Trade Secrets

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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby Boreades » 11:44 pm

Ahh, lovely pics!

What about San Miquel in Spain?
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby Mick Harper » 4:07 pm

Extract Thirteen

But it is unlikely that this kind of evidence will convert anybody coming from the normal background of believing that pre-historic Britons are incapable of these technical and organisational feats. Piling up these coincidences does sometimes lead to a tipping point but more often just serial head-shaking. Nevertheless, even the latter occasionally generates creative ingressing so let us turn to the next ‘pattern’ which is, by any standards, arresting. Though probably not tipping.

The terrestrial Michael Line has the following characteristics:
1. A series of markers capable of orientating travellers
2. Places with Michael associations
3. Laid out on or clearly visible from a Great Circle
4. Which is also the longest land-line across Britain

The maritime Michael Line has the following characteristics
1. Places with Michael associations
2. Laid out or or clearly visible from a Great Circle
3. Which is the longest sea-line radiating from Burgh Island towards Central France

This last point is another way of saying that Mont St Michel is where the ocean gets closest to the markets being served. In other words it can be plausibly claimed that both routes were chosen according to a priori considerations of 'greatest utility'.

So, comparing the two Michael Lines, the only thing missing is the series of markers that guided the sailors. A somewhat critical consideration. On land it is always possible either to exploit something nature provides or to construct something de novo in order to provide 'landmarks' that are at such frequent intervals that the traveller is always in sight of one. Clearly this is not possible at sea. Even if it is accepted that Burgh Island and Mont St Michel may be constructed de novo, it is is unlikely that Megalithic methods (or come to that, modern methods) could construct such islands in the middle of the English Channel.

On the other hand, nature has provided the Channel Islands in the middle of the English Channel and the Great Circle goes through them, so it seems reasonable to begin the task of reconstructing the pattern of 'sea-marks' there.
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby Mick Harper » 1:21 pm

Extract Fourteen

Since the Great Circle crosses Guernsey, there is a requirement for two ‘sea-marks’: one at the western end of Lihou Island and one at the southernmost part of the Guernsey mainland, where the Great Circle crosses. These will provide both necessary functions: to alert mariners going eastwards that they are approaching the Guernsey coast and then when to pick up the Great Circle again south of Guernsey; to alert mariners going west that they are approaching the Guernsey coast and then when to pick up the Great Circle west of Guernsey.

Are there two identical Megalithic survivals at these very specific places? Yes. They even have the same name: Venus Pool. Here is the one at the very western end of Lihou Island

Image

It is a tidal rockpool of considerable size. Unfortunately there are no available photos of the one at Corbiere as it is unused due to rock slides but it can be taken as similar. Of course neither of these are regarded as Megalithic, even the name is held to be a Victorian coinage. They are not even considered to be man-made, merely the end products of the way the constant battering of the tidal seas act on weaknesses in rock strata. In other words this is just another example of nature doing something at a remarkably convenient place. Two remarkably convenient places.

It may be asked how common such “swimmable rockpools” are and the answer would be “In nature, somewhat rarer than tidal islands.” There are for instance none on the south coast of mainland Britain. While tidal pools are extremely common on any rocky foreshore, the chances of any given concatenation of rocks being watertight on a scale more than a few feet across and a few inches deep are vanishingly small. Children play on every British beach but there has yet to be a sign posted: “Beware the rockpool”. As usual Guernsey has two of these incredibly rare beasts and both are precisely, precisely, where they are required.

The Great Circle does not actually cross Jersey, so one Venus Pool is all that is required here, at the extreme southwestern corner (also, it will be recalled, named Corbiere) in order to keep both eastbound and westbound mariners clear of the land. Here it is though somewhat dilapidated since it is not used by swimmers:

Image

The modern Corbiere lighthouse in the background indicates that not much changes, ancient or modern. So that would be three remarkably convenient places. And of course Burgh Island itself will have to have a 'Venus Pool' to alert incoming ships they have reached landfall. Here is the Mermaid Pool on Burgh Island.

Image

Four convenient places.
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby Mick Harper » 8:09 pm

Extract Fifteen

This leaves one place unaccounted for, Mont St Michel itself. As far as is known, there is no Venus Pool on the island though since this is France where pleasure and religion are more strictly demarcated there may be a large tidal pool there which is not used for swimming and therefore has escaped modern identification.

A more likely explanation is that the extensive development of the entire island in relatively modern times would have destroyed such a feature though even more likely is that there was never one there in the first place. However there is a rather more intriguing ‘early warning’ for ships approaching Mont St Michel along the Great Circle: Grand Ile, an island the Great Circle bisects.

This is in itself yet another startling coincidence of the Great Circle route, providing a very handy waystation that fills the gap between Jersey and Mont St Michel. But Grand Ile is neither a tidal island nor, as far as is known, does it have a Venus Pool. But it does have an inexplicable etymology. Grand Ile is the main island of the Chausey Islands. ‘Chausey’ is an English corruption of the French chaussée meaning causeway. And the entire group of islands appears to hold the worl record for tidal islands in so far as there are 365 of them at low tide but just fifty-two when the tide's in.

So to sum up the Maritime Michael Line, it is a Great Circle that crosses or is immediately adjacent to:

1. Burgh Island, a causewayed tidal island with a Venus Pool
2. Lihou Island, a causewayed tidal island with a Venus Pool
3. Corbiere (Guernsey), a Venus Pool
4. Corbiere (Jersey), a causewayed tidal island with a Venus Pool
5. An archipelago of ‘tidal islands’ called Causeway
6. Mont St Michel, a causewayed tidal island
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby Mick Harper » 5:07 pm

Extract Sixteen

It is vital to appreciate that orthodoxy, both historical and geographical, unanimously regards everything on this list as natural (apart from the causeways). Despite tidal islands being incredibly rare, they do not consider having four of them lined up along a Great Circle as being anything out of the ordinary. Despite Venus Pools being incredibly rare, they do not consider having four of them lined up along a Great Circle as being anything out of the ordinary.

