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Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
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Resonox
604 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 17:22
If anyone visits Carnac...just south of the Kercado alignments is a complete passage grave....when I visited(4 years ago) people were milling about outside..until I crawled into the actual passage(it is permissible for visitors to enter btw),then others followed suit.I was pointing out to my children that the circular one piece stone ceiling/roof appears not to be held up by anything...but the whole stone has been carved with a lintel style lip all the way round...bearing in mind this is a perfectly circular stone...there must have been some effort went into the construction of this to knock that out with just hammer stones...is it possible these stones have a high lime content which can be "softened" by an acidic liquid?..Try pouring vinegar on marble to see what I mean
Apropos of nothing..there are faint carvings inside...(which I pointed out to the others in there on that occasion...and they took photographs,one dutchman insisted on snapping me pointing at the carvings and crouching by the entrance...fame at last!)but they are so faint they couldn't have been made with the same tools which shaped the stones
The large stones we call henges aren't the bluestones from Wales though are they??Are they indigenous, glacial deposits or brought from far away??
tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 17:39
StoneGloves wrote:
It's an altered hill. And then there's the tunnels inside it ...


Are you suggesting that it is a prehistoric man made pyramid with contemporaneous tunnels ?
Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 17:59
I should mention that when I was in Egypt I visited the Temple of Dendera and was invited to look at where the 'caretaker' lived...up on the roof! The flat stone roof was contructed of massive stones some 6ft wide and around 20ft in length and at the ends were cut out open dovetail joints. So if you can imagine it when two stones were joined end to end it left an open double dovetail joint to which they amazingly crafted this huge locking dovetail piece which they then inserted. As I've said I am a chippy by profession but these guys make you blush with their precisionship because you couldn't slip a knife blade between the joints. You have to ask...how the hell did they do it?


With you there Sanctuary. I passed by Dendera (in a clapped out old taxi) back in the 90s and even from the car window the place looked amazing. Wish now I'd stopped off for a ganders but was on my way to Abydos. Jeeze... you talking about moving big blocks of Mother Earth and fitting them together then Abydos is the place. Blocks as big as a London bus and then some!
Sanctuary
Sanctuary
4670 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 18:04
nigelswift wrote:
I've often wondered if the joint was craftily chosen - to allow a bit of lateral "give" if (for instance) some additional weighting was placed on or against the lintols.

In addition, rounded/tapered stub tenons might make it a lot easier to slot the whole ring together (allowing a degree of jiggling of the supporting uprights until everything fitted) - quite a consideration when you're trying to assemble a ring weighing scores of tons high in the air! After all, it might form a nice neat ring when laid on the ground but become a bit of a problem when you tried to erect it. It's the MFI flatpack syndrome....

I might be wrong about that but I haven't seen a queue of experimental archaeologists anxiously waiting to replicate that bit - even six inches off the ground!


Yes flexing would certainly be possible Nige to a degree, good point. A 'proper' mortice if flexed would either snap off the side under pressure or snap the tenon off.

Correct me if I'm wrong here (and it'll save me running through the DVD of it) but in 'The Secrets of Stonehenge', didn't MPP say that one of the lintols had the 'mortise' cut on the wrong side so it had to be correcly cut out on the other side? How can one prove that as it may have been intentional and meant to hold something else in place above it?
Sanctuary
Sanctuary
4670 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 18:15
Littlestone wrote:
I should mention that when I was in Egypt I visited the Temple of Dendera and was invited to look at where the 'caretaker' lived...up on the roof! The flat stone roof was contructed of massive stones some 6ft wide and around 20ft in length and at the ends were cut out open dovetail joints. So if you can imagine it when two stones were joined end to end it left an open double dovetail joint to which they amazingly crafted this huge locking dovetail piece which they then inserted. As I've said I am a chippy by profession but these guys make you blush with their precisionship because you couldn't slip a knife blade between the joints. You have to ask...how the hell did they do it?


With you there Sanctuary. I passed by Dendera (in a clapped out old taxi) back in the 90s and even from the car window the place looked amazing. Wish now I'd stopped off for a ganders but was on my way to Abydos. Jeeze... you talking about moving big blocks of Mother Earth and fitting them together then Abydos is the place. Blocks as big as a London bus and then some!


Yep saw them as well and as you say...huge and what a beautiful place! Then you move up another gear and visit Abu Simbel where they dug into solid rock and left behind a temple that takes your breath away. Nothing brought in just all crafted out of the inside of a mountain with the finest of details on the figures of Rameses etc with not a single flaw in sight. To repeat what I said earlier, how the hell did they do it?
Mind you to be fair, UNESCO did a pretty fair job themselves when the cut it all into sections, moved it higher up and put it all back together again!!
StoneGloves
StoneGloves
1149 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 18:16
Nobody knows what it is. But there's some big pieces of stone being excavated. I was very careful in the Knar valley to not excavate anything - for fear of future criticism - and everything I removed from the site - portable carved stones etc - I did try to scrupulously record. But the finds are studiously ignored. I didn't find anything at the Knar that I would think could upset anyone's pet theory. I found an observatory - ruined - but that had been hypothesised by Dr Thom. I found a single-tailed long cairn but three-tailed examples are known from the north of the county. But the stuff coming to light in Bosnia is unlike anything else known. There are big stones, laid, and flagged platforms, with an early kind of cement between. Just take a look at the Bosnian stone balls - what are they about - and how do they fit into any coherent theory ?
tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 18:17
Sanctuary wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong here (and it'll save me running through the DVD of it) but in 'The Secrets of Stonehenge', didn't MPP say that one of the lintols had the 'mortise' cut on the wrong side so it had to be correcly cut out on the other side? How can one prove that as it may have been intentional and meant to hold something else in place above it?


There were two "mortises " on the what was the lintel of the tallest ? trilithon . Difficult to prove but none of the other lintels had anything similar .
nigelswift
8112 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 18:18
How can one prove that as it may have been intentional and meant to hold something else in place above it?

Darn right. Unless of course the positioning suggested the redundant mortise was positioned over one of the tenons maybe.

Incidentally, on the subject of flexing, in order to fix the lintol circle satisfactorily you have to deliver all the tenons in a perfect, horizontal, correctly spaced circle by means of dropping 40 ton uprights into holes of just the right depth and then wriggling them about. Who the hell could do that? I think we have to be talking The Mekon here....
;)
Sanctuary
Sanctuary
4670 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 05, 2010, 18:28
nigelswift wrote:
How can one prove that as it may have been intentional and meant to hold something else in place above it?

Darn right. Unless of course the positioning suggested the redundant mortise was positioned over one of the tenons maybe.

Incidentally, on the subject of flexing, in order to fix the lintol circle satisfactorily you have to deliver all the tenons in a perfect, horizontal, correctly spaced circle by means of dropping 40 ton uprights into holes of just the right depth and then wriggling them about. Who the hell could do that? I think we have to be talking The Mekon here....
;)


Well I assumed it was but then it would be because that was the load bearing position for it I would imagine having an upright underneath it.

Don't you Dan Dare start me of on the Mekon (g)
Sanctuary
Sanctuary
4670 posts

Re: Myths, truths and theories - Stonehenge
Sep 06, 2010, 08:32
Have a look at some of this amazing stonework. If you scroll down you will find the dovetail joints I mentioned at Dendera.

http://davidpratt.info/andes2.htm
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