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The bluestone debate
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tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: The bluestone debate
Dec 14, 2008, 14:42
mountainman wrote:
I'm not criticising you, Nigel, or attacking you for circular reasoning. I'm trying to represent the orthodoxy that we find in all those learned tomes and in virtually everything published by EH about Stonehenge. In the standard guides the human transport theory is cited as FACT, on the basis of exactly the style of circular reasoning that I have mentioned.

All I'm asking for, from the likes of our dear friends Profs W and D, is a bit more recognition of UNCERTAINTY.

There is nothing like the same degree of uncertainty with regard to the glacial theory. At least once in the Ice Age, the Irish Sea Glacier flowed across West Wales and up the Bristol Channel. Fact. The ice reached some way inland in the Bristol area, Avon, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Fact. How far inland? Still uncertain. There are at least 20 different rock types in the bluestone assemblage. Fact. Erratic trails or fans are similarly mixed. Fact. Some of the bluestones at Stonehenge were made of soft ashes and flaky rhyolites -- crap stones for building monuments out of. Fact. Spotted dolerites are never used preferentially in Welsh megalithic structures. Fact. The ice streamlines and the rock types at Stonehenge match up. Fact. The builders of UK megalithic monuments always used stone that was locally available. Fact. Logically, the builders of Stonehenge would have done the same. Is there a problem with any of that?


Eh ? I'm not Nigel and didn't have any circular reasoning .
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