Nor do they think the Chausey Islands out of the ordinary except they would probably concede that nothing else like them exists anywhere else in the world. As we shall see over and over again, being a one-off is never taken as a sign of un-naturalness. It is always taken as a sign that nature, as it were by its nature, constantly creates one-offs.

This is a dubious claim on a number of levels but is sufficiently philosophically obtruse as to be sufficient to defend any given basic assumption. To the more mordant eye it is is clearly the successor to 'It's God's Will' as an all-purpose defence to any anomaly capable of overthrowing the ruling paradigm.

Strictly speaking one ought to say that orthodoxy doesn’t know about the tidal island/Venus pool problem in order to comment one way or the other. It is a continuing marvel that despite there being thousands and thousands of people paid from the public purse over the last many many decades to carry out these kinds of researches, not a single one has ever noticed any of these phenonema 'hidden' in plain sight.

One can however confidently predict that were orthodoxy to take note – and that is in itself unlikely since orthodoxy rarely strays outside orthodoxy for its reading material – they would be unmoved. One can only pile on the anomalies and wait for that generation to pass on.
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby macausland » 7:29 pm

There was a report on the Daily Mail site the other day about new findings at Stonehenge.

They have discovered natural ridges caused during the ice age under the ground following the 'processional route' and which by accident lined up with the solstice. I think the conclusion was that that was what made the builders choose the site to build Stonehenge.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... ircle.html

'The ridges were created by Ice Age meltwater and naturally point directly at the mid-winter sunset in one direction and the mid-summer sunrise in the other.

Professer Parker Pearson is excited by the evidence, which he describes as ‘hugely significant’.

‘It tells us a lot about why Stonehenge was located where it is and why they were so interested in the solstices,’ he said.

‘It’s not to do with worshipping the sun, some kind of calendar or astronomical observatory.

‘It’s about how this place was special to prehistoric people. This natural landform happens to be on the solstice axis, which brings heaven and earth into one.’'
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby hvered » 10:49 pm

macausland wrote:There was a report on the Daily Mail site the other day about new findings at Stonehenge.

They have discovered natural ridges caused during the ice age under the ground following the 'processional route' and which by accident lined up with the solstice. I think the conclusion was that that was what made the builders choose the site to build Stonehenge.


What I find perplexing is why, in the whole of the ice-pocked British Isles, this phenomenon of ridge-lines only occurs in one spot.

[If the marks are caused by glaciation that seems to support the argument that the Preseli bluestones were deposited thereabouts by ice rather than people doesn't it?]
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby macausland » 9:53 am

Perhaps the grooves were made as a permanent site marker towards the horizon at the point of the summer sunrise. Once they were engraved they would be a permanent fixture around which everything else could be built at a later date?

I seem to remember reading an article on the activity of large masses of ice as in glaciers. The ground underneath appears to be preserved. Something to do with the ice liquifying under pressure.

I think it was Velikovsky who argued that what moved large stones was water rather than ice. A lot of water that is. A bit like the sea shore after a big storm. Everything gets thrown up on to nearby roads and land.
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby Mick Harper » 3:28 pm

Extract Seventeen

Given the apparently huge investment in the infrastructure of the Burgh Island - Mont St Michel route, it comes as as something of a shock to learn that this is not in fact the main shipping route in this part of the Channel. But this should not come as a surprise if the nature of the tin trade is considered in its wider context. Tin may be valuable but it can never be the bulk cargo.

Tin is useless on its own so bringing ingots of the stuff to, say, Central France, is not going to be a paying proposition in isolation. For every ingot of tin, there needs to seven, eight, nine (the alloys vary) ingots of copper brought in before the tin is of any commercial use. Or if you prefer seven, eight, nine copper ships.have to cross the Channel for every tin ship. Burgh Island may be ideally placed to export tin but nobody would want to transport the products of the (mainly) Welsh copper mines all the way to Plymouth Sound and then back across the Channel.

And not just copper either. It is known from Classical sources that Britain was a major corn exporter to the Continent both before and during the Roman occupation and corn (more likely barley and oats than wheat) is of such bulk that it can only be profitably shifted by very direct routes. And Burgh Island is not one of them since its hinterland is either Dartmoor or dairying.

This is all to be added to the merely ‘general trade’ that can be assumed to be happening in the background. Clearly a more convenient route from Central Britain to Central France is required. Which means more infrastructure and we now know exactly where to look and exactly what to look for in the quest to reconstruct it.
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Re: Trade Secrets

Postby Mick Harper » 4:40 pm

Extract Eighteen

Modern ferry and freight routes are generally the best guide to ancient ones since the same factors apply:
1) shortest overall distance
2) greatest proportion over sea because it is cheaper
3) shortest voyage over sea because it is slower (and more dangerous)
4) widest hinterland served on either side.
It is not difficult then to see why Weymouth - St Malo has always been of such importance.

Image

Notice that Weymouth is best positioned to export Welsh copper since it is the nearest port to the land crossing over the Bristol Channel. Wherever Welsh copper is mined it is best shifted via land to Weymouth if it is being exported to anywhere in Western France. Similarly St Malo, like Mont St Michel, is where the sea gets closest to that same western French hinterland. The fact that Weymouth is almost due north of St Malo means the shortest route but it remains to be seen whether the Channel Islands are on the way or in the way.
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