BS: Stonehenge came from Wales

Subject: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 06:36 AM

Not just the stones. The whole thing.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/12/dramatic-discovery-links-stonehenge-to-its-original-site-in-wales

Early example of English looting. The Welsh should ask for it back.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Jos
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 06:47 AM

Maybe it was the Welsh who took the stones to Wiltshire and left them there.
An early case of fly-tipping?

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 07:26 AM

Just the blue stones.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 09:23 AM

I was reading this earlier... Coolio! Maybe Merlin Ambrosius did have the science...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 10:17 AM

What the Welsh do today, the English do tomorrow...(I think they used to say that about Manchester and London).

Talking about shifting big bulky stony things, here in Bude we have to shift the storm tower at Compass Point, one of our prized landmarks, before it falls into the sea. It'll be the second move it's had to make. Last time they shifted it (I could be wrong but I think Queen Vic was on the throne), the silly buggers got its orientation all wrong, compass directions all to cock, so let's hope they get it right this time. It's going to cost a third of a million quid.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: leeneia
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 11:01 AM

I wonder if it wasn't a glacier that shifted the big stones. Later humans gathered them and set them up.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 11:15 AM

The Welsh site may have been an early garden centre/souvenir shop..

The stones were stood up arranged on display, waiting for gullible English tourists
to be conned into buying over priced 'magic' big garden ornament stones...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 11:37 AM

They've built a big silly Stonehengeiferous fake job on a roundabout just outside Barnstaple. Looking at it, it seems clear that we've forgotten how to do these things. Maybe you have to be a Druid...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 11:49 AM

..it's easier and quicker to build a Stonehenge on a kitchen table
out of Weetabix...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 12:48 PM

Yebbut you have to flatten at least one end of each Weetabix first...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 01:38 PM

..human ingenuity..

Dunk one end in baked beans to soften it to shape...???

5000 years ago the smartest Brits, even without modern technology and education,
were probably just as brainy as us..

So if they could figure out how to hump bloody great big rocks from Wales to Salisbury,
then stand them on end to make a gurt big garden party gazebo;
we 21st cent types shouldn't be too flummoxed by a rounded Weetabix end...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 02:20 PM

Who gives a shit ?

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Helen
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 02:47 PM

I do. It's an interesting historical feat.

I made a Stonehenge birthday cake a few decades ago using lamingtons stacked on top of a chocolate cake.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 02:58 PM

Maybe you have to be a Druid...

Only since Victorian times. Unless you have some insight into Roman "alt facts" where they call the Welsh Priests by a name instead of just slagging them off in general terms in a Trumpesque campaign of discreditation.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 02:59 PM

Bernard Cornwell's novel about Stonehenge is an enjoyable read. I suspect all the facts are correct with a fictional story woven around it. Not even a hint of Sean Bean though...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 06:43 PM

When I was a late teeny, we could go to Stonehenge for nowt, stroll around and stroke those stones. Which we did. Which is the way it should be, but the world is, I suppose, full of wankers now...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: meself
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 09:06 PM

I learned all about this Stonehenge-stones-from-Wales from a documentary at least ten years ago ...? (And, no, I'm not a time-travelling Druid).

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: BobL
Date: 13 Feb 21 - 03:17 AM

Maybe the Welsh stone circle was a manufacturers' trial run, to iron out any teething problems before moving everything to the customer's site.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 21 - 05:36 AM

Heheh!

By the way, Red, I was joking about the druids...

Weetabix dunked in baked bean juice sounds like a feast fit for a king. I might try it with the choc chip Weetabix...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: JHW
Date: 13 Feb 21 - 05:43 AM

Why not move it back then and avoid the new road tunnel?

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 13 Feb 21 - 06:01 AM

Just watching a documentary about this on BBC Iplayer. It was broadcast last night.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 14 Feb 21 - 03:42 AM

Latest Stonehenge story was engineered by TV to get Professor Alice Roberts back on telly - she hasn’t fronted a show for, oh, hours and hours.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Feb 21 - 05:20 AM

We tend to make modern assumptions about why the bluestones walked.
Were the bluestones there first, or did the other giants precede them?
Was it that the locals stole them from Wales?
Or was it that Welsh invaders brought them and erected them as a symbol of conquest?

