New Views over Megalithia

[Boreades]

Well, what was the new stuff?

[Mick Harper]

I'm just reporting the facts, ma'am.

[Boreades]

Ma'am & I are off to Marden today, to get an update on progress with the recent research.

https://historicengland.org.uk/research ... henge-nmp/

What would you like us to ask?
Questions on a postcode please.

[Boreades]

Thanks for the questions by private mail. Please see the responses in the normal manner.

[Boreades]

Apologies for the delay in posting anything about the Marden Mega-Meeting.

It took some teasing, but after a few drinks it emerged that, after a full season of scraping and sifting soil and stuff off of the site, the orthodozy regulars have come to a definite conclusion. They definitely still have no idea what it was for.

There is no evidence of permanent occupation of the dwellings or the site as a whole. .. "A completely artificial division has been made in the past between domestic and religious, recreation and ritual ... We're going to have to rethink all that. It's not one thing or the other, it's everything mixed in together."

Well, quelle surprise! A bit of academic back-peddling, which takes them closer to a TME position. It wasn't all hillforts and high-status ritual objects.

[Boreades]

It's that special time of year for Newgrange and Stonehenge.

The local folklore (that the sun shone into Newgrange on the shortest day of the year) was dismissed for many years by "the experts". What do local people know? Partly because of subsidence of the roofing stones of the passage, it wasn't possible for the sun to illuminate the passage properly, until 1967 when conservation work repaired the passage. And lo! The sun now shines down the passage exactly as the ignorant locals described.


Image (c) http://homepage.eircom.net/~archaeology ... knowth.htm

Folk memory and oral traditions are often rubbished by the "experts", and written histories based on oral traditions are often dismissed as forgeries, even by world-famous revisionist historians! ;-)

A comment by Gillies Macbain about Newgrange struck me as pertinent and familiar to many TME themes.

When I first wrote down my conclusions on the passage mounds – I sent a copy to Professor Eogan, an archaeologist, and another to Professor Wayman, an astronomer. The distinguished archaeologist wrote back saying " I can't comment on your theories because I am not an astronomer". The distinguished astronomer wrote back saying that the numbers looked right but he couldn't comment on them because he was not an archaeologist!

http://www.aislingmagazine.com/aislingm ... range.html

[TisILeclerc]

Mac 'illeBhorraidh, have you come across someone called David Furlong?

I was watching his Glastonbury talk on youtube last night and he goes into his own researches into alignments etc and he links them to ancient Egypt, or at least the geometry of these things.

This is very interesting in itself but towards the end, about 46 minutes into the talk he shows himself at the Temple of Hatshepsut at the winter solstice and photographs the sun coming up in alignment with the doorway at the end of a long corridor which is itself an extension of a long straight pathway.

He mentions that he was the only one their, well, him and his mates because nobody else had recognised the importance of this alignment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxW9uU0r8jQ

[Boreades]

David Furlong?

Yes, bumped into him a few years ago re his "Marlborough Circles"
http://www.davidfurlong.co.uk/keys_intro.htm

Others have commented on this alignment,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortuary_ ... Hatshepsut

Some of them are even "proper" astronomers.

(The) grand temple of Karnak, which is also aligned to the rising sun of the December solstice!

http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/201 ... el-bahari/

[hvered]

The local folklore (that the sun shone into Newgrange on the shortest day of the year) was dismissed for many years by "the experts". What do local people know? Partly because of subsidence of the roofing stones of the passage, it wasn't possible for the sun to illuminate the passage properly, until 1967 when conservation work repaired the passage. And lo! The sun now shines down the passage exactly as the ignorant locals described.

This is a pertinent point that isn't raised enough. How do the archaeologists/ historians know what position the stones occupied or whether the terrain was exactly as it is now? They don't of course but it doesn't appear to matter so long as 'facts' fit the theory.

Folk memory and oral traditions are often rubbished by the "experts", and written histories based on oral traditions are often dismissed as forgeries, even by world-famous revisionist historians! ;-)

When exactly did this 'folk memory' emerge though? 1960's by any chance?

[Boreades]

One of the earliest known surveys of the site was in 1769

Following a visit to Ireland in 1769, one of the earliest antiquarian accounts of Newgrange, a letter of Pownall’s entitled "A Description of the Sepulchral Monument at New Grange, near Drogheda, in the County of Meath, in Ireland. By Thomas Pownall, Esq in a Letter to the Rev. Gregory Sharpe, D. D. Master of the Temple" was read to the Society of Antiquaries in 1770 and subsequently published in Archaeologia. Earlier descriptions of the monument had been published by Lhwyd and Molineux but Pownall commissioned Samuel Bovie, a local land-surveyor, to re-measure the mound, correcting Molineux’s mistaken estimate of the height as 150 feet.

http://newgrangetours.com/newgrange-america

But no mention of solstice alignments. The poet Keats, however, is reported to have once stayed overnight in Newgrange to experience the solstice dawn. Probably didn't do his health any good.