Re: What are megaliths made of?
Posted: 2:20 pm
The Megalithic Empire is rather scathing on the Saracen theory:
Standing stones are also known as sarsens, a word that repays closer scrutiny. The Oxford English Dictionary claims sarsen is a “variation of Saracen” implying that the local yokels believed that some Muslim knights popped over and erected their ancient monuments when nobody was looking, but perhaps it is only the OED that believes in these kinds of unlikely explanation, as it so often does because its entire etymological paradigm is frankly hopeless. On the other hand, if ‘Saracen’ refers to a different set of Phoenicians, the ones of the Bronze Age who might have set up the original system, then that would make rather more sense. To Cornish tinners the term ‘Saracen’ just meant ‘foreigner’, someone prohibited by law from advancing inland.