New Views over Megalithia

Current topics

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby ericwargo » 2:54 am

Apologies in advance if you guys know about this person already or have discussed him elsewhere on this site (I couldn't find mention of it, if so), but a Belgian historian-cum-outsider-archaeologist named Marcel Mestdagh made some interesting megalithic discoveries in France that remind me very much of your own in Britain.

Mestdagh's work isn't translated into English from what I can tell, so this is all secondhand, via Philip Coppens, whose book The Lost Civilization Enigma I have just been reading. Coppens says Mestdagh became dissatisfied with the standard historical account of the Viking invasion of England and France, specifically thinking there was something odd about the path the Viking army took in its conquest. He finally realized that the Vikings had been following an ancient system of roads radiating from the towns of Nottingham, England, and Sens, France--roads he initially thought were Roman but later realized were originally megalithic pathways, because they were thick with standing stones (which he interpreted as boundary markers, but whatever...). The Vikings ended up taking Sens in an oddly peaceful siege in 886-7, and it seemed to Mestdagh as if the Vikings were searching for something--the legendary Valhalla, specifically--using megalithic knowledge that they had retained knowledge of, and that they actually found it (or what had become of it) at Sens. Like you, he argued that the Druids had simply retreated to the European periphery (i.e., Scandinavia) after Anglesey, and that the Viking conquest represented a kind of reassertion of Megalithia (I don't think he calls it that) after all that time, not just haphazard rape and plunder.

Most interestingly, Coppens says Mestdagh spent years driving and walking the French countryside, exploring the megalithic landscape, and ended up discovering a huge ancient system of concentric oval-shaped dykes centered (along with the aforementioned road system) on Sens--a massive terraforming project that is still reflected in existing roadways and the course of major rivers, as well as the location of towns. Besides standing stones, the region is also full of Merc- place names (Mercury...marker-y), hinting at its megalithic importance. Mestdagh argued that Sens had not only been the French megalithic capital (which Coppens adds, is probably why Caesar stationed his army there; it had been the home of the Celtic tribe Senones, "The Elders"), but that it had been the original Atlantis, having long ago been a kind of island surrounded by that dyke system--the region is still called Ile de France.

Whatever you want to make of the Atlantis (or Valhalla) part of the argument, that Sens had been hugely important to Megalithia and remained so even through the Middle Ages could explain certain oddities, including the curiously powerful title held by the city's archbishops, "Primate of Gaul and Germany." (Wiki also reveals Sens had the biggest and one of the very first early Gothic cathedrals.) A map of the Sens region and the odd arrangement of towns in the surrounding area is here: http://wiki.atlantisforschung.de/index. ... l_Mestdagh

There's more, but basically, many of Mestdagh's insights sound like they harmonize very well with yours (not that I needed further convincing), and his evidently largely-ignored discoveries seem to have been made in an authentic A-E spirit.

Eric
ericwargo
 
Posts: 4
Joined: 12:56 am

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby Mick Harper » 10:18 am

By the usual rules of serendipity I wrote the following words yesterday afternoon in a new book what I am writing (Noirmoutier is an island off the French Biscay coast):

Noirmoutier has some obvious Megalithic features. As Wiki puts it

The island is most notable for the Passage du Gois, a paved-over sandbank with a length of 4.5 kilometers, one of the routes that connects the island to the mainland. It is flooded twice a day by the high tide.

Rather more enigmatically, the island was the site of the first Viking raid on the European mainland. This is interesting because, according to The Megalithic Empire, the Vikings are themselves thoroughly Megalithic and their first recorded raids always seem directed at (or at any rate reported by the thoroughly non-Megalithic Anglo-Saxons to be on) islands like Lindisfarne, Portland or Noirmoutier that have long Megalithic associations.
Mick Harper
 
Posts: 910
Joined: 10:28 am

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby hvered » 10:30 am

ericwargo wrote:Most interestingly, Coppens says Mestdagh spent years driving and walking the French countryside, exploring the megalithic landscape, and ended up discovering a huge ancient system of concentric oval-shaped dykes centered (along with the aforementioned road system) on Sens--a massive terraforming project that is still reflected in existing roadways and the course of major rivers, as well as the location of towns.

