Going Round in Circles

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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby TisILeclerc » 12:50 pm

Hasn't the meaning of Tarbert been discussed elsewhere?

It appears to be a place for drawing boats across land. Something we know the Vikings were quite partial to when attacking various places, even in Loch Lomond.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarbert

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/harris/tarbert/

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/tarbet/tarbet/
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby hvered » 3:59 pm

A narrow stretch of land suitable for drawing boats across was so useful that it required a mega signpost apparently

Image


East Tarbert Bay is very handy just before or just after passing the Mull of Kintyre. A well-known landmark, dubbed the 'Giant's Tooth', marks the spot
It is surrounded by farmland and just up on the road you will find the best standing stone hereabouts – the so-called giant’s tooth (the aforesaid fellow lived on Kintyre and got such bad toothache that he pulled out the offending tooth and hurled it over to Gigha! .... Another tradition is that it is the 'Hanging Stone' where criminals were executed.
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby Boreades » 7:32 pm

TisILeclerc wrote:Hasn't the meaning of Tarbert been discussed elsewhere?


Yes, it's so well discussed that even people outside of TME have noticed. Neil Oliver was on the telly (again), a couple of years ago(?), presenting a re-enactment, with locals dragging a boat across the narrows.

That reminds me, Neil Oliver was on telly (again) last night, presenting Age of Ancestors

Age of Ancestors Neil Oliver examines what impact the arrival of farming had on ancient social structures. He dives off the Isle of Wight where archaeologists have found an 8,000-year-old hunter settlement and learns what happened when hunter-gatherers met farmers for the first time.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ysr2l

Perhaps the most interesting parts were:
1) the 8,000 y/o settlement off the Isle of Wight with "the oldest boat-building yard in the world"
2) a trip to Carnac
3) the Orkney Voles! Now with DNA profiling that links them to Brittany (proposed transport was in sacks of grain from Brittany)
3) the 5,500 y/o old stone walls and farms found at Céide Fields, near the coast in South West Ireland (close to TME points of interest) - "the earliest known farms ever found in Western Europe".

Well, that's what he said.

Céide Fields
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9ide_Fields

Previously: Orkney's Stone Age Temple
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ms282
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby TisILeclerc » 9:05 pm

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the TV licence man or Capita as they're known in the trade I watched your video.

I agree with your assessment. The first three points were interesting. Which is why they skipped over them pretty quickly I would imagine.

Neil looks gorgeous as ever as he strides across the landscape flicking his raven black locks across his shoulder. See how I got the megalithic sponsorship thing in there?

He tells us that nobody knows what these ancient people were up to or what they thought. And then tells us what they were up to and thought. Good on yer man is what I say.

His frequent allusions to invaders bringing an alien lifestyle made me worry for a while that the beeb was starting to go native. But he soon wandered off into other things.

I wonder if the warfare he was thrilled about may have been not one farmer tribe against another but maybe the wildmen of the wood coming up like chavs to grab a bit of bling.

After all, the woman survived. Or maybe it was her farmer lover doing her husband in. Who knows? Well Neil knows.

And so on.

Why does he make it so much about him and so boring?

As an unreformed descendant of hunter gatherers I am tempted to declare war on farmers and BBC archaeologists and presenters with raven black locks. When I say black locks I don't mean blacklocks which is something different. Although I could have done.

What was interesting and not mentioned really was the fact that those farmers in the west of Ireland caused their own demise by stripping the land of trees. Which destroyed the land. As they are doing in Brazil and other places or so I've been told.

So basically what the story is is that we were doing all right running about with bows and arrows shooting a bit of venison every now and then and sleeping under the trees until the landowners came with their bags of barley and sheep.

Perhaps that MacGregor woman is right after all.
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby Boreades » 9:13 pm

Re "caused their own demise by stripping the land of trees. Which destroyed the land. "

Yes, and isn't that the same for the high ground in Devon & Cornwall? Nothing left except mile after mile of peat bog, with the very occasional patch of ancient stunted oak woods?
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby TisILeclerc » 9:33 pm

Which means really that meat eaters are the new greens or vegetarians.
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby hvered » 11:45 pm

Oliver being an archaeologist gets very enthusiastic about stones, tombs and petrified wood but is completely blasé about the arrival of new animal species. Native deer, he said, had provided the necessities, i.e. meat, hide, tools, as with reindeer-herding societies.

All of a sudden there seemed to be loads of cows, sheep and pigs around which presumably needed to be fed and therefore foodstuffs such as barley imported all the way from Mesopotamia reportedly. Who would have thought a crop from a hot arid country could thrive in a cold wet island?
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby Boreades » 6:14 am

hvered wrote:Who would have thought a crop from a hot arid country could thrive in a cold wet island?


Ah well spotted, that slipped past me. Speaking from personal experience, trying to grow anything from a hot arid country in this country is grief and frustration. The exotic foreign stuff usually rots in the cold wet British ground.

Similarly, when he mentioned the Orkney Voles. The DNA profiling that links them to Brittany would have been worth more detail. Perhaps we'll have to find that ourselves?

Likewise, the explanation, a throw-away one liner, the "sacks of grain from Brittany". Hang on, what grain from Brittany? How did it get there? On a flying Celtic Saint? Or by boat? Boat, what boats? What was worth trading that would have gone back to Britanny?

It raised more questions that it answered. Thankfully the TME people are the right kind of people.

If I find anything on these proposed "grain boats", I'll report back on the "Megalithic shipping and trade routes" thread
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1697
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby hvered » 9:06 am

The links between Britain and Brittany are attested to by a wealth of saintly comings and goings. Our much-quoted Sister Rees claims that the shortest crossing to Brittany is from around Penzance and claims the parish, called Paul, is named for Paul Aurelian, "a prominent figure in Celtic times". Aurelian suggests 'golden' as in fire, beacon, or perhaps golden grain or golden lion. He's described as 'a Welsh saint', perhaps connected to Caerleon in south Wales?

He is also supposed to have given his name to St Pol de Leon in Brittany for some reason. Pol, pyl, pil, is just 'pool' but Leon is just as or more megalithically interesting, being associated with Land's End and Finistiere. Anyway Paul Aurelian kicked off with the church of Paul aka St Pol de Leon, which overlooks Mousehole, Cornwall and serves as a daymark for shipping in Mount's Bay according to Wiki.

He then popped over to the Ile de Batz off Roscoff, overcame a dragon with his stole (a priest's girdle?) and threw the monster into the sea at the western point of the Ile de Batz, a blowhole called the Serpent's Hole, whereupon he founded another church on the island later named St Pol de Leon in his honour. He also had time to found a church on the coast of Finistere; it's been rebuilt several times and remains "an essential coastal landmark" today.

The most direct though not the shortest crossing from Roscoff leads to the Erme Estuary, with Wembury to the west and Burgh Island to the east. Very much part of a Great Circle route it would seem.
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Re: Going Round in Circles

Postby Boreades » 10:15 pm

I'm grateful for any mention of the Saints and their doings with Dragons. The more I see, the more I am convinced that any mention of "dragons" is an allegorical codeword for their ecumenical opponents.

Today's "Forgotten Books" is an excellent prompt.

Edit: sorry, nearly forgot to say, it is "The Celtic Dragon Myth" by J. F. Campbell

http://www.forgottenbooks.com/books/The ... 1000073503
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