Megalithic Calendar

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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby spiral » 9:45 am

Boreades wrote:Good point!
If other places are to be believed, it was only the advance of the railways that did away with local time zones and the like.

But?
<< Stonehenge certainly isnt precision engineered. >>
Except it was the cutting edge precision engineering of its time?


I have really given up on this way of viewing things. Everyone is so damn keen to discover accuracy and precision...eg Megalithic Yards/Impossibly Straight ley lines, etc. This will eventually become the new orthodoxy.

Nope, your Brits have always rejected this sort of continental bollox, we are a nation of lazy inventors who, if we can get either nature, or some other bugger to do the job for us, will always go for the easier more inventive option.

When the English created a ancient landscape, they let nature take the strain, they also went for a revolutionary inventive "naturalistic look" (which is why MJH keeps finding new man made monuments that orthodoxy thinks are natural)

The more primitive continentals instead imposed a more intensive man made landscape, without taking nature into account, they were much more concerned with formalism, accuracy, precision, pyramids and so on.

The more astute of you will note this mirrors our approach to gardens.

The genius of the first Brits was to work with nature and not against it, giving us a massive competitive advantage. I don't doubt that Stonehenge is in part a observatory, but unlike Johnny foreigner, who was obsessed with the sun, solstice and so on, we took a much more practical naturalistic approach. This enabled us to crack on with building the Megalithic Empire, instead of falling under the influence of sun worshiping Zealots.

I suspect that I might be in a minority (of one) on all this. So please feel free to continue.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby hvered » 12:08 pm

You're not alone, Spiral, completely agree with your 'amateur' view.

Distrust of maths seems almost ingrained, it doesn't embarrass an English person to admit being bad at maths, in some cases rather a matter of pride. Perhaps there's a pattern from megalithic times of Brits having creative ideas and others who are more skilled in precision engineering developing them.

[To call someone an accountant is possibly the worst insult in MJH's considerable lexicon]
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby spiral » 2:59 pm

So do the ancient Boroviani observe the lunar Sabbath, start a fixed 7 day week on a Saturday (like the Romans), or are they ancient sun worshippers? Or maybe they want it all ways like the Christians?
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Boreades » 5:07 pm

spiral wrote:I have really given up on this way of viewing things. Everyone is so damn keen to discover accuracy and precision...eg Megalithic Yards/Impossibly Straight ley lines, etc. This will eventually become the new orthodoxy. Nope, your Brits have always rejected this sort of continental bollox, we are a nation of lazy inventors who, if we can get either nature, or some other bugger to do the job for us, will always go for the easier more inventive option.


After several days of mulling, I am still perplexed and dismayed by this notion. On TME of all places!

spiral wrote:When the English created a ancient landscape, they let nature take the strain, they also went for a revolutionary inventive "naturalistic look" (which is why MJH keeps finding new man made monuments that orthodoxy thinks are natural). The more primitive continentals instead imposed a more intensive man made landscape, without taking nature into account, they were much more concerned with formalism, accuracy, precision, pyramids and so on. The more astute of you will note this mirrors our approach to gardens.


What is this revolutionary inventive "naturalistic look" you speak of?

To take just one example, Silbury. There was certainly no "naturalistic look" when it was first constructed.

Image

The "naturalistic look" which people now seem to pride is the combined effect of several millennium of woeful neglect (by humans) and natural weathering. For want of a name, let's call it the English Heritage.

Or should we suppose that Avebury was designed and constructed by some wayward continentals that just nipped over to show the lazy Brits how things should be done? A bit like Isambard Kingdom Brunel (who trained as an engineer in France), but four or five thousand years earlier?

I would, however, concur about our approach to gardens. The back garden at Château Boreades is a world leader in the neglect and weather approach. Indeed, we're taking it many steps further, with rapidly accumulating layers of detritus such as broken toys, decaying woodwork, discarded garden furniture, rotting straw, overflowing compost piles and chicken shit. A veritable treasure trove for future archaeologists, with not a single piece of mathematics or electronics in sight.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby TisILeclerc » 6:28 pm

Whoever built Silbury was not, I imagine, thinking of gardens or the latest garden furniture.

It had a purpose, whatever that was, and it had design. Conceptual art it was not. That branch of artistic and architectural endeavour tends to come at the point of collapse of a civilisation, not the beginning. 'Clogs to clogs in three generations' as they say. In this case more than three.

Where these people 'continentals who nipped across' to show us how to do it?

We always assume that civilisation and clever things come from the south and the east. Our history is full of how our lives have been enriched by 'Celts', Romans, French, Dutch, Germans etc etc.

We do know however that there was a vast maritime network stretching from Scandinavia round the west coast of Britain and Ireland down to Spain and into the Med. Doggerland presumably was a hindrance for a channel passage while it was still there.

I wouldn't like to suggest that the Norwegian cliff face collapse that started the tsunami that erased Doggerland was done deliberately by pesky pre Vikings but it was very handy.

Leaving that idea behind we do know that recent digs have shown what a centre of activity the Orkneys were. As well of course as the other centres in western Scotland, Ireland and England and then of course Brittany. Orkney should not figure in all of this going by conventional history but there it is.