Sens means direction in French.
hvered
 
Posts: 855
Joined: 10:22 pm

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby Boreades » 12:12 pm

Hello Eric, that is very interesting.

ericwargo wrote:The Vikings ended up taking Sens in an oddly peaceful siege in 886-7, and it seemed to Mestdagh as if the Vikings were searching for something--the legendary Valhalla, specifically--using megalithic knowledge that they had retained knowledge of, and that they actually found it (or what had become of it) at Sens.
Eric


That reminds me of some accounts of The Knights Templars' searching in Jerusalem.
Boreades
 
Posts: 2081
Joined: 2:35 pm

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby ericwargo » 1:13 pm

Mick Harper wrote:By the usual rules of serendipity I wrote the following words yesterday afternoon in a new book what I am writing ...


I'm glad you're on the case, Mick ... and glad there's gonna be another book.
ericwargo
 
Posts: 4
Joined: 12:56 am

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby ericwargo » 1:17 pm

Boreades wrote:That reminds me of some accounts of The Knights Templars' searching in Jerusalem.


Yes, I had more or less the same thought. The whole thing was a Crusade (if Mestdagh's right).
ericwargo
 
Posts: 4
Joined: 12:56 am

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby ericwargo » 1:53 pm

hvered wrote:Sens means direction in French.


It all makes so much sense.

There's also the word island. Standard etymology says it's from Middle English iland and Old English iegland--ieg being a cognate (according to Wiki) of the Latin aqua (so "water land"). Having read Mick's other book, I know that's all nonsense. The OE ieg sounds an awful lot like "egg" to me. And Coppens mentions that in Dutch the word is eiland, which means "egg[-shaped] land." More directly relevant to English, the ME "i-" sounds like "eye" to me, and indeed other words for island like eyot seem to support such a connection.

Doesn't French also use the same word for both "egg" and "eye"?

In any case, those dykes in France are certainly egg- (or eye-) shaped.

Coppens, on the other hand, claims island comes from Ys-land--the land of Ys being the legendary dyke-protected lowland drowned by the sea somewhere near Brittany.
ericwargo
 
Posts: 4
Joined: 12:56 am

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby hvered » 8:29 am

Yes, ig/ieg or egg is a very fundamental, possibly universal, word. It is also in igloo which is traditionally a mud-house rather than built from ice blocks. Maybe island words, and their various spellings, originate with the Inuit.

[Loo/lu appears to be mud, cf. Lutetia, place of mud, the Roman name for Paris, so we might be looking at a high/low juxtaposition which is exactly what island denotes].
hvered
 
Posts: 855
Joined: 10:22 pm

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby macausland » 9:19 am

eggs and eggs and marrowbones.

I thought the French for egg was 'oeuf' and for eye 'oeil'. The 'f' in 'oeuf' would presumably change to gh or g and 'oeil' sounds like eye anyway.

There's an old story told by Caxton of confusion between 'eggs' and 'eyren' which I believe was used in the south of England.

'In the preface to the Eneydos he told a story of some merchants going down the Thames. There was no wind so they landed on the Kent side of the river to buy food. ‘And specyally he axyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel’ [And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well].'

http://www.bl.uk/treasures/caxton/english.html

Procopius called the mainland of Britain 'Brittia' as opposed to Brettania by which he may have meant Ireland.

Perhaps the ending '-ia' could be related to 'island' which could mean that 'Brittia' was the 'Bright' island which would tie in with other descriptions of it as 'Albion' supposedly taken from the white cliffs of the south east coast. I wonder if that is also related to 'albumen' the white of the egg?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittia

Here's the link to wiki's article on Procopius.
macausland
 
Posts: 339
Joined: 3:17 pm

Re: New Views over Megalithia

Postby spiral » 9:24 am

ericwargo wrote:" More directly relevant to English, the ME "i-" sounds like "eye" to me, and indeed other words for island like eyot seem to support such a connection.



Maybe the ancient concept of (eye)land, (before maps) was that, from a high point, you could see all the land (with your eyes) was surrounded by water.
spiral
 
Posts: 228
Joined: 8:10 pm

PreviousNext

Return to Index

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 128 guests