Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[hvered]

Prof Malmström's view on the relationship between angles and a particular latitude came up vis-a-vis Stonehenge. His claims tie in with quite a lot of our earlier navigational discussions about 'meridians', leys, getting a fixed bearing, e.g.

At Carnac a right angle exists between the extremes of moonrise and moonset, at Stonehenge it is found between the extremes of sunrise and moonset or conversely between the extremes of moonrise and sunset, whereas at Ales Stenar it occurs between extreme sunrise and sunset positions. Thus, each of these places is located at the only latitude in the northern hemisphere where the symbolic “right-angle” serves as a characteristic feature of the local astronomy.

In some ways Malmström's position is puzzling. On the one hand the sky-watchers are found to have been incredibly accurate astronomers and on the other afraid of, or obsessed with, eclipses. Megalithic astronomers would have appreciated eclipses never did any harm except perhaps to a few retinas.

[macausland]

Hvered

'Megalithic astronomers would have appreciated eclipses never did any harm except perhaps to a few retinas.'

Unless there was good reason to be afraid which was perhaps the reason for all this sky watching and the resources it used up.

According to people like Velikovsky the solar system underwent a series of catastrophes in which comets or planets came very close to planets like the earth causing world wide devastation.

I was reading a variation on this theme in which the writer claims that it was even more catastrophic if the theory of an electric universe is true. This would mean that planets have an electrical charge and when they come too close they react violently with electrical discharges from one to the other.

In such a scenario the watchers would have reason to be afraid of any unusual happenings in the sky. The writer points out that farmers plant plants without building stone circles to tell them what the time is.

Here's a link to his page on pyramids and henges. It starts off with a nice Danish ship.

http://saturniancosmology.org/oldk.php

He may be wrong of course.

[Boreades]

There was apparently a very large population in the area so it couldn't have been all that windswept and barren.

Eh? Aren't centres of population (of any kind) usually supported by external centres of food production?
In systems theory, that would be food sources and sinks.
e.g. that strange place Mick lives in (London) full of millions of people and thousands of food consumption places, compared to that strange place I live in (out in the sticks) with a few hundred people and millions of plants growing the food.

[Boreades]

Unless there was good reason to be afraid which was perhaps the reason for all this sky watching and the resources it used up.

According to people like Velikovsky the solar system underwent a series of catastrophes in which comets or planets came very close to planets like the earth causing world wide devastation..

By chance a few days ago I stumbled on something related, and quite entertaining.
The Little Bang Theory
(so named, presumably, to distinguish it from The Big Bang Theory, that popular comedy TV show)

The basis of which is the idea that Mars was an errant planet that came close to Earth and caused all kinds of mayhem.

[spiral]

Blimey Mac, that http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk has some great material.

I've only got 14 mins into that 1 hr 38 min video, but the keywords so far might strike a chord with TME folk.

Your link doesn't open open on my decrepit PC. Judging by your "keywords", you have discovered Christian Obrien "the Genius of the few" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_O%27Brien . I am sure it will strike a chord, if you can get through it.

Keywords.

Genius>Race>Cultural Superheroes>Domestication of Agriculture>Agriculture First>Garden of Eden>Origin>Diffusion>Delusion.

[Boreades]

We do tend to think of the Orkneys as being remote .... We tend to be 'south centric'. We are told that all good things come from the south, and we believe it.

Even the way the BBC presents a weather map reinforces that perception. Which reminds me, didn't we (a while ago) talk about a lovely little book called "A Gigantic Whinge on the Celtic Fringe"?

One of the first illustrations in that book is a "proper" view of the British Isles, from the Western sea-going Celtic perspective.



Ref: http://www.scribd.com/doc/193707084/A-G ... tic-Fringe

[macausland]

Looks like a quite good book.

I see he spelled Wails wrong.

And he didn't mention the Vikings of Donegal, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin etc. who were the Nordic highlights on the Celtic fringe. Give Ireland back to Norway I say.

