So, dear readers. A change of format.
Rather than writing an essay, and then posting it, and then putting whatever I find of interest into the blog comments, and then repeating… this now is an ongoing ‘work in progress’ which will roll out as it gets done.
This is the 93rd blog post. There are between 150 – 200 visits every day. Several thousand names registered. As many followers may only check the blog, say, once a week, I guess that means that I have a few hundred regular readers.
So, thank you all, for your attention. It’s an honour. Let’s see how many remain after I put you through all this stuff 🙂 A few hardcore fans and handful of special branch police perhaps… 🙂
Anyway, allow me to introduce you to this new idea.
A couple of posts back, I mentioned that the ancient Greek fellow called Eratosthenes had managed to calculate the circumference of the Earth.
He lived c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC. So that’s about 2,200 years ago, and although he’s always spoken of as a Greek, he was actually born in what is now Libya.
Here is his wiki page where you can learn how he measured the Earth, also that
Eratosthenes believed there was good and bad in every nation and criticized Aristotle for arguing that humanity was divided into Greeks and barbarians, and that the Greeks should keep themselves racially pure. As he aged he contracted ophthalmia, becoming blind around 195 BC. Losing the ability to read and to observe nature plagued and depressed him, leading him to voluntarily starve himself to death. He died in 194 BC at the age of 82 in his beloved Alexandria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes
So he was one of the very many very remarkable people of that period. If we were not such a flawed species, and had continued making progress in studying, in the manner that he did, we could easily have colonised Mars long ago, and made this world a delightful place for all its inhabitants.
Instead, there are always individuals, and social forces, which have prevailed and destroyed any chance of that happening, because they have sought power and wealth and have had no respect for this Earth and their fellows, so there have been endless wars and the libraries have been burned, over and over again. And now we are where we are, and can see, that nothing has been learned.
So, then I learned of this fellow Abū al-Rayhān Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Bīrūnī previously unknown to me, who
…devised his own method of determining the radius of the earth by means of the observation of the height of a mountain and carried it out at Nandana in Pind Dadan Khan (present-day Pakistan).
Here’s his wiki info
Al-Biruni is regarded as one of the greatest scholars of the medieval Islamic era and was well versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences, and also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist and linguist.[9] He was conversant in Khwarezmian, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and also knew Greek, Hebrew and Syriac. He spent a large part of his life in Ghazni in modern-day Afghanistan, capital of the Ghaznavid dynasty which was based in what is now central-eastern Afghanistan. In 1017 he traveled to the Indian subcontinent and authored “Tarikh Al-Hind” (History of India) after exploring the Hindu faith practised in India. He is given the titles the “founder of Indology“. He was an impartial writer on custom and creeds of various nations, and was given the title al-Ustadh (“The Master”) for his remarkable description of early 11th-century India.[9] He also made contributions to Earth sciences, and is regarded as the “father of geodesy” for his important contributions to that field, along with his significant contributions to geography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Biruni
So what’s mostly of interest there, about a thousand years later, and a different method of calculating the circumference of the Earth.
And I learned that from a forum comment, which I posted in the previous thread, which had this somewhat startling claim, which I have bolded…
To stumble across the idea (of a round world) by chance needs an unusual set of geographical features. The only location I have found that the idea can both be proven and stumbled across by chance is at Preseli: At this location, Neolithic constructions of unknown age are located in precisely the correct locations to show how this might have been found.
Immediately below these locations is the possible quarry that some archaeologists say is the source of the bluestones used at Stonehenge. Using the Geocentric Hypothesis, Stonehenge is a model of our Cosmos which shows, amongst other things, that the Earth is round (the circle of Stones representing our world).
This was posted by someone called jonm, about whom I know nothing, other than his info page, and that he appears to be writing a book on the topic
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/user.php?op=userinfo&uname=jonm
Here is the thread
[Note to self. Many points there that could be followed up]
[Note to readers. As I said, this is ‘work in progress’. 🙂 It may veer into, um, incoherency. I shall not be surprised if it does… I shall be surprised if it doesn’t, ahahaha]
So. A ‘What if… ?’ type of thought alighted upon me….
Long before Eratosthenes, here in Wales.
