should be at least a couple of
| centuries gap between the error ranges.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >>Is it really that reliable to make such precise
| statements?
|
| Carbon dating is never enough in itself. They are not
| saying that carbon dating proves that one thing happened
| before the other. They are saying that carbon dating does
| not disprove it, that the narrative they propose is not
| contradicted by carbon evidence. The fact that there are
| multi-century error bands means it can never be solid
| proof, but the fact that one error band is centered years
| later than the other does add weight to their proposed
| timeline. Carbon dating is a fuzzy telescope, but lack of
| perfect resolution doesn't mean it cannot produce useful
| evidence.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Regardless of camera crews, I have a perpetual skepticism of
| entire disciplines, partly because of my own ignorance, I'm
| sure. But also partly because I have a BS detector and it goes
| off a lot.
|
| Largely about all these inferences made about history using so
| few data points and a brilliant imagination. Really? You could
| tell all these things about this specific household because of
| a pot you found?
|
| I'm not sure I have a beef with the scientists themselves.
| There is value in guesstimating what dinosaurs looked like. But
| at some point these guesstimates get sold as scientific
| discovery.
| irrational wrote:
| For me it is primarily fields that deal with humans.
| Psychology, Sociology, History, Archeology, Anthropology,
| etc. I take the findings of all of these with a grain of
| salt. The problem with all of these fields are the people. It
| is so very hard to know the motivations of people. It is not
| at all like studying mathematics, physics, etc. where
| particles don't have any sort of agency, motivation, etc.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _But at some point these guesstimates get sold as scientific
| discovery._
|
| First example from TFA:
|
| _Prof Pearson said the remains of a cow, which was found at
| the site, suggested animals may have helped to pull the
| stones to their resting spot in England_
|
| What, they didn't use trucks? A much better indication than
| "we found a skeleton" for these ancients having used oxen to
| move stones would be any remains at all of the sorts of yokes
| and related equipment that allow oxen to pull heavy loads.
| Cattle are primarily of value for their meat and dairy, so
| the fact that humans and cattle were merely associated at any
| particular site certainly doesn't mean what the good
| professor seems to claim.
| posterboy wrote:
| > You could tell all these things about this specific
| household because of a pot you found?
|
| There's a lot of story in history. Construct a narrative
| stitched together from different sources. Orators in Greece
| would do the same thing, remember a few lines and improvise
| the gaps.
| throwaway189262 wrote:
| Reminds me of the complete skeletons produced using things
| like jaw fragments. Especially for popular species like
| dinosaurs and ancient hominids.
|
| Like 20 years ago we didn't even know that most dinosaurs had
| feathers. Most reconstructions are just wishful thinking IMO
| Hoasi wrote:
| > Most reconstructions are just wishful thinking IMO
|
| It's true, but you have to start somewhere. That's the
| beauty of it. It's fine as long as you do it to the best of
| the current knowledge and tell it.
|
| For fragments of history that are so old, visualization
| helps put things in context. And if it means you have to
| erase every reenactment and start over every other year, so
| be it.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I kinda feel like they have to, because who funds archeology?
| If they can earn a living or more money by sensationalizing
| their discovery and making a documentary about it, more power
| to them I guess.
| fao_ wrote:
| > partly because of my own ignorance, I'm sure. But also
| partly because I have a BS detector and it goes off a lot.
|
| I'm not sure how accurate a bullshit detector can be if you
| know literally nothing about the field in question.
| tobylane wrote:
| I agree with you on skepticism. But there's a lot more than
| just a pot behind theories. The pot is just something they
| can hold in front of the camera. It's also the ashy layers in
| the fireplace, the bone pile outside the building, the
| greater findings at other digs of the same age and culture.
| hanoz wrote:
| So it's not just some cracked pot theory?
| yvdriess wrote:
| Exactly, the context in which the object is found is more
| informative that the object itself. The moment this context
| is disturbed, e.g. artifacts being pillaged from the site
| and sold on the black market, the object loses almost all
| archeological scientific value.
| ljf wrote:
| Amusingly I sent this to my nephew who lives close to the site in
| Wales, he responded 'I thought that was common knowledge, it is
| what people around here have always claimed'
|
| I love the link to Ireland that at first seems incorrect until
| you learn that this part of what was part of Ireland in the past.