And where was the Watford Gap? That gaping great abyss that separates the barbarians from Yorkshire and other civlised parts.

It reminds me of the video link I posted here of the three Irishmen who did a similar thing around Ireland and Scotland, including Orkney, back down the Caledonian canal and then round the north of Ireland and round the corner back to the sunny south.

They lost the boom and were a bit worried sailing to St Kilda in case the motor conked out and they were left without a paddle so to speak. They managed all right and pulled in at Stornoway where they got a makeshift replacement by way of a pine tree which gave its life for the job.

The funny thing was they were also doing the Celtic fringe thing with snippets of Celtic history all the way. It was a very good video. All done in Irish of course. But the bloke who fixed their boom had been on a BBC programme which did DNA tests on people from Lewis. He was one of three tested. All participants when asked what they thought their ancestry was declared themselves to be Vikings. The first was shown to have ancestral roots in the south of Ireland, the second in the Basque country, but the tree chopper and boom fitter extraordinaire was indeed a Viking. He was very happy about it as well. He's probably got the 'show me a Celtic fringe and I'll trim it down to size' gene in his DNA.

[Boreades]

Mac, you're quite right to remind us of the shared roots and DNA.

Many clans from the Western Isles and Highlands of Scotland have loads of folklore about connections with Ireland and Norway. Significantly, very little about any connections with Lowland Scotland. Which was to all intents and purposes a separate country until James (of Edinburgh) invaded the Western Isles by force and seized control.

When the English later invaded the Highlands, the moral dilemma was how to choose between two enemies. Both were Sassenachs. It caused many divisions in many clans.

[macausland]

Speaking of Orkney, National Geographic have done a feature on the latest developments at Brodgar and Stenness. There's a short video on the site about half way down on the left.

They are comparing the area to Ancient Egypt and Greece as well as Roman architecture. So far the archeologists have only dug about ten per cent of what's there.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/ ... smith-text

A longer video giving a better view of the setting in the landscape and more information on the site itself is provided by Neil Oliver. This seems to be an update on a previous programme he did.

If you ignore the music and Oliver's dramatic posturing as well as the hushed voice theorising for which he gives little or no evidence, it is an informative look at not only Orkney but a hint at its relationship with Stonehenge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuOXF81GMvY

Although they make comments on how strange it is that Orkney was the centre of stone age civilisation in Britain they don't take the issue any further. For instance could it be that with the demise of Doggerland the north east of Scotland was swamped with refugees fleeing the advancing waters?

The conclusion of the video seems to be that the farmers couldn't wait to devote a thousand years of building temples to their stone age religion before demolishing them when the Bronze Age came.

The landscape's nice.

[Boreades]

If Ms Caroline Wickham-Jones (of the University of Aberdeen) has been doing anything useful since 2011, she should be able to help us shed light on the significance of Orkney -v- Doggerland.


Scapa Flow as a land-locked bay

e.g. in 2011 she said
Giving some shape to the land has helped me to realise the complexity of the human use of the land in prehistory. It is not just a question of saying that there was more land for people to inhabit, but also of looking at the lie of the land and exploring the emotional reactions of those approaching the islands in small skin boats. Over the coming year I shall be refining the picture and adding more data in order to extrapolate from Orkney for a wider view.

Caroline was awarded a Research Fellowship grant in 2011. Err, well, perhaps we should give her the benefit of the doubt and pass over the blindingly obvious assumptions she started with.

Ref: http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/news_i ... newsid/189

But surely this is good news for TME regulars! You can get grants for this kind of research. On behalf of TME (the sacrifices I make) I shall be applying for a grant to explore the complex emotional reactions of those pre-historic travellers on The Ridgeway when they approached a Pre-Roman/Celtic/Briton Temple that brewed its own beer. Field work will be required to reconstruct a working model, so that scholars can appreciate the full experience of induced micturition in a beverage production facility.