jmm@bonnie.UUCP (Joe Mcghee) (06/18/84)
Hypotheses Concerning Some of The Mysteries of Stonehenge --------------------------------------------------------- During the past two decades I have read or seen a great number of books, articles and television programs concerning Stonehenge. I was always fascinated by the degree of skill required to construct this megalithic complex. In the summer of 1971 I visited the site. More recently in reading various books and articles on Celtic culture, my mind was stimulated to bring together many of these concepts into a more unified and distinct image of the society which built Stonehenge. I would like to share my thoughts with you. To begin with, the layout of Stonehenge, as many scholars know, is intimately connected with its location. The stones are placed in a way which corresponds with certain alignments of the sun and moon which work only at that latitude. A few years ago I read about a community in the United States which had an exact replica of Stonehenge cast in concrete and constructed in their town. Those people may have been disappointed to find that even though the structure may have the correct orientation with respect to true north, the alignments of the sun and moon which occur at Stonehenge don't occur at other latitudes. Furthermore, the site of Stonehenge was chosen for its broad open planes, for the most part, unobstructed by trees and other irregularities of terrain. But there is another complication which most visitors to Stonehenge never notice. The land on that site is not exactly flat and level. It slopes gently but fatally for any unsophisticated architect. And so if the structure had been built without regard to leveling, the alignments would not have worked and the whole project would have failed. One of the mysteries of the place is: How were the ancient builders able to level the megaliths of Stonehenge? This task involves not just a few key stones, but the entire plane of the tops of the largest megaliths at the site. A further complication is that the builders of Stonehenge did not bother to cut the standing stones to uniform length, but instead buried them at varying depths in the ground to make the tops come out level. But how were they even able to determine a level plane over such a broad area without modern surveying instruments? This is one question I propose to answer. This question, in my mind, is connected with the answer to another mystery. A small ditch was dug around the site at the time of its construction and there has never been a satisfactory answer for this question: What is the purpose or function of the ditch around Stonehenge? This is the second question I propose to answer. Some have proposed that the ditch was a moat used to defend the site in case of attack by outsiders. But the ditch is so small and shallow that it can be easily jumped by a man or boy. Others have proposed that it served as a mystical barrier to evil spirits because of the widely held belief in ancient times that spirits could not pass over water. But this explanation is also flawed because the ditch does not extend completely around the site and so there is a big gap in the "wall-to-hold-out-evil-spirits" theory. The true function of the ditch around Stonehenge was that it functioned as a liquid level to level the tops of the megaliths standing on the site. Water was poured into the ditch or collected from rainfall and the surface of the water described a level plane around the site. Then, a small boat, called a curragh, was placed on the water in the ditch. (A curragh is a very light, shallow draft boat made of animal skins stretched over a light wooden frame. These boats are surprisingly buoyant and have been used for millenniums for ocean fishing and travel.) A colored marker on the mast of the curragh served as a siting indicator which was one point on a level plane which could be set at any desired height above the plane of the surface of the water in the ditch. The architect or surveyor could stand on a platform at the center of the site and look out over the tops of the stones and see the level marker on the mast of the curragh. By moving the curragh around the site through the ditch the architects had a movable and reliable standard for describing a level plane over any point on the site. In this way the architects were able to adjust the height of the stones by chiseling the tops or by undermining the base of the stones until an exact level plane was formed. As of this date (6/18/84) I have not seen any published material which describes these concepts or anything vaguely close to them and so I believe that my hypotheses are original and unique. I would appreciate any discussion that might be offered on this topic, especially from anyone having a background in the various fields touched on by this article. Joseph M. McGhee Bell Labs, Whippany, New Jersey (201) 386-2333 - work (201) 858-0596 - home
kissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin Kissell) (06/21/84)
(sigh) Joe appears not to have appeased the whitespace demon on his posting, so I can only respond to the portion after the lines: > into a more > unified and distinct image of the society which built Stonehenge. I would > like to share my thoughts with you. Anyway, having made a pilgrimage to Stonehenge just last month, and having boned up a bit before hand, I submit the following commentary: > To begin with, the layout of Stonehenge, as many scholars know, is >intimately connected with its location. The stones are placed in a way which >corresponds with certain alignments of the sun and moon which work only at that >latitude. > A few years ago I read about a community in the United States which had >an exact replica of Stonehenge cast in concrete and constructed in their town. >Those people may have been disappointed to find that even though the structure >may have the correct orientation with respect to true north, the alignments >of the sun and moon which occur at Stonehenge don't occur at other latitudes. A reproduction of Stonehenge at a different latitude will not work, but that *does not mean* that the site of Stonehenge is the only site at which such an observatory could be built, simply that, had it been built elsewhere, it would have been built slightly differently. > Furthermore, the site of Stonehenge was chosen for its broad open > planes, for the most part, unobstructed by trees and other irregularities of > terrain. But there is another complication which most visitors to Stonehenge > never notice. The land on that site is not exactly flat and level. It slopes > gently but fatally for any unsophisticated architect. The site is near Salisbury Plain, but it is not particularly flat. If a site was to be chosen for "broad open planes" (sic) it would have been to the south and west of the actual site, which is in rolling hills. > And so if the structure had been built without regard to leveling, the > alignments would not have worked and the whole project would have failed. All of the allignments of which I am aware relate to the positions of celestial objects as they rise and set. It is the *edges* and spaces *between* the stones that are significant, not the hight or levelness. The therory that Joe advances of the coracle (curragh) in the ditch as a leveling instrument is ingenious (not to say charmingly bizzare), but the motivation he attributes does not seem to hold up. Besides, it's windy up there, and any coracle small enough to fit in the ditch with a twelve foot mast on it would bob around quite a bit, if not blow over completely. Kevin D. Kissell Fairchild Research Center Advanced Processor Development uucp: {ihnp4 decvax}!decwrl!\ >flairvax!kissell {ucbvax sdcrdcf}!hplabs!/ "Any closing epigram, regardless of truth or wit, grows galling after a number of repetitions"