Stone Henge

[tdr1nka]

*Stonehenge, where the demons dwell and the banshees live, and they do live well*

24 carat classic.

I vote that Stone 'enge was dicovered in 1985 and was in severe danger of being demolished by dwarves!

 

[Monst]

Whatever.... but can I please have a cup of what Bonj is on?

 

[Maz]

I don't think it was somehow. They were far too militant when Julius Ceasar's lot were roaming around to knock up a stone circle.

Weren't the Romans sort of clearing off by about 400 AD?
But you're right, the date is wrong.

The 4th was a Monday.

 

[Cathryn]

Ooooh...Maggot...you've found my home...I grew up, and my parents still live, in Durrington next to the glamorous Woodhenge. My Dad worked at the RSA as well. Did you live in Larkhill?

How exciting!

 

[ufkacbln]

OK I'll confess - I built it as a GCE project in the 70's

Got a Grade C as the exam board though the finish on the stones was not good enough - Still it was a pass!

 

[Keith Oates]

I think Bonj is skating on thin ice, if his knowledge gets out and is accepted the money lost to the tourist industry could possibly lead the country into recession. MI6 will be knocking on his door very soon I think!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[surfgurl]

It hasn't been built yet. You can only see it because it is refracted backwards through time through a reverse polarity loop.

So there. Ner.

 

[rich p]

Poor old Cathryn was never the same after her skiing accident. She can't even remember that she and her family had to move out of No.1 Stonehenge Gardens after the local council condemned it due to the lack of a roof.

 

[bonj2]

OK I'll confess - I built it as a GCE project in the 70's

Got a Grade C as the exam board though the finish on the stones was not good enough - Still it was a pass!

Well it was definitely before 1890. Thomas Hardy wrote Tess of the d'Urbevilles in 1889/90 and in it she is arrested for murder while resting on the stones of Stonehenge. So maybe your pre-Victoria theory is begining to stack up.

There is of course Woodhenge not far away, although it's now concrete posts as the wood has long ince rotted. It's just over the fence in the layby on the Amesbury side of the Amesbury-Pewsey road, just before the roundabout. Not a lot of people know that.

Hey Cathryn where did you live? I was based at The Royal School of Artillery for a few years. Oh the memories

What somebody wrote in a fiction book is not evidence, but you're right it was there before 1890 - there's a photo of it which was took in 1877.

OK I'll confess - I built it as a GCE project in the 70's

Got a Grade C as the exam board though the finish on the stones was not good enough - Still it was a pass!

The EIGHTEEN seventies?

 

[Rhythm Thief]

It's as old as everyone thinks it is. What I don't believe is that the builders dragged the Prescelli bluestone all the way from Wales. Every other stone circle is built with local stone and I think Stonehenge is no exception. I think the presence of bluestone on Salisbury Plain is evidence that the glaciers reached there in the last ice age about 10 000 years ago.
I have little evidence for this, but hey, that didn't stop Bonj postulating that it was built last week, did it?

 

[bonj2]

I am being sensible here RT, in that I have observed the ACTUAL evidence, e.g. a photo that was taken of it in 1877 (rather than just old wives' tales and evidence that amounts to no more than 'well it looks old') - unlike silly you - suggesting that blokes actually dragged the stones there without any mechanised tools. I think it's only logical that some sort of steam powered tractor in combination with an early mining winch would have been used, both products of the industrial revolution. It was only after mechanisation that focus really turned onto the tourist industry, and they realised what was possible - they had the wonderful idea to build something that would have an aura of druid mysticism and attract curious tourists and pretend pagan pilgrims in their droves, and make a killing as an attraction.

 

[Milo]

Im fairly sure somebody would have written it down.....

 

[Noodley]

I am being sensible here RT, in that I have observed the ACTUAL evidence, e.g. a photo that was taken of it in 1877 (rather than just old wives' tales and evidence that amounts to no more than 'well it looks old') - unlike silly you - suggesting that blokes actually dragged the stones there without any mechanised tools. I think it's only logical that some sort of steam powered tractor in combination with an early mining winch would have been used, both products of the industrial revolution. It was only after mechanisation that focus really turned onto the tourist industry, and they realised what was possible - they had the wonderful idea to build something that would have an aura of druid mysticism and attract curious tourists and pretend pagan pilgrims in their droves, and make a killing as an attraction.

I'm with bonj on this one - makes perfect sense to me. Flawless logic IMO.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

I am being sensible here RT, in that I have observed the ACTUAL evidence, e.g. a photo that was taken of it in 1877 (rather than just old wives' tales and evidence that amounts to no more than 'well it looks old') - unlike silly you - suggesting that blokes actually dragged the stones there without any mechanised tools. I think it's only logical that some sort of steam powered tractor in combination with an early mining winch would have been used, both products of the industrial revolution. It was only after mechanisation that focus really turned onto the tourist industry, and they realised what was possible - they had the wonderful idea to build something that would have an aura of druid mysticism and attract curious tourists and pretend pagan pilgrims in their droves, and make a killing as an attraction.

No Bonj. I don't know much about this particular experiment, but I do know that archaeologists have tried erecting two uprights and a cross stone (can't remember the technical terms ... think the classic Stonehenge shape) using only technology that would have been available in the early Bronze Age. That experiment worked. Ok, it doesn't show that it was built like that, but it shows that it could have been. The experiment tried by someone else, in which a huge lump of bluestone was quarried in the Prescelli Mountains, wheeled overland and sailed up the Bristol Channel on a raft, failed dismally. (I think it sank somewhere in the channel.) Hence (partly) my thoughts that the bluestones were just lying around on Salisbury Plain, having been brought there by the ice.
Do you have any evidence for it being 150 or so years old?

 

[bonj2]

Im fairly sure somebody would have written it down.....

Writing it down doesn't constitute evidence. it could be made up!

It must be old enough for all passed down memories to have been eradicated. So, that must be at least 10 generations, probably many more. Otherwise someone will have come forward saying my great grand-fathers great-grandfather built Stonehenge.

Let me re-iterate - old wives' tales don't count as evidence.

As to your qoute about it not being evidence because it was in a story book. Well that would make Thomas Hardy some visionary wouldn't it? Imagining an area, on the edge of Salisbury where there was an incomplete circle of stones which no-one knew the purpose of

It could easily have been designed, but not built. In other words, druids and pagans have probably got some bible which has claimed for centuries that the holy grail for them is a circle of stones in a field, but it's never existed - but come the 1800s, some bright spark decides to then give them what they've always wanted, and builds it.

No Bonj. I don't know much about this particular experiment, but I do know that archaeologists have tried erecting two uprights and a cross stone (can't remember the technical terms ... think the classic Stonehenge shape) using only technology that would have been available in the early Bronze Age. That experiment worked. Ok, it doesn't show that it was built like that, but it shows that it could have been. The experiment tried by someone else, in which a huge lump of bluestone was quarried in the Prescelli Mountains, wheeled overland and sailed up the Bristol Channel on a raft, failed dismally. (I think it sank somewhere in the channel.) Hence (partly) my thoughts that the bluestones were just lying around on Salisbury Plain, having been brought there by the ice.
Do you have any evidence for it being 150 or so years old?

Evidence that stone henge is so old because it COULD have been contructed out of certain tools, is only going to be as good as evidence that those tools are that old in the first place.
The other theory is that it wasn't built at all, but is completely natural.
The only thing I'm sceptical of is that primitive people built it with just their bare hands and no proper tools whatsoever that hadn't been invented in those days.