| OJFord wrote:
| Going by the article linked in this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26112657
|
| It indeed seems more like evidence in favour of a long-held
| theory.
|
| Also though, as the OP says:
|
| > It is already known that the smaller bluestones that were
| first used to build Stonehenge were transported from 150 miles
| (240 km) away in modern-day Pembrokeshire.
|
| > But the new discovery suggests the bluestones from Waun Mawn
| could have been moved as the ancient people of the Preseli
| region migrated, even taking their monuments with them, as a
| sign of their ancestral identity.
|
| I don't live in Wales but have definitely heard that before
| too, the discovery seems to be about larger ones and that they
| were previously erected (not just mined) in (what is now)
| Pembrokeshire. Is it definitely that that he thought to be
| common knowledge, not just that the stones were taken from the
| region?
| ljf wrote:
| I asked him just now and he said he thought it was known that
| the stones were taken from the stone circle there not just
| mined there. He hangs out with a lot of alternative types
| there, who are interested in that sort of thing.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Ask him for other some common knowledge and filter for what
| seems surprising to you. Then fact-check those.
|
| Perhaps there's diamonds in the rough. Perhaps not.
| tabtab wrote:
| "Grog, get your ugly art-work out of our neighborhood now! I
| lowers our cave resell values and attracts mastodons in heat."
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| The uninformed have been saying this for years, the truth is
| those sarsen stones aren't available in Wales, they exist very
| close to Stonehenge in other parts of Wiltshire, and Oxfordshire
| simonh wrote:
| The sarsen (sandstone) stones most likely came from West Woods,
| 15 miles from Stonehenge, but there's no known local geological
| source for the bluestones though. These do seem to have come
| from Wales somehow. The varied geological origins of the stones
| has caused a lot of confusion like this.
| DanBC wrote:
| Stonehenge has a mix of sarsen stones and blue stones.
|
| The sarsen stones come from Wiltshire. The blue stones come
| from the Preseli Hills in south west Wales.
| call_me_dana wrote:
| Anyone interested in the Stonehenge topic should check out the
| Secrets in Plain Sight documentary.
|
| https://youtu.be/DHhgLnIvuAs
|
| Stonehenge starts at 57:27
| nathias wrote:
| I wonder how ancient aliens moved it, maybe it was Hitler all
| along ...
| samizdis wrote:
| Study cited in the BBC article:
|
| _The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the
| Preseli Hills of west Wales_
|
| Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2021
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/or...
| notahacker wrote:
| The actual paper is, as always, less exciting than the breezy
| PR
|
| TLDR: Three of Stonehenge's stones have long been believed to
| come from a particular area of Wales. One of them has a
| pentagonal cross section which was found to approximately
| matches a pentagonal hole in a partial stone circle in that
| area, a circle surrounded by a ditch which - coincidentally or
| otherwise - has the same dimensions as a ditch at Stonehenge.
| Dating is inconclusive, but evidence supports some of the
| people cremated at Stonehenge having lived in south Wales for
| some of their life. It's also established beyond doubt that
| nearly all the other stones in Stonehenge have no logical
| connection with this site.
|
| So the builders of Stonehenge might have taken as many as three
| stones from another site for symbolic or "hey, I know where to
| find a massive stone the right size for our new project"
| reasons
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > So the builders of Stonehenge might have taken as many as
| three stones from another site for symbolic or "hey, I know
| where to find a massive stone the right size for our new
| project" reasons
|
| If it's 400 years (and the timeline is up for debate), who
| knows, it may have been a completely different people /
| culture that decided to move the stone (vs the ones that
| built the original circle).
|
| I mean in western Europe, town walls were dismantled for
| other building projects. Walls that still exist are
| considered protected cultural heritage nowadays. It's a
| different point of view that changes over time and as
| cultures progress.
| wnevets wrote:
| > mean in western Europe, town walls were dismantled for
| other building projects.
|
| To further this example the limestone used to clad Egyptian
| Pyramids were removed to use as materials in other building
| projects.
| fidrelity wrote:
| To everybody who is interested in the possible purpose of
| Stonehenge and other megalithic structures I can recommend this
| book: Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty (https://www.goodreads.c
| om/book/show/780619.Seed_of_Knowledge...).
|
| It has nothing to do with ancient aliens and the like and is
| rather scientific about the electromagnetic properties of such
| structures.
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