New Views over Megalithia

[Boreades]

After reading the previous post, I commented to M'Lady Boreades : "You know, darling, I think Mick sometimes likes playing with Agent Provocateur stuff". Her reply startled me : "What, he likes wearing sexy ladies' underwear?". Err, I don't think that's what I meant. I meant Mick likes to be a bit provocative sometimes. I clearly have no idea what the modern world is like. Although, I'm told that if you do a Google search for "Agent Provocateur" one would find out soon enough. I couldn't possibly comment on what Mick does wear in the privacy of his own home.

[Mick Harper]

I also have read my last post. Perhaps you could indicate what is deliberate provocation. Aside from the last bit which is mere sarcasm. Though on that subject perhaps somebody would indicate any astronomic sighting that a) requires something megalithic and b) would be useful to Megalithics. I doubt any of you can but I doubt that will dampen any of your enthusiasms.

[TisILeclerc]

Happy Lammastide or, if you prefer, Lunasdal. I hope you've all been knitting your corn dollies.

I'm sure the megalithics had a state of mind before sticking big rocks up all over the place for no apparent reason.

They had a reason, we don't know what that was. We don't know how they did it or how they organised 'stone age' society into working on these projects. Talk about logistics never mind chipping at big stones with little stones. And they were doing it all over the world. They had something on their minds that's for sure.

We can't ask them because they're not here. We could pop along to the local polyversity and ask a friendly archaeologist what he thinks about it all. Take a twist of pipe tobacco and a tweed jacket and you could have a rewarding afternoon before heading to the pub.

And as we are still being told our ancestors were savages who painted themselves blue and dressed in animal hides even when the Romans arrived so how did their even savager ancestors do it and why?

As regards astronomy just looking at that moving sky must have even impressed their savage minds. Maybe they just thought it was pretty and went back to hitting each other with sticks.

But someone thought more of it. If you are travelling and you need a fixed point to guide you how could you use the stars when they are always moving. The moon moves. The sun moves. You'll finish up going round in circles like the proverbial traveller lost in the wood.

We can make assumptions. One is that they used something to keep track of the sky. Get lost at sea and you could easily end up in America if you're lucky. We know they had things to sort that one out. Everyone was looking at the sky, all over the world and making measurements. It's just a question of how you make measurements when you've never done it before and you're the first. Unless of course a pre ice age civilisation had already done it and you were trying to remember what your great grandad said about that sort of thing.

Even the Welsh had constellations with stories attached to them. All the better for remembering with.

http://www.lablit.com/article/341

Look up at the night sky in winter and one of the dominant constellations is Perseus, located in some of the brightest portions of the winter Milky Way. This Greek hero and son of Zeus is well known to classical scholars, but how familiar are the Celtic traditions associating this constellation with the god Lugh? According to Celtic calendar traditions, Lugh is the sun god who dies as the nights get longer after the summer solstice; a traditional feast in his honour was held on Lughnasahd or “Lammas” day on the first of August, a day marked in the old Celtic pictographic calendar with a bow-and-arrow shape. As Lugh was the primary god representing the red sun, his name in common parlance would have been “Coch Rhi Ben” anglicised to “Cock Robin” – a leftover from the belief that souls became birds after death. This idea is still sustained in the old folk song “Who Killed Cock Robin” in which the sparrow kills him with “my bow and arrow”, the sparrow here representing Bran, the tanist incarnation or opposite of Lugh – the god of winter

No doubt I'm wrong but I think one of the first things people would have done returning to a gradually revealing landscape as the ice thawed would to have made markers to show where they had been. That would be a start. Eventually they could have the whole country mapped. Something that's important so that different groups knew where their share ended and someone else's started. It still goes on today of course.

[Mick Harper]

This is all covered in The Megalithic Empire. Stones and terraforming are a bit rough-and-ready but hellishly useful in getting about. I have posted up something about dragons and direction-finding in The Dark Age Obscured thread in the History section of the AEL here
http://www.applied-epistemology.com/php ... 5135#35135

[Boreades]

Thanks to a correspondent from Yorkshire, I've been awakened for the first time to the whole business of Polygonal masonry in Europe. It's like the Polygonal masonry in Central & South America, but, err, in Europe.

Polygonal masonry is a technique of stone construction of the ancient Mediterranean world. True polygonal masonry is a technique wherein the visible surfaces of the stones are dressed with straight sides or joints, giving the block the appearance of a polygon.

This technique is found throughout the Mediterranean and sometimes corresponds to the less technical category of Cyclopean masonry.

In Italy it is particularly indicative of the region of Latium, but it occurs also in Etruria, Lucania, Samnium, and Umbria; Some notable sites that have fortification walls built in this technique include Norba, Signia, Alatri, Boiano, Circeo, Cosa, Alba Fucens, Palestrina, and Terracina. The so-called Porta Rosa of the ancient city of Velia employs a variant of the technique known as Lesbian masonry.

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

Health & safety hint: careful with your Google searches for that last kind of masonry.

This is all pre-Roman megalithic stuff.

I'm not sure what the difference is between this and Cyclopean masonry.

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

That's used to categorise the Nuraghe towers in Sardinia, which we've previously mentioned because of their similarity to Scottish Broches. Is there a distinction that matters?

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

Has anyone found any Polygonal masonry in Britain?

Does dry-stone walling count?

Is there a connection between Umbria and Northumbria/Cumbria?

[Mick Harper]

Does dry-stone walling count?

This doesn't get enough attention (pre-historically that is, everybody's doing it on Country File). It seems pretty likely that this was the first masonry -- it clears the stones from fields, keeps animals in or out, identifies possession but also significantly lessens soil erosion. Trouble with it is that it isn't very efficient -- despite the claims on Country File. Very labour intensive and requiring constant repair. It is quite likely that all these other techniques, from wattle-and-daub to polygonal cyclopean, were evolved to firm it all up. Rather like the way reindeer-herding led step-by-step to civilisation, as detailed in TME.

[TisILeclerc]

I assume Lesbian Masonry is not some secret society with rituals?

Of course in Scotland dry stone walls are known as dry stane dykes and are as much a part of the landscape as they are in England. And here's one they did earlier.



http://www.merchantandmakers.com/histor ... one-walls/

All this talk of Cyclops and heavy lifting giants has made me wonder. At the top of every deep mine or pit there was a winder house with a couple of large wheels on the top outside which were used by the engine in lifting and lowering the cages.

Could the idea of the one eyed giant who lifts heavy things be a memory of an ancient pulley system? In modern times there is a basic weight bearing system called a deadeye.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld ... iKM35bTb5w

Another important part of the set up of the dead eye and presumably any other lifting system was the use of tallow or grease to allow free running of the ropes. And Cyclops was famous for his sheep which Odysseus's crew used to escape the cave.

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

Part of a Roman pulley system was found in Strathclyde.

[Boreades]

Cyclops as a heavy lifting giant or wheel house on a mine?

That would match and fit with Dragons as smelting furnaces, breathing fire.

[Boreades]

I assume Lesbian Masonry is not some secret society with rituals?

Sadly not.

It's all explained here --> Polygonal Masonry in Larisa (Buruncuk).

https://www.academia.edu/2574601/Polygo ... _Buruncuk_

[Boreades]

There is some Polygonal masonry in Britain, according to the Dry-Stone website. But it's unusual.

Polygonal walls have fascinated me ever since I found a British Standard for Polygonal Masonry whilst researching "Dry Stone Walling". That of course refers to mortared work such as the cladding shown on the house (left, Gaerwen, Ynys Mon).

http://www.dry-stone.co.uk/Pages/Books/ ... gonal.html