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Feb 21 - 05:22 AM

It was a good programme. I happen to think that Alice is an excellent and lucid presenter.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: JHW
Date: 14 Feb 21 - 05:38 AM

Good cartoon in the Telegraph. Two ancient Brits. One reading. "Your stone circle will be delivered between 3,000 and 2,000 B.C. Please make sure you are in to sign for it".

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Helen
Date: 14 Feb 21 - 01:59 PM

Funny, JHW!

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Splott Man
Date: 15 Feb 21 - 10:15 AM

It's an early rugby pitch.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Penny S.
Date: 17 Feb 21 - 03:47 AM

That the bluestones came from Preseli has been known for a long time - a century? That they were there set up as a circle with an opening to the midsummer solstice sunrise, and the same circumference as Stonehenge was not. I think it has also been known for a while that some of the burials at Stonehenge were of people who grew up in Pembrokeshire.
It seems to me that if the people who built the Preseli circle decided for some reason to trek over to Salisbury Plain, then coming across the chalk ridges now defining the Avenue must have seemed like a sign that here was the place to rebuild. Like those folk myths about white cows lying down at the site for the future city. Much more understandable that some random person just happeneing to come across those ridges at the right time to spot their significant alignment, and thinking it was significant.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Rain Dog
Date: 17 Feb 21 - 06:31 AM

They just need to confirm if

A) Someone from Wales was wandering around and came to Stonehenge and thought 'Mmm looks nice here. Maybe we should move'

Or

B) They all set off from Wales on some sort of trip,taking the stones with them and camping at various sites along the way, erecting the stones at each stop. If they got bored with the new site they simply took down the stones and set off again. By the time they got to Stonehenge they had all probably had enough.
Not many bluestones made it to Kent.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Feb 21 - 07:18 AM

Have we considered continental drift?

I'll get me coat...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Penny S.
Date: 17 Feb 21 - 08:23 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Malcolm Storey
Date: 17 Feb 21 - 09:43 AM

I have photos of my son - now in his mid fifties at both Stonehenge in 1970 and the Giants Causeway in 1976.

On each occasion we had free and unhindered access.

At the Giants Causeway we drove down to the beach.

In the mid 1990s Judy, Jill Pidd and myself visited the Causeway and were confronted by an expensive car park and a bus to the beach.
When I queried why things had changed the man taking the money gave a typical local response - "Sure and they want to make money"
He did point out that we could park in the local pub car park provided we made a purchase. So after a break for coffee we strolled over to the free bus!!.....

Yorkshire grit & wit triumphs again.

By the way on all three occasions the sun was shining and the weather most pleasant.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Feb 21 - 09:34 AM

Yorkshire grit & wit triumphs again"
England's always expecting. No wonder they call her the Mother Country” FS Trueman

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Feb 21 - 04:04 PM

The multiple English Sea Henges all have a dubious explanation.
"Because they're made of wood?"

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: sian, west wales
Date: 19 Feb 21 - 09:25 PM

A European-funded project in the 1990s/2000s tried to illustrate the migration of the stone to some merriment or despair, depending on your point of view.

s/ww

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Mr Red
Date: 22 Feb 21 - 03:44 AM

There was yet another documentary on how to move honking great stones. Trying several methods. The clear winner was ................

seaweed. In the documentary they used Fucus serratus as a bed to slide on. It contains a gel-like substance.

Moving over land is perceivable with enough people. So how to cross the river Severn? Some pretty big boats! And no-one suggests it was done in "next day delivery". My guess is it took years.

