Littlestone
|
The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 10:57
|
Following on from sam's <b>Latest News</b> item yesterday about the glacier theory for the bluestones at Stonehenge (please see sam's link at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/5072664.stm ) geologists from the Open University are claiming that the bluestones were not transported from the Preseli Hills but were glacial erratics found within the Stonehenge area.
I know the argument against human transport has been made before but I seem to remember a <i>worked</i> bluestone being found a few years ago on the seabed off the Welsh coast (might still have the news cutting somewhere) - that being so doesn't it suggest that the bluestones <i>were</i> transported from Wales?
There's a related article to the above at http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~brianj/bluestones59.html
|
Spaceship mark
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 13:57
|
|
I think the problem is that there are no other glacial erratics on Salisbury plain. At all. So it was either the glacier was very particular, or it's the old 'they couldn't possibly have moved them, because it was ages ago' arguement...
|
Littlestone
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 14:36
|
>...it's the old 'they couldn't possibly have moved them, because it was ages ago' arguement...<
That's what I thought too.
The rather condescending remarks by the geomorphologist, Dr Brian John, to the effect that he, "... always thought the idea that Bronze Age man had quarried the stones and then taken them so far "stretched credibility." and that, "Much of the archaeology in recent years has been based upon the assumption that Bronze Age man had a reason for transporting bluestones all the way from west Wales to Stonehenge and the technical capacity to do it."* beggars belief.
For heaven's sake, Dr John, if the builders of Stonehenge had the vision and technical capacity to create Stonehenge in the first place they would surely have had the capacity to get the bluestones on site from basically wherever they wanted. Perhaps Dr John needs to visit Silbury and see what people a few thousand years ago were capable of in terms of 'technical capacity'.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/5072664.stm
|
Cursuswalker
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 16:06
|
Precisely.
Unless they are seriously sugesting that the builders of Stonehenge used every single scrap of glacially deposited Bluestone in Wiltshire (Which is even more outlandish an idea than the Bluestones being transported from Wales), their theory rather relies on deposits of Preseli Bluestone being found in the south west of England, rather in the same manner as the Greywethers.
Have such deposits been found? If so they would also have to be bleedin' obvious or else the builders wouldn't have found them in order to use them.
|
Grendel
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 16:56
|
Bryan John has written a book on the geology of Pembrokeshire - his comments are strange.
G
|
Littlestone
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 21:29
|
>Have such deposits been found? If so they would also have to be bleedin' obvious or else the builders wouldn't have found them in order to use them.<
Quite.
It never fails to amaze me how facts such as the one you quote, and the possible worked bluestone now lying at the bottom of the sea, are so easily ignored in order to substantiate someone's latest theory.
As with 'lying by omission', there should be a phrase for hypothesizing without due consideration ;-)
|
juamei
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 21:50
|
They found a bluestone inside a longbarrow. Aubrey Burl says:
"Following his excavation of Boles Barrow of 1801, William Cunnington wrote of the barrow's `large stones' amongst which he discovered a `Blue hard stone ye same as the upright Stones in ye inner circle at Stonehenge'. For his period, Cunnington was a competent geologist, well able to distinguish between sarsen and dolerite. He removed ten stones from the barrow and arranged them in a circle in his garden at Heytesbury. After his death, a bluestone was taken from his garden to Heytesbury House. From there, it was given to the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum by Siegfried Sassoon in 1934."
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/BA/ba45/ba45int.html
|
GordonP
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 21:54
|
As with 'lying by omission', there should be a phrase for hypothesizing without due consideration ;-)
Reply to this message Posted by Littlestone
14th June 2006ce
21:29
In reply to:
Re: The bluestone Hear hear!!!
|
Paulus
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 22:04
|
< there should be a phrase for hypothesizing without due consideration >
There is. Up North we call it "Talking bollox!" I might add, that it's summat we all tend to do from time to time. It just takes a bitta guts to hold us hands up and say, "Yup - y' got me there. I was obviously talking bollox!" Some folks - academics in this case - seem to think themselves immune from this simple human quality. Anyway, ignore me - I'm probaby talking bollox!
More tea vicar!?
|
Littlestone
|
Re: The bluestone debate
Jun 14, 2006, 22:11
|
>Anyway, ignore me - I'm probaby (sic) talking bollox!<
Yup.
|
