Trade Secrets

[macausland]

Alum can be used to purify water and pickle food.

It's also used as a mordant to fix dyes. I believe the wool trade was important in pre Roman Britain, especially the export of dyed cloth.

[spiral]

But even that is incomplete, as there are plenty of chalk quarries in Wiltshire (for example, the one behind my house). You don't need to dig a mine when the whole hillside above you is made of chalk and flint!

You are stuck in the middle of the the Chilterns, the North Downs, the South Downs, and the Dorsetshire Downs and that is exactly the point.

[spiral]

Inhabitants on the Isle of Thanet were apparently builders of 'sea gates', openings in the chalk cliffs to give access to the sea. Worth everyone's while to keep the openings open.

Yep.

[Mick Harper]

Extract Thirty-Six

There is though a problem because of the existence of 'rias', that is river valleys that have been drowned by a subsequent rise in sea level. (Or, it is also argued, a subsequent subsidence of the land). However there is a definite difference, though not one recognised by academic geographers, between what might be called natural and un-natural 'rias'.

Here for instance is Plymouth Sound with the characteristic 'dendritic' shape denoting the former river tributaries that were there when the river valley was drowned:



And of course those parts of the former tributaries that were not drowned are still there:



Quite different from Poole Harbour and its unusual river pattern.



Here is the much more 'Megalithic' shape of the Hayling Island complex:

[macausland]

That map of Hayling Island looks almost like a rough cut down map of England.

There appear to be lots of rectangular inlets in the area. I would have thought that rectangularity would rarely be a feature of natural erosion etc.

[hvered]

The layout of Hayling Island is even more striking in this pic



Western Point saltworks near Runcorn in Cheshire (1896)



and the Old Saltworks at Dawlish Warren, at the mouth of the Exe estuary in south Devon (1890 map)



have similar rectangular outlines.

[Mick Harper]

Extract Thirty-Seven

There is no possibility, as there was with causewayed tidal islands and Venus Pools, to be definitive about the extent of the Hand of Megalithia. A better way forward is to list the uses that Ancient Britons made of their (already?) remarkable coastline, given what we have already learned as to their proclivities and abilities. And not just the Brits of course since as we have seen with St Malo and shall see with the Brittany coastline, northern France is similarly blessed with these extended sea-inlets.

It is clear that the Megalithics and tides are entwined; it is also obvious that Megalithics and metal-mining are linked; and that shipping plays a major part throughout. The last would seem to point to why Megalithics would wish to use, adapt or even create these huge enclosed bodies of water, yet a note of caution is needed here. The archaeological evidence (ie the lack of archaeological evidence) would seem to indicate that the Megalithics did not use harbours in the sense we use today, of specially engineered stone or wooden jetties.

There must then be an overwhelming assumption that they used beaches to bring their craft in for loading and unloading. This is presumably the origin of their interest in tides since knowledge of tides – not just diurnal but spring and neap – is essential for the safe exploitation of beaches.

We have been using as our exemplar the shipping route St Malo – Weymouth but in truth Weymouth is a very awkward harbour even today. Nor is Portland next door much better in the absence of the huge breakwaters that the Royal Navy were able to place there:



However, Chesil Beach is an almost perfect place to ‘beach’ a boat so long as you don’t mind a bit of rough treatment from the shingle and, if you do, there is Weymouth Bay on the other side, an unexcelled vista of gently sloping soft sand. Of course you can always choose between the two, as you approach Portland Bill, depending on the state and direction of the wind.

[Mick Harper]

Extract Thirty-Eight

So, how difficult is Chesil Beach to construct given Megalithic constraints? We do have a slight etymological clue to send us on our way. In order to build Chesil Beach it is necessary, at the very least, to put down immense quatities of large stone blocks. But unfortunately the local rock – chalk and limestone – does not last very long underwater. Granite is what's needed.

The closest source of easily exploitable granite is the Channel Islands where the Chausey Islands and the Minquiers provide granite at all states of the tide because they are almost all tidal and composed wholly of granite, meaning that handy chunks can be hacked off at any time simply by selecting an appropriate island and parking on the sand next to it.

Looked at from a Megalithic viewpoint, this granite comes free because ships taking metals one way either to St Malo (granite outpost: the Minquiers) or Mont St Michel (granite outpost: the Chauseys) need ballasting for the return journey. So by requiring every ship to unload its ballast at the same place the underpinnings of Chesil Beach (or Sandbanks at the head of Poole Harbour or the various enclosures that create(d) the Portsmouth and Chichester harbour complex) are rapidly put in place.

Since Chesil Beach is most definitely a causeway it makes sense to call the places that built it ‘The Causeway Islands’. Or to put it another way, any other explanation is slight nonsensical unless the name of this huge collection of apparent shipping hazards refers to a Causeway to Heaven.

But the foundation granite blocks are only the first step.

[Mick Harper]

Extract Thirty-Nine

It must be obvious by now that the Megalithics had access to forces that we ourselves can scarcely comprehend. This book is asking the reader to believe that the Megalithics were capable of feats of civil engineering we would be hard pressed to duplicate today.

Now there is a long tradition in revisionist history – in orthodox history occasionally – of crediting ancient peoples with access to mysterious but powerful sources in order to explain some supposed wonder. The Great Pyramid for instance is constantly being cited as requiring stupendous skills in terms of lifting heavy blocks or lining things up with preternatural accuracy.

In truth all these things turn out rather to be failures of imagination in ourselves. That we have not thought the problem through properly. There is always a ‘simple’ explanation even if that explanation generally obliges us to expand our appreciation of our rude forebears.

When sufficient resources are mobilised to solve the problem we find that it does not require giant cranes to lift 300-ton ashlars because some combination of rollers, pulleys and ramps can get the job done; it does not require laser scanners to achieve astonishing alignments, a plumb bob and a set square can get there too.

So what was the Megalithics' Big Secret? It would seem they had a knowledge of tides that we have quite forgotten. And we even have a reason why it was forgotten. The entirety of our historical tradition, that is our detailed continuous record of what happened in the past via the written record, comes from the Mediterranean where there are no tides. History just blanked out tidal technologies as soon as it arrived in the tidal world. Let us not permit another failure of the imagination to obscure these momentous but not-really-impossible achievements.

[Boreades]

For today's bonus points, name this megalthic trade hub.