Going Round in Circles

[Malmaison]

Why is it that we can't navigate like animals do, apparently with the aid of magnetic forces? People can't even walk in a straight line for a short distance even when 'stone-cold' sober. How many of us have literally gone round in a circle thinking we were headed in a completely different direction...

I wonder what cup and ring markings on standing stones are all about. They may be navigational aids even though they don't seem terribly helpful to modern eyes. They may be symbols of some higher truth but in line with Megalithia generally it's more likely they represent something quite mundane but presumably very useful.

[Jools]

There was a programme the other night on TV which was supposed to shed light on the Dark Ages. The presenter showed a dice discovered in some Roman ruins and I noticed it was engraved with concentric circles that looked like cup and ring markings.

So I am wondering if the Roman dice is nothing of the sort or if cup and ring markings are proof that Monopoly has been played for a very long time. Could bored Megalithic drovers have used waymarkers as a convenient surface for game-playing?

[Penny]

That's an interesting idea! Hermes is the god of gambling and dice as well as of roads and trade.

[Donna]

As far as I know cup(-and-ring) marks are only in Ireland and the northern half of Britain, none have been found in the south.

At Drombeg, the only known cup-marks are on the “ley-line”, i.e., on the upper surface of the recumbent sighting-stone. Craig Morag is similar: all known cup-marks are on a single recumbent stone in the circle itself. At Boheh in Mayo, cup-and-ring marks and mazes jostle indiscriminately on the same 3-metre stretch of rock.

A slab at Westwood Moor in Northumberland has a very fine labyrinth in the middle of a “maze” of cup-and-ring marks. A potential labyrinth, actually made of a deeply-incised cup surrounded by partially-overlapping rings with an “entrance path”, is found among cup-and-ring marks at Laxe das Rodas in Galicia. On a large boulder at Gardom’s Edge in Derbyshire, a small spiral labyrinth shares space with a series of cup-and-ring marks. A possible maze and cup-marks occur together on the same slab-face at Guisecliff in North Yorkshire.

However, most of the British and Irish labyrinths are dubious. Some may be eroded cup-and-ring marks with multiple rings. Others are believed to be modern.

[Boreades]

I wonder if these were part of some megalithic manufacturing process? Perhaps something that wore grooves in the rock?

[Jacqui]

[Boreades]

Knowing as we do that Romans were adept at grabbing any technology of worth from megalithic regions and calling it their own, I wonder what you make of this?

"Roman" gold mining in Wales, but in particular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolaucothi#Carreg_Pumsaint

"Such a water-powered hammer would have been moved regularly as each hollow became too deep, so producing the series of overlapping oval hollows in its surfaces."

[hvered]

[hvered]

[Iona]

The stones were thought to possess medicinal properties just as certain springs and wells were considered to have healing powers, at least according to Geoffrey of Monmouth:

"whenever they [the Irish] felt ill, baths should be prepared at the foot of the stones; for they used to pour water over them and to run this water into baths in which their sick were cured. What is more, they mixed the water with herbal concoctions and so healed their wounds. There is not a single stone among them which hasn't some medicinal virtue."

The sense of 'magick' is reminiscent of the aura or awe surrounding metal-working and smithery. Could "water" here be quicksilver or mercury, which for some reason was used for an inordinately long period to treat quite perplexing conditions such as syphilis?