Re: Why is it that every TV special on Stonehenge mentions Druids?

On Oct 9, 10:57 am, "Digger" <p.du...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Matt Giwer" <jul...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:48ec6f5b$0$4913

Given the rate of cultural diffusion limited by walking and the English
Channel that geographic range at that time would be like substituting
Spain and Mesopotamia for Stonehenge and Baltics.

never underestimate the distances people were travelling in prehisotry. Once
you start to understand the evidence you find that people were travelling
mind-boggling distances. We already know there were very close links between
Britain at this time and north western Spain.

"Walking" is a subjective term and brings to the modern mind a
leisurely traipse through the hills. I doubt many "walkers" today
could get from Stanford Bridge to Hastings in much less than three
weeks, never mind three days.

Yes, I am aware of henges throughout northern Europe

Actually, no henges per se exist outside the British Isles but maybe you
don't fully understand what a henge actually is.

"Henge" is a misused term. You are correct that there are no "Henges"
outside of Britain, but stone circles in the most generic sense exist
as far south as the Mediterranean and a few date as far back as 10,000
BC. The common triad of stones with a stone on top, often mistaken for
a Henge, is not a stone circle at all but the centre of a burial mound
after the surrounding earth has been lost.

But, big *** here ;), the idea that a particularly impressive henge was a
place of pilgrimage leaves me cold. Maybe a tribe that could afford to
build it INVITED others to show off their wealth. However such invitations
usually means military superiority. Any signs of that? None I hear of.

I don't follow your argument here. The military thing is a red herring as
far as I am concerned. What we DO now know about Stonehenge and what used to
be called the "Wessex" culture, is that there does appear to be evidence
that the builders of the Wessex Henges may also have been in control of the
Copper/Bronze trade in the British Isles and NW Europe.

Wessex culture, in addition to being in control of copper and bronze,
exported the best axes in Europe of the time, was a major importer of
Baltic amber, and was basically sodding rich. They were the Yuppies of
the prehistoric world. If someone found a Bronze Age stock exchange in
the region, it wouldn't shock me. It was likely THE place to be seen.
It certainly was, as far as merchants and overseas military were
concerned, and if they said people could be healed there - well,
tourists will be tourists. It works as a sales pitch today, so there's
no reason to assume it wouldn't have then. Especially since they could
easily have paid for the best medicines and most skilled surgeons of
the day, if they'd wanted to.

There is the problem again, probably. A fixed population showing up every
"sunday" and a large seasonal population would leave the same quantity. So
there has to be something in the quality of what is in the trash to
distinguish between the two.

There's plenty of evidence. We know from the animal bones in the midden,
EXACTLY what time of year people were at the site. Read the reports and
you'll see how this evidence works.

There's that, but animal bones aren't the only evidence we have. We
know from pollen and grass grains from non-native varieties, DNA from
human remains, and other such material, who was local and who wasn't.
Evidence isn't in short supply, though I do want to point out that
archaeologists have done a really bad job of presenting what evidence
exists and what it says.

The evidence from human bones excavated around the locality does
demonstrate that people were traveling from far and wide to visit the
site and, perhaps, settle in the wider area, (although the immediate
environs of Stonehenge seem not to have been permanently occupied).

OR it shows the peoples of the islands were nomadic and were buried where
they died. A nomadic culture is one with a fixed settlement and the able
bodied men are gone from after planting until before harvest doing the
herding and hunting and such. In their travels the men visit the
settlements of other tribes and trade, barter for women, get into fights
and die and are buried.

Read the reports, then comment. We know that people were at the site who
began their lives in Wales, Northern England and Mainland Europe. The
distances from point of origin would suggest that there is something more
than a nomadic round going on here. Unfortunately we can't yet tell where
people died but we CAN tell where they were born.

Depends a little on the state of preservation. Burned remains are hard
to place, and that's unfortunately the norm, but it's not everything.
With Pete Marsh-like bogmen, you can identify if the grains for their
last meal were a native British strain or not. If there's any hair,
hair samples reflect the chemistry of the food/drink intake and you
can sometimes spot very specific regional chemical signatures. This
kind of data can tell you where a person died, or at least give you a
very very good idea, but it is exceptionally rare. However, to show
visitors, you don't need it to be common. It just has to be common
enough to be able to class "freak incident" as an unlikely
explanation.

Even though I do not have a dog in this fight, I see so many of the
"interpretations" of the data arguing to a conclusion. The conclusion here
is that Stonehenge was the Vatican of ancient of northern Europe.

Not necessarily. It *may* have been the Vatican of its day. It may have been
the Lourdes of its day. Equally, it might have been the Wall Street or the
Wembley Stadium of its day. We simply don't know yet. All we can say with
any certainty is that the site was VERY VERY important for some people
liviing in prehisotric Britain and Europe.

The entire regional complex (Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury Hill, the
lost structures at the foot of Silbury, Woodhenge, the 100'-diameter
wooden structure that was reported on 8-9 years ago, the chalk horses,
the chalk man, the wooden posts next to Stonehenge, even the
construction worker's huts) could have represented each and every
single possibility listed above and a few dozen more besides. It is a
mistake to treat Stonehenge as though it existed in absolute
isolation. This was a busy place, as evidence by the sheer number of
Barrows in the area.

I know of no signs of organization in northern Europe in those days which
could make Stonehenge a focal point.

Then I would suggest you need to read more widely.

Personally, I would advocate the original poster start by reading.

Given the tendency of religious splitting, if Stonehenge were popular I
would expect several of them competing to be the the "real" Stonehenge of
the "real" religion.

There are plenty of candidates to be rivals to Stonehenge under the type of
system you propose. Avebury could have made a claim to be the greatest, as
could Knowlton, Marden, Mount Pleasant, Thornborough, Arbour Low and many
others.

What was it that early commentators on Avebury said? That if
Stonehenge was a church, Avebury was a cathedral? Of course, they were
in use at only slightly overlapping times, at least as stone circles.
Stonehenge's site was unquestionably in use for something at the time
Avebury was in full swing, we have plenty of evidence for that, but if
it was not set up to compete with Avebury per-se, then there would be
no need to look for competition at the time of set-up. It's possible
Avebury fell out of use because Stonehenge managed to divert enough
attention from Avebury by migrating to being a stone circle complex.
As such, the imagined scenario of the original poster might easily
have happened, so far from being counter to evidence, I'd suggest it
fits with what is known rather nicely. So I really don't see a
horrible conflict.
.

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