In the Bronze Age, Wales had the largest copper mine in the whole world, on the north coast, at the Great Orme. They mined ore there for at least 1500 years, it is a vast complex.
http://www.greatormemines.info/research.html
What did that mean ? It meant they had trade contacts to everywhere within reach, and they were incredibly wealthy, because everybody who was into the Bronze Age, meaning the latest technology, needed what they had, the copper. To be mixed with tin and maybe other substances, arsenic, whatever. But copper was vital, essential.
Good as gold, near enough.
Which leads to
3000 B.C. – 1833
The Mold Cape was buried only a matter of miles away from the largest Bronze Age copper mine in northwest Europe, the Great Orme. The copper from here, and the tin from Cornwall, would have provided the ingredients for the vast majority of British bronze objects. The peak of activity at the Great Orme mine has been dated between 1900 and 1600 BC. Recent analysis of the gold-working techniques, and the decorative style of the cape, dates the burial to this very period. So we can only guess, but it’s likely that the wearers of this extraordinary object were linked to the mine, which would have been a source of great wealth, and a major trading centre for the whole of north-west Europe
Cape is unearthed
1833 – 1835
Workmen quarrying for stone in an ancient burial mound in 1833 found this unique ceremonial gold cape, which remains unparalleled to this day. The mound lay in a field named Bryn yr Ellyllon (the Fairies’ or Goblins’ Hill). I takes several years to be pieced together
Reverend C.B. Clough writes about the discovery
1833 – 1835
The isolated location of the burial site, near the village of Mold, not far from the north coast of Wales, meant that the wider world could easily have continued in ignorance of its existence. That this didn’t happen, owes everything to the curiosity of a local vicar, Reverend C.B. Clough, who wrote an account of the find that aroused the interest of the Society of Antiquaries, hundreds of miles away in London.
https://www.preceden.com/timelines/3281-mold-gold-cape
There’s an amazing story to go with that, somewhere. Someone had a dream or vision that there was a prince or something, buried in that Fairy Field with the gold cape…. another thing to check out…
Hammered from a single ingot of gold, about the size of a golf ball.
So never mind what the Greeks and the Egyptians were doing, these guys in Wales had the wealth, the money, and they had the connections, to everywhere, and they had the time…. the leisure…
So what did they do ?
Did they decide it might be interesting to measure the circumference of the Earth ?
Meini Hirion, Welsh, literally, ‘stones long’, the standing stones.
” This is the world: the lying likeness of
Our strips of stuff that tatter as we move
Loving and being loth;
The dream that kicks the buried from
their sack
And lets their trash be honoured as the quick.
This is the world. Have faith. “
Dylan Thomas.
Now we must backtrack, some autobiography, the miasma of my past life.
Once upon a time, long ago, in the dark time before there even was an internet, before there even were computers you could buy, when telephones were black wheely things that you had to wind up with your finger to generate sparks, like a sort of… well,never mind, ask… no you can’t, they are all dead by now… it was that long ago.
You know, this is Wales. If you live here, you just took it for granted.
The whole place is littered with prehistoric relics. Everywhere.
I’ve lived in many different places in Wales, I lived above Colwyn Bay for quite a while, high up, in a caravan, looking straight out across at the Great Orme. At that time, nobody had any idea it was riddled with scores of miles of prehistoric tunnels.
I was sitting in a field. As you do. And there was a stone. And I thought, well, there, so often is. And why is that ? What are they doing ? What are they for ? And the farmer said that they are there for the cows to rub themselves on.
Well, yes. Welsh farmers know everything, of course they do. Except if you look in the library, in a book, it says ‘ritual monuments from the Neolithic and Bronze Age, or possibly boundary markers’. Not much mention at all of cows rubbing. There may be some rationale to the theory, but the trouble is, Welsh farmers inhabit the same sort of imaginary territory as Kafka’s Great Mole and the Schoolteacher story, mentioned recently.
You see, cattles and horses do like to rub themselves, and they are prone to push gates and fence posts, and so it might be a sort of means to keep them away from doing that, giving them a more tempting target, so to speak. But then a tree would be quite satisfactory and adequate.
Why wouldn’t the farmer just leave a sturdy tree ? Why go to the trouble of erecting a great big stone ? I mean, the logic breaks down, when there are a lot of trees, right there in the field, as well as the stones, that serve just as well, if any large animal feels in need of some rubbing.
