One Stonehenge mystery solved

[Celebration]

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=15661198%26method=full%26siteid=50082%26headline=archaeologists%2dfigure%2dout%2dmystery%2dof%2d%2dstonehenge%2d%2dbluestones-name_page.html

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have solved one of the greatest mysteries of Stonehenge - the exact spot from where its huge stones were quarried.

A team has pinpointed the precise place in Wales from where the bluestones were removed in about 2500 BC.

It found the small crag-edged enclosure at one of the highest points of the 1,008ft high Carn Menyn mountain in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

[thecrow]

1. I visited Stonhenge last spring

It's been a fascination of mine for many years.
A truly amazing thing to see; a very sacred place.
For a moment...Time stood still.

[Celebration]

6. I'd love to see it

Closest I have come is Stonehenge II (seriously) near Kerrville, Texas.



http://www.alfredshepperd.com/Stonehenge/main.html

To experience Stonehenge II at its most magical, don't read this article. Or at least hide it from your family. Motorists who suddenly come upon the Eighth Wonder of the Texas Hill Country, without knowing it's there, are the ones who are most amazed, most excited, most awestruck. It can almost make them think they've been abducted by aliens and re-deposited on Earth
in another time, on another continent. (But still in their car.)

[OffWithTheirHeads]

7. Is that anything like

the rapture, but you get to stay in your car?

[NJCher]

2. fascinating

And especially about the family. Why were they doing this?


Cher

[punpirate]

3. This suggests another mystery...

... how were those stones transported to near what is now Reading, about sixty-five miles west of London? Wales is a long, long way from there.

[benburch]

13. They do have good theories.

Involving rollers, sledges. and rafts.

VERY labor intensive, but we also know that Stonehenge was built over centuries.

[punpirate]

14. Easter Island totem...

... routines, then?

Shitload of work, at the very least. :P

[benburch]

16. Exactly!

But like I say, it took centuries! I doubt they moved a stone in one "go".

Likely there was some season of the year that was stone moving time.

[newswolf56]

4. Thank you...

...for posting this. It helps remind us that the original symbol of Western Civilization is not the Cross but the Standing Stone -- and that, once upon a time (long before the advent of the Cross), the world was a saner place -- simultaneously both more rational and more holy.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Er...saner?

Let's not romanticize something that has little standing record, besides Stonehenge. Very gruesome way that primitive people disposed of each other. They did by hand what we do by grenade these days.

In fact, the one thing that can be stated is that we have now become adept at creating weapons which can destroy large populations. And that's why more is expected from our leaders to remain civilized just to ensure the survival of this planet.

[newswolf56]

8. The consensus among scholars is increasingly that...

...(just as mythographers and folklorists have argued for decades), much of the traditional literature surviving from pre-Christian Europe embodies the theology of the Standing Stones. What emerges is a worldview that beyond its polytheistic distractions is the diametrical opposite of the Biblical mandate to conquer, exploit and oppress. Indeed it is arguably an Occidental version of the ethos at the core of Zen or Taoism (which beyond Tao Te Ching is itself superficially polytheistic) -- this common core vision the reason that, like Lao Tzu, Taliesin can assert "there is no thing in which I have not been" and add, a few stanzas later, "I know the star knowledge from before the worlds were born": surely a reference to the astronomical knowledge expressed at Stonehenge and myriad similar sites throughout Britain and Europe.

Alas we cannot say what the logical fruition of such a worldview might have been; the Cross prevailed, toppling the Standing Stone, crushing the ethos of Gaea and replacing it with the ethos of Yehveh: conquer and kill -- and build ever-more-potent doomsday machines. Don't misunderstand: I am far too much a skeptic to romanticize ancient modes of living, especially since I have viewed a bit of the Third World firsthand. But our fulfillment of that Biblical mandate has inflicted upon this planet and all its inhabitants a horror without precedent -- the ever-worsening prospect of terracide. Thus the entire earth household becomes like some ruinously dysfunctional family headed by a drunken, meth-tweaked father who has already begun murdering his children. And I say that is insanity. Insanity in comparison to which even the greatest horrors of the ancient world appear quite rational and sane.

[DrGonzoLives]

9. I seriously have no idea what you just said

but it's interesting that the myth that the Celts were peaceful and kind still persists - they were just as warlike and bloodthirsty as other people at the time.

[newswolf56]

10. Of partial Celtic ancestry myself, I have never doubted...

...the Celtic penchant for warfare, which (among European peoples) was second only to the more collectively skillful Germanic inclination for war -- this ordering based on the massacre of Varus' command in the Teutoburg Forest, 9 A.D. The Celts beat the Romans several times -- note in this context Boadicea's uprising -- but none beat them so thoroughly and permanently as Arminius: immortalized centuries later as "Herman the German."

As to what I was saying, I'm sorry I was not more clear. Its essence is this: That (just as Carl Jung maintained) god is an ultimate construct -- and that therefore what we build as societies and cultures are always projections of our images of god. Those who built Stonehenge worshiped the universe as mother and covered their realms with giant calculators for clocking the seasons -- an ultimate celebration of life. We worship the murderously vengeful god Yehveh who tells us in his Bible to conquer the earth, and to do his will, we build doomsday machines -- an ultimate celebration of death and destruction. Which society is more sane?

I have answered that question for myself. Others will have to pursue their own quests toward the answer -- or not, depending upon their inclinations and needs.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. I confess...

I haven't researched the subject quite as thoroughly as you have. I sort of like your logic that who we worship says something about ourselves as a culture. Of course, it would still be difficult to make conclusions about a time which has no real written record. For example, Christianity is practiced differently in different parts of the world so I don't know how much you can really conclude about Christians as a rule.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. I don't know what newswolf said either, but he or she said it so

intriguingly I couldn't help but be captivated. Like listening to a poet read Gaelic, I imagine. Some would say it was like cream dripping from the mouth.

[Tesha]

15. There's a lot to be said for requiring that we do it by hand.

> Very gruesome way that primitive people disposed of each other.
> They did by hand what we do by grenade these days.

There's a lot to be said for requiring that we do it by hand.
People might not be quite so gung-ho on murdering "others" if
they had to do it face-to-face, with a knife or bludgeon, and
not only see the smashed faces of their enemies but also run
the risk that their enemy might kill them instead.

Today, it's push-button death, just like in the video games
with which we train our future murderers.

Tesha