There had to be a powerful reason to motivate people for such an undertaking. As a predictor of the timing of the seasons it is pretty powerful. A Stone age Music Festival is a draw. As a better mixing of the gene pool it would work well. Free food/alcohol. Trading stuff. Religion? Well you can imagine that getting closely intertwined.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Malcolm Storey
Date: 22 Feb 21 - 07:08 PM

Amazon would have sorted it - returns might have been a problem!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: leeneia
Date: 23 Feb 21 - 10:41 AM

I've read a number of books and articles about Stonehenge, and so far they surprise me in their ignorance of geology. I mean the kind of geology one would learn in two semesters of college.

"Bluestones". There is no rock unit called a bluestone. This term is used for gray rocks at Stonehenge. They could be different rock types and could have come from different places.

"Sarsen". This word means foreign and applies to rocks that don't look like they belong in the place where they are seen. Again, they could have come from many different places.

I have yet to see a book address the possibility that the big stones of Stonehenge are glacial erratics. Where I live, we occasionally find boulders of Sioux quartzite as big as automobiles which have been moved over 300 miles by the glaciers. If they are really big, they are so hard to get rid of that people just mount a plaque on them and deem them a historic monument.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Feb 21 - 11:42 AM

You are correct in saying that "bluestone" isn't a specific geological rock type. The Stonehenge ones appear to be a type of dolerite, an igneous rock which in turn has several types. In Cornwall we have a hard dolerite that we call greenstone, which forms coastal headlands that protrude out to sea beyond the areas of softer slaty rocks and provide spectacular cliff scenery (e.g. at Pentire Head, at the Rumps peninsula, my favourite spot on Planet Earth and where my ashes will be scattered). I'm not entirely convinced by the glacial erratics theory. Salisbury Plain and the stretch between there and Pembrokeshire was at the extreme southern edge of the maximum glaciation and I have to wonder whether the ice had enough consistent heft to get those rocks all the way, and whether the ice would have flowed in the right direction in any case. I wonder whether any drop-offs have been found along the route, which is what happens with large erratics (I know the Norber Boulders in Yorkshire)... Musing from ignorance here...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: leeneia
Date: 25 Feb 21 - 12:24 AM

I'm not convinced either. I think the idea is likely enough to be investigated.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Feb 21 - 06:33 AM

You may be able to move huge stones a short distance using serrated wrack, but you'd have to preserve vast amounts of it in its wet state in order to cover a significant distance. It soon dries out and goes all crispy on you (good for your veg plot by that stage). Like all those littoral zone brown seaweeds, it's a tough old bugger, though not the toughest of them. I think that the logistics of collecting enough of it, then transporting masses of it to place at strategic points along the route, would far outweigh in difficulty any other way of shifting the stones...

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 25 Feb 21 - 11:50 AM

The stones don't have to move that far overland at the Salibury Plain end of the journey, not sure how far to navigable water at the Welsh end.

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Feb 21 - 01:04 PM

There's a lot of uphill though, Robin.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: JHW
Date: 26 Feb 21 - 06:41 AM

We moved enormous vessels about at the brewery. Tucked a bit of carpet, furry side down under each leg. Heavy going but slid on concrete floor.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Mr Red
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 10:47 AM

This term is used for gray rocks at Stonehenge. They could be different rock types and could have come from different places.

Modern hand-held spectroscopy is good enough to get a match close enough to rule out all possible sources except one. The quarry would have to be obvious as a quarry - even 5000 years later. The sarson stones likewise, in fact if you go the the sarson quarry ( a convenient few miles away), you will see stones nearly finished and not transported. Spares in case of accidents one would presume.

The number of animal bones found would indicate feasting, with a very doubtful side order of animal worship &/or sacrifice. And there are theories that the Winter Solstice was the principle focus. Counting days to sowing time and harvest being easier, and spare time from farming more plentiful.

If you really want to nail it, you just dun gotta have been there.

Subject: RE: BS: Stonehenge came from Wales
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 12:19 PM

"We moved enormous vessels about at the brewery. Tucked a bit of carpet, furry side down under each leg. Heavy going but slid on concrete floor."

A couple of lock-in nights would have made the vessels a lot lighter...