You can never be sure how much serious thought the farmer has devoted to the question, can you. He may, in fact, not be very serious at all. He may, quite possibly, be keeping a straight face, whilst meaning the answer as a joke, to test you, as a trial of your judgement and common sense. Many of these farmers live their whole lives in close proximity with these stones. But are they to be trusted, when to comes to knowing them ?
Anyway, let’s move on. The archaeologists. I found a report. One large stone in South Wales somewhere, [I’ve forgotten where, if I ever find the reference….] was buried under blown sand, so very well preserved site, and what they found was interesting. It was like a sort of shrine. A large paved area all around it, and a sort of flimsy wooden hut affair, as if perhaps some sort of priest-like person had lived beside the stone, as an attendant, and maybe people had come with offerings, or to consult, possibly divinations of some sort.
But back to biography. I sort of got more and more curious about these ancient stone monuments, in a casual sort of way, over several decades. I kept seeing them in fields, from the car, from the train, from the bus. I mixed with freaks and mushroom heads who told me about dowsing and ley lines and visitors from Alpha Centauri and the Crop Circles and every kind of weirdness that was going on. But I had my own preoccupations, I never had a chance to really get absorbed into the subject.
But then I met a woman, as one does, and got involved, and she’d been studying this stuff – ‘Earth mysteries’ – for years, and had masses of photos and gave me slide shows and jabbered on and on and on for hours, all night and day. It was all very interesting and intriguing. So I got somewhat better educated in the subject.
Again, this was long before the internet.
So then, by a series of bizarre happenings, I moved to this part of Wales, 25 + years ago. And the density of these megaliths is so remarkable that it is mindboggling.
And so, like many others, I was provoked to do a study, to try and get a better understanding as to what the heck they are all about. I bought books, and maps, I went around and took photos, and amassed a huge pile of information.
So I have all this stuff, and I studied it very intensively for a few years, and then, I met a woman, as one does, and she gave me a stiff talking to. She told me it was an elitist indulgence, and that I should get back to the battle to save the world. She was a lady with a forceful personality, not the sort of woman you’d want to be on the wrong side of, in terms of politics, or anything else, if….. well, you’ll catch my drift, no doubt, I don’t need to explain the dynamics of human cohabitation here, do I.
So, that was the end of the stones research project, which has languished for years, whilst I was busy attending to other things. But as ‘the world’ is now beyond ‘saving’, I am taking a break, and having a look at what I have. Piles of stuff. Interesting stuff.
In a nutshell. Someone, a very long time ago, erected stones, masses of them, all over the Preseli area. For some reason. Nobody knows why. So, that is the puzzle to the solved. There are clues. Amazing clues. Very weird.
So that is the introduction. That is the easy part. Now I have to explain to you what I found. This is the much harder part, seeing as it was more than twenty years ago, and nothing is orderly, and the subject matter is subtle… but here goes… we shall see how it turns out…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here is a photo is a photo of a fairly typical standing stone. This one I can see from my home. The view is from the stone looking back at my house and this mountain, years ago, when I first began studying these things. There are thousands of them, all over Wales, and then, as you’ll learn, if you check out the Megalithic Portal site, all over the British Isles, and then all over Europe and around the world.
Why people put them up is mostly uncertain, various different reasons are likely, and also when, is often unknown, they seem to cover a huge time span. But I began with this one.
So, this particular stone is a neighbour, I can wave to it, across the valley, I can see it most days. I made a series of portraits of it, and meditated upon them. Being an ardent and dedicated zen practitioner, I addressed it in a stern vocative and demanded that it disclose its secrets.
I got hold of the archaeological records for the county, which disclosed that there had once been a whole complex of monuments there, but the farmers had destroyed them. This has happened everywhere. Less so here, because it has been a relatively poor and undeveloped region. But it raises the question, how much has been lost ? What percentage are we seeing ?
It also stirs in me the deep passion, that never leaves, what an infernally crass, ignorant, stupid culture we have made. One which respects nothing whatsoever, and all this because of the diabolical money lenders. Rothschild’s policy, after WW2, to ‘modernise’ agriculture. Destroy the ecology and the archaeology along with it. So a few filthy rich bankers could get richer, centuries of irretrievable knowledge was thrown away in a couple of decades. But I must resist a rant.
So what did this stone have to say for itself ?
