New Views over Megalithia

[Boreades]

Evenin' all.

Balls. Someone has a fetish or a fancy for megalithic balls.

A bronze age carved stone ball, measuring approx. 6cm by 6cm has been stolen from its display cabinet at the Dunblane Museum, The Cross, Dunblane, sometime between early and mid November, 2015. The stone ball may have some identifying numbers marked on it however it would be possible for these to be removed. A photo of the stolen stone ball is attached. Dunblane Officers are investigating the theft and are appealing for information. If you have any knowledge of who may be responsible or know the whereabouts of the stone ball, please contact them on 101 or via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

The ortho archaeos have been mystified by these balls, which are found at various places, but notably in Scotland. My favoured explanation is Platonic Solids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_Stone_Balls

[Keimpe]

This Carved Stone Ball:



Immediately reminded me of this:

[hvered]

Is it known where the balls were found? It's boring, though useful, being a lookout, hermit, fire-tender etc. so playing ball games (bowls, petanque, croquet and so on) would be a good way to stay alert, on the spot as it were. The most famous bowls game we're told was played by Drake waiting for Spanish ships.

Golf was invented in Scotland, according to the Scots anyway.

[TisILeclerc]

Could it be a loom weight?

Usually they have a hole drilled through them but if sections of the stone were worn away they could provide grooves for wrapping the thread round. Here's an image of stones, mostly drilled but with one at least having been shaped as well as having a hole through it.



http://www.butser.org.uk/iaftex_hcc.html




Here's a reconstruction as in wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp-weighted_loom

[Keimpe]

Nah, if it's loom weights, why bother carving them? You just hang them there.

I'd carve them for identification purposes. That's your ball, this one's mine. It's like carving your name on something.

[TisILeclerc]

Carve grooves in them and the strings will be less liable to slip off.

[Komorikid]

What I find difficult to understand is why did they choose points of reference in the mid Atlantic to act as the points from which they drew their lines.
How did they choose these points and why?
Longitude, we are told was a much later development.

These Mid Atlantic points are usually referred to as the 8 Wind or 12 Wind System that appear on many ancient maps.
The Mid-Atlantic point denote the origin of the wind. Ancient mariners have been traversing the Atlantic in a roughly circular route as far back as the early Bronze Age.

The route relied on intimate knowledge of Wind, Tide, Ocean Currents, Astronomy, Weather Patterns, Line of Sight coastal reference points, Avian Knowledge and Personal Experience.

The route from Britain was south down the Spanish coast past the Canary Island to Senegal. Here the ocean current veers west past the Cape Verde Islands and then swings northward along the Brazilian coast and on past the Caribbean Islands. It then curves along the N American coast as far as Nova Scotia and Newfoundland where it swings east across the N Atlantic following the Gulf Stream which returns the mariner to Ireland and Britain.

This ancient route has a modern name its called the North Atlantic Gyre and it encircles the Sargasso Sea a place where even ancient mariners avoided. As the Sargasso in virtually windless from the ancients perspective all the prevailing winds that enabled then to sail this circular route came from somewhere in the middle of the N Atlantic.
Some ancients believed the Azores were the Navel of the World.

If you centre Google Earth at 30° North 40° West you can see the circular route of the N Atlantic Gyre.

[Komorikid]

I have been reading a book that you may be interested in.
The Biggest Estate on Earth - How Aborigines made Australia.
This is Terraforming writ large as evidenced by early European settlers and written about extensively in thousands of eye witness accounts.
Though most didn't actually know or understand what they were witnessing.

https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/history/The-Biggest-Estate-on-Earth-Bill-Gammage-9781742377483

It also has links to animal behaviour which is what most of the terraforming was designed for.
It seems to neatly dovetail into TME quite nicely, though the objectives may have been different.

But then again after watching the Francis Prior video on Ancient Britain the part about ancient shepherding is almost identical to the Aborigines practices.
Maximise food management with minimum effort.
Fire was used to create a managed landscape of water, grass and forest.
Selective burning of different flora species created a managed environment where game could be watered, fed and eventually culled on a continuous basis over vast distances.
Fire is the one of the key ingredients in large scale ancient terraforming.

[TisILeclerc]

Australia is more than just terraforming according to some.

It is the place of the original humans. We all came from Australia, not Africa.

http://humansarefree.com/2014/08/the-fi ... -from.html

The Australian racial group has a much higher number of mutations than any other racial group, which suggests that the Australians split off from a common ancestor about 400,000 years ago.

By the same theory, the Mongoloid originated about 100,000 years ago, and the Negroid and Caucasian groups about 40,000 years ago.

[Boreades]

You have a few minutes to spare, to get a big stack of soft toys ready beside you.

Why?

At 21:00 tonight, BBC Four is screening "Stonehenge: A Timewatch Guide"

Using 70 years of BBC history archive film, Professor Alice Roberts uncovers how the iconic ancient monument of Stonehenge has been interpreted, argued over and debated by some of Britain's leading historians and archaeologists. She reveals how new discoveries would discredit old theories, how astronomers and geologists became involved in the story and why, even after centuries of study, there's still no definitive answer to the mystery of Stonehenge.

The TME sub-title might be "Old Views over Megalithia"
Soft toys do less damage when you throw them at the TV

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z59g7