In 2012 it was found that trees survived the ice age in Scandinavia. It has been suggested that large animals like deer also survived. Perhaps humans were also living through the ice age as well while the rest of Europe was covered in all that ice and snow?

http://sciencenordic.com/trees-survived ... candinavia

'Animals may have survived too

The discovery is of great importance to the scientific picture of what happened after the Ice Age.

Just as in Scandinavia, there may well have been similar ice-free retreats in Siberia and in North America, and the current models of how plants spread now need to be reassessed.
Having analysed the genetic make-up of more than 100 European spruces, the researchers discovered that there isn’t just one type of spruce, but two. (Photo: Science/AAAS)

The researcher points out that small animals such as lemmings may well have been able to survive in these retreats too.

And if these ice-free areas have been sufficiently large, it’s possible that bigger animals such as the stag could also have survived there, says the researcher.

Image

'Picture B shows that the distribution of the Scandinavian spruce is greatest in the west and north near the island of Andøya, which is where the trees are thought to have spread from (blue arrows) as the ice melted and the ice-free areas grew larger. At the same time, spruce trees from the south and the east migrated back to the area (red arrows). Picture A shows the evolution of the Scandinavian ice sheet. The ‘A’ and the ‘T’ on the map mark the two sites where trees existed during the Ice Age.'

The Vikings seem to have had a head start in the ocean exploration activities of early Europeans. All the Irish and British could come up with for a long time were leather coracles. Not that I'm knocking them.

But if there was an early trading empire it would have needed a fleet or several fleets of good sea going ships. Viking longships are fairly similar to ships in Egypt judging by the early rock carvings and other images.

I came across an article recently that suggested that Germans were Scandinavians who had moved south. If so how did the Scandinavians get north in the first place unless they were already there? Apparently the 'I' dna haplogroup is only found in Europe and especially in those with German descent unlike the 'R1b' so called 'Celtic' haplogroup which gets just about everywhere. Which leads some to suggest that the 'I' group were the original Europeans and hunter gatherers after the ice age.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I propose the Scandies as the original architects. All those places called Dor and Dur. Very Scandinavian and just about everywhere along with the brochs, burghs and other variations.

With that I bid you all God Jul, Happy New Year, agus Bliadhna Mhath Ur.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby hvered » 11:03 am

Boreades wrote:To take just one example, Silbury. There was certainly no "naturalistic look" when it was first constructed.

Silbury is the most unnatural-looking construction but not much of a megalith -- huge as it is, it can only be viewed once travellers have arrived from the Ridgeway. Dolmens and stone circles don't look natural either but can easily be missed unless you're on the right track. Rather than build pyramids, the Megalithics placed menhirs on cone-shaped hills, tors, clifftops. Without the later churches on these sites, they would perhaps not be remarkable.

Cursuses appear to have been the largest-scale constructions, with more than a local 'reach', but are scarcely visible nowadays. Would they have originally looked 'unnatural'?
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby hvered » 11:25 am

TisILeclerc wrote:I came across an article recently that suggested that Germans were Scandinavians who had moved south. If so how did the Scandinavians get north in the first place unless they were already there? Apparently the 'I' dna haplogroup is only found in Europe and especially in those with German descent unlike the 'R1b' so called 'Celtic' haplogroup which gets just about everywhere. Which leads some to suggest that the 'I' group were the original Europeans and hunter gatherers after the ice age.

'I' for Inuit? The reindeer people (as per TME).

A multi-lingual happy new year to you too.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby spiral » 6:13 pm

Boreades wrote:After several days of mulling, I am still perplexed and dismayed by this notion. On TME of all places!


Hey, I did say I expected to be in a minority of one......
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby spiral » 7:52 am

One Roman view was that the Brits were into Sun Worship. Here is Cicero's youngest brother

Quintus wrote:The temples of the Britons are raised and constructed in a circular form, with obelisks of stone, over which are imposts, all of huge dimensions untouched by the chisel; a peace offering to Geranius, or Apollo, the sun. The huge stones of which they are composed, lay scattered by the hand of nature on the plain: these, with myriads of labourers, the high priest caused to be rolled up on the inclined planes of solid earth, which had been formed by the excavation of trenches, until they had attained a height equal to their own altitude; these pits being dug, they were launched from the terrace and sunk so as to stand perpendicular, at due and equal distances in the circle, and over these were placed others horizontally. After having completed one circle, they formed another that is concentric at some distance, and towards the extremity of the area of the inner circle, they placed a huge stone for the purpose of religious rites. When the sun enters into Cancer, is the greatest festival of the god; and on all high mountains and eminences of the country, they light fires at the approach of that day, and make their wives, their children, and their cattle, to pass through the fire, or to present themselves before the fire in honour of the deity. Deep and profound is the silence of the multitude during this ceremony, the appearance of the sun above the horizon, when, with loud and continued exclamations, and songs of joy, they hail the utmost of that luminary, as the supreme triumph of the symbol of the god of their adoration.

From http://www.johnchaple.co.uk/stonehenge.html

The Romans are supposed to have later changed their fixed first day from a Saturday to a Sunday, to appease the sun worshiping part of their empire.....
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Mick Harper » 11:24 am

When does the 'sun enter Cancer'?
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