[I should say, that I am reminiscing, I did all this more than twenty years ago, children have been born, grown up, got married, and had children since then. Most likely many other people have researched this stuff, and I’m entirely unaware of what’s gone on. There’s thousands and thousands of threads I could be reading in an effort to catch up. But, as I said, for now, I have masses of material here, all kinds of things, I don’t even know what I have, I can’t remember half of it. So, I’m working my way into all this first, and we’ll see where it goes. It’s bound to overlap and cross connect to much more…]
The first ‘Eureka !’ was that, matching the top of the stone, to the top of the mountain, gives one an exact perfect compass bearing for due North.
Well. Hmph. You could say. That could be just random accidental chance. Yes. It could.
Or not. It’s interesting. Look at the profile, there’s the sort of < at the left, that meets the near horizon line, and also an interesting shoulder or step on the right side.
So to cut to the chase, I took lots of pics of lots of stones, to study the profiles. I mean, it was very exciting, because the very next one I came to, just up the hill, has the exact same step or shoulder. And then another one !
You know what the spooks say. First time, chance. Second time, coincidence. Third time, enemy action.
Here are six different standing stones, and it is quite plain to see, at first glance, that they all have some common features.
It is very easy to notice this NOW, the way I have presented them. However, curiously, at that time, twenty years ago, nobody in the entire history of archaeology ever seems to have noticed.
But there we are. Once you get the idea, seems to me, we have some sort of human – what shall we call it ? – sign language ? or code, or some such.
Seems to me, that whoever erected the stones, has shaped the stones.
Either they selected stones that were already close to the shapes that they wanted, and modified them a bit, or they found any large stone, and then modified it a lot, to suit their requirements. That they were masters of stonework, nobody questions, although it seems that actual knowledge about their techniques is very sparse. I could find almost nothing, but as I said, that was decades ago, I expect more is known now.
For the moment, I’ll leave that. I have so much more. I just wish to convey the idea, that what matters, is looking at the stone, from a particular view. Then, you ‘read’ the outline, the profile, against the background of the landscape. This then imparts information.
This is the crux of the matter, really.
So then, what we need to establish, what information is it, and why ? And what correlates with what ?
Now, I attempted to do this. I tried every mind boggling hypothesis that I could come up with, and it’s worse than quantum physics, really. 🙂
So I just kept on collecting more data, in the hope that some evidence would offer better clues. As I said, I have piles of stuff here. What I will do, is post a few interesting bits as I dig them out. If you have now got the basic idea, about how to view the stones, that’s all that matters to start with.
This is a different class or category of stone, much smaller, and one of a pair. And, if you inspect the top, you can see, it appears to have a symmetrical notch.
And there is a reason for that notch. When you sight it, like aiming a rifle, using the point on the top of the partner stone of the pair, it gives you the view below.
Apologies for the poor quality of this image, I must have a better one somewhere, but it demonstrates the principle. Which is, that we have an instrument which gives a precision bearing on the horizon line.
So what is that for ? At the time, I thought it must be to view some sort of celestial event, such as the appearance of a star, or the Moon at some significant date, or some such.
But I do not have any definitive answer. They were surveying SOMETHING !
How come those dopey professional archaeologists have never noticed any of this stuff ? How come none of it ever gets properly protected ? The whole area is littered with all kinds of stuff, but when you read the records, there used to be a heck of a lot more that has gone.
You are not persuaded ? You think that these two stones could just be there for the animals to rub themselves, and the notch is purely chance, ulvfugl’s deranged and tormented imagination ? Hahahaha
Well, I have to admit, I never thought that they might have been calculating the circumference of the Earth. I mean here. On this hill.
But….
Look at this one.
The stone on the left is the one with the notch, the stone on the right is the one with the pointed top that fits into the notch. When you sight them, you meet the horizon line, to the right, which, I cannot recall, but I think was not exact South by modern compass, but was out by 4 degrees, or possibly more. [I’ll come across that detail eventually].
So in this photograph, which has a pleasing symmetry, you are looking exactly East, at dawn. And, if you went there every day, you could watch the sunrise move along the horizon.
At the two equinoxes, the glow of the Sun emerges out of the land and appears exactly between those two hills. After the Spring equinox it moves further each morning, to the left, North-ward, until mid summer, the Solstice, when it begins moving back.
After the autumn equinox, when it is between the two