2012 Blog » Megaliths

Howden Hill > Silbury Jr.

Robert Bast — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:59:54 +0000

I’ve often thought that Silbury Hill was unappreciated in the greater scheme of ancient mysteries. Primarily because it is just a hill. Yet when you look at the figures, it was quite an achievement for its era (massive pyramids and mounds worldwide):

8 million man-hours
or 500 men working for 15 years
40 metres high
248,000 cubic metres of soil

After thorough excavations, the Marlborough mound is now thought to be around 4,400 years old, making it roughly contemporary with the nearby, and far more renowned, Silbury Hill.

It was built at a time that many other major structures were created, suggesting either a unified force or at least a connection between societies. I’m hoping this news will help uncover a new system/pattern, especially considering Howden Hill is exactly due east of Silbury Hill. Read more at Julian Cope’s Modern Antiquarian, and/or Stone Circles.

Howden Hill > Silbury Jr. is a post from: 2012 Blog

Wandering Elders Behind Megaliths?

Chinese Air Raid Shelters / LHC in 2012 / Mzora Stone Circle

Robert Bast — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:02:08 +0000

This CNN video lets us know that there are lots of Chinese folk living in old, underground shelters. The question – is this a sign that the Chinese Govt. deems shelters unnecessary, or is it true that they plan on evicting the residents?
http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/02/07/yoon.china.mouse.tribe.cnn

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The Large Hadron Collider was due to shut down at the end of this year, so that scientists could prepare it to operate at full power. This has now been changed, and the LHC will continue operating in 2012, still only using half of its capabilities. For some people this will be a relief!

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Few have heard of the Mzora stone circle, so the article about it at Heritage Action is worth sharing around. Found in remote Morocco, it has many similarities to Celtic circles, including the use of the “megalithic yard”. It could end up being an important clue in discovering the origins of megaliths, especially when combined with this quote from Geoffrey of Monmouth:

“They are mystical stones, and of medicinal virtue. The giants of old brought them from the farthest coasts of Africa, and placed them in Ireland, while they inhabited that country.”

Chinese Air Raid Shelters / LHC in 2012 / Mzora Stone Circle is a post from: 2012 Blog

Wandering Elders Behind Megaliths?

Robert Bast — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:01:00 +0000

My proposition is that megaliths and pyramids were typically built under the instruction of “mysterious elders”, who were only temporarily involved with each culture they helped. This, to me, is the most logical explanation for why these construction abilities vanished from every culture that built such structures. A new study confirms the lack of consistent building, in Europe:

Rather than a single “megalithic” culture stretching across Europe, the outburst of mound tombs likely represents an idea reaching local cultures, he suggests, which then “stopped and started” across the centuries.

I do accept that the other possibility is that building megaliths “seemed like a good idea at the time”, but subsequently they failed to achieve what was expected. In the modern era we have plenty of fads, so why not back then as well? But megaliths (and pyramids) are more than just fads, for they have high levels of knowledge and expertise attached to them, suggesting that it was the enablers who travelled, not the idea.

Wandering Elders Behind Megaliths? is a post from: 2012 Blog

Stone Circles – Mostly Just Ritual Space?

Robert Bast — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:45:00 +0000

I was just watching a documentary (Standing With Stones) on the stone circles and burial chambers of Ireland, and they started off with Carrowmore in County Sligo. It seems that the very first standing stones and burial chambers in Ireland were “dolmen circles”, and the ones in Carrowmore date to between 4300 and 3500 BC, and possibly even as far back as 5400 BC.

These dolmen circles consist of a dolmen with 5 orthostats and 1 capstone creating a burial chamber in the shape of a pentagon. Enclosing each dolmen is one or two circles of 30-40 boulders.

As the documentary shows, the final dolmen at Carrowmore became fully enclosed, establishing a trend towards bigger & bigger burial mounds and eventually massive passage tombs like Newgrange.

What interests me the most is that these boulder circles are quite likely the first ever stone circles, and that means they originally were used to demarcate burial zones. With time, although plenty of monuments were still enclosed by circles (standing stones, boulders, pits, ditches), most dolmens were not, and most standing circles had nothing within them.

I suggest that originally people used dolmens to bury their dead, and the boulder circle separated the sacred space from the world – and within this space they conducted rituals of burial and/or remembrance. At some point the need arose for a ritual space that was not where ancestors were buried, for purposes other than burying or remembering ancestors. Perhaps this is where fully-fleshed pagan religions began – with a multi-purpose ritual circle?

Modern pagans still revere the pentagon / pentacle. And witches still sweep clear and “cast” a circle for conducting rituals within. Could these be remnants from as long ago as 5400 BC?

After years of looking for more esoteric explanations, I now figure that the primary purpose of stone circles was to mark a ritual space. Their locations, which I also hoped might have significance, could also be explained by something as simple as “it has a nice view”, or “it was a flat spot near where we lived”.

Stone Circles – Mostly Just Ritual Space? is a post from: 2012 Blog

Stonehenge was behind a wall

Robert Bast — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:52:00 +0000

In a recent documentary on Stonehenge I was surprised to learn that even though there were houses and facilities for large gatherings, most of the year nobody was home.

To me this sounded a bit odd, surely there would be guards to keep out squatters?

I now think there were, because it has been determined a large timber fence ran for 2 miles protecting the monument from one direction. Experts are saying it was to stop prying eyes from seeing rituals, others say it was to keep out drifting snow. While it may have served both of those purposes, I think it was more akin to the Berlin Wall – a year round barrier that could be manned by a handful of soldiers, regardless of whether there was a ritual happening or not.

Stonehenge was behind a wall is a post from: 2012 Blog

Tonga: Megaliths in the Birthplace of Polynesia

Robert Bast — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:59:00 +0000

Simon Fraser University’s David Burley says his latest finds from the Nukuleka archeological site on one of Tonga’s southern islands shows it was the principal “founding settlement” of Polynesia about 2,800 years ago, and endured long enough for a genetically and culturally distinctive people to evolve and begin spreading across the immense “Polynesian triangle” bounded by Hawaii in the north, New Zealand in the southwest and fabled Easter Island in the far southeast, not far from the coast of South America.

So you’d expect Tonga to have a pyramid or ancient structures of some type. Like Tonga-Tabu, 2 pillars 4.88 meters high, weighing approx. 50 tons, supporting a 5.79 meter lintel:

And don’t forget the “burial mounds” which are actually short step pyramids using megalithic blocks: