Hattie makes a good point. It should be a ground rule of "Reverse Engineering" with all our fables, myths, legends etc. Whenever the story mentions anything like "casting out of snakes" or "killing dragons", we can be certain it's a cover for pagan/megalithic practices being usurped. Like St.Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland. Which was the Druids that didn't want to convert to Christianity.

The word rabbit, of unknown etymology, seems to be the same word as leveret or young hare (by the l = r rule). The official history of rabbits claims they were introduced into the UK from Spain by the Romans, then disappeared (probably because Spanish rabbits couldn't cope with British weather), only to be re-introduced by the Normans even though rabbits are prodigious breeders. [The Spanish for rabbit, conejo, is similar to the English coney, and both are used informally for genitalia.. male in Spanish, female in English]

To some extent rabbits have an island connection. If Wiki is to be believed, offshore islands tended to be chosen for warrens, the explanation being that it was easier to protect the rabbits from predators. Not aerial predators presumably. In fact, it could be the reverse, i.e. warrened islands as food stores for specialist birds (or specialist humans?). Rats are good swimmers but mice, like rabbits, are useless at swimming. Also like rabbits, mice breed fast and are a food source for many birds and mammals. One man blogged about how he was going to feed a baby rat to his python (live) but took pity and kept it as a pet. Perhaps he gave his python a grown-up rat instead, he didn't say.

Interestingly, scientists are now claiming that mice are as intelligent as rats and perform the same tasks in the lab. http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/ ... 00173/full

There is also the strong possibility that mention of "crows" in many old stories is really saying "old woman/women dressed in black".

Just as the priestesses who tended the sacred oak at Dodona were known as Peleiades, or ‘wild doves’.

The winged creatures of the wind who lived in the hollows of the ancient oak were its indigenous spirits. These all-knowing doves were birds of the chthonic realm, universally regarded as “prophetic birds, omens of death, and spirits of the dead.” (14) And it was they, themselves, who interpreted the eerie sounds of the incessantly murmuring leaves stirred by the unceasing winds in this desolate and deathly place at the furthest reaches of the known Greek world.

http://www.sacredthreads.net/www.sacred ... odona.html

That SacredThreads web page also provides a clue about another one of the Ancient Centres of the World

In Egypt, a major revision to their whole system of viewing the cosmos was precipitated by this astronomical occurrence. The decoded message of the myth, then, reveals that when the new ram-worshipping dynasty “moved the capital and the geodetic center of Egypt to a more central position,” the astronomer-priests needed to ascertain accurate measurements with respect to their own new center. Their universe was now to be centered at Karnak, called in Greek “Thebes”; and Dodona, an ancient and established center of the world, was the very place from which to take those measures.

In performing astronomical observations it is necessary to express differences of longitude in terms of units of time. . . . The ancients calculated by sidereal time, which they could measure by observing the apparent movement of the vault of heaven. . . . In order to obtain the right length of the second and minute of sidereal time, one must take as reference a degree of latitude further north than Egypt. The degrees at the latitudes of Dodona and Delphi provided the correct values.

These facts, together with the evidence so innocently revealed in Herodotus’s report, document that the prehistoric site at Dodona, believed to have been in existence since about 2000 B.C.E., is much older than we had thought. The absolute beginning of the holy site of the earth goddess can only be guessed at, but we do know that in 1991 B.C.E., or thereabouts, when the priests of Amon zeroed in on it for their coordinates, they not only knew it well, but acknowledged it as a center of esteemed reverence at the furthest reaches of the sacred universe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40494248

Scientists have been examining Roman concrete and have found that although it is simple it is too difficult to copy. For some reason.

Another drawback is the lack of the precise mixture that the Romans followed. It might take years of experimenting to discover the full formula

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40494248

This new study says the scientists found significant amounts of tobermorite growing through the fabric of the concrete, with a related, porous mineral called phillipsite.

The researchers say that the long-term exposure to sea water helped these crystals to keep on growing over time, reinforcing the concrete and preventing cracks from developing.

"Contrary to the principles of modern cement-based concrete," said co-author Marie Jackson from the University of Utah, US, "the Romans created a rock-like concrete that thrives in open chemical exchange with seawater."

Surely it's not that difficult to find a volcano somewhere or rocks with the same properties?

Concrete blocks appear to be well suited to underwater conditions and qualifies as 'historic' remarkably quickly. Margate's tidal swimming pool is a Listed Building (Grade II).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION

Walpole Bay Tidal Pool, one of two tidal pools designed by Margate's borough engineer in 1937, constructed in concrete blocks reinforced by reused iron tram rails, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Structural engineering interest: an ambitious project because of its scale, the weight of each concrete block, and that work needing to be carried out day and night because of the tides; * Scale and design: impressive in scale and shape, occupying 4 acres and three sides of a rectangle, the sides 450 feet long diminishing towards the seaward end which was 300 feet long; * Social historical interest: provided an improvement to sea bathing at the period of the greatest popularity of the English seaside; * Degree of intactness: intact apart from the loss of the two diving boards which do not often survive; * Group value: situated quite near the remains of the 1824-6 Clifton Baths (Grade II), an 1935 lift and the other 1937 tidal pool.

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/ ... ry/1421296

Why would they need TWO pools? The official explanation is to do with the 'considerable tidal range'

"Excellent provision has been made by the Margate Corporation in furnishing large sea-bath­ing pavilions and ranges of dressing boxes, but it has been found by experience that the receipts from these undertakings were very much less on days when low tide was about mid-day, and the water’s edge, therefore, a considerable distance from the bathing stations, and in order to facilitate bathing for large numbers of people at all states of the tide it was decided that two pools should he constructed at the most popular parts of the beach, tine at Marine Terrace in the centre of the town, and the other at Walpole Bay at the east end of Cliftonville."


The larger Walpole Bay beach has an(other) unusual feature

It is an interesting feature that in the case of Walpole Bay pool, there are copious pure fresh water springs arising from the beach within the confines of the walls and the pool is continuously overflowing by the supply of fresh clean water from the floor of the pool.

http://www.bathsandwashhouses.co.uk/arc ... hing-pool/

Despite the twice-daily changeover of seawater, "Swimmers warned of poor water quality at Walpole Bay, Thanet" in 2016.

Putting the roof back on Stonehenge.

Here's an excellent example of reverse engineering, by Geoff Carter, on one of our favourite locations. As usual, it will confound the Ortho' Archeo's.

Twelve reasons why Stonehenge was a building.



http://structuralarchaeology.blogspot.c ... e-was.html

Thanks, Borry. Mr Carter clearly has no time for the Stonehenge observatory theory, else why bother with a roof? Does he have an explanation for its geographical position (and Goseck's)?

The scale of these structures clearly implies they were built at the limit of what was considered prudent by builders in Prehistory. This is a craft that was several thousand years old, and by this period we have evidence of a new elite who would normally be expected to express wealth and power in the built environment.

Does he suppose that Stonehenge was a dwelling place?

My presumption is that Stonehenge was a temple built to house the Bluestones.

No idea why since he doesn't give a reason but anyway, again, why position a temple (temple?) here?

The unprecedented use of a stone load-bearing wall, and pillars in the centre, is a technological approach reminiscent of Mediterranean Europe, suggesting imported craftsmen.

Are other Stonehenges scattered around the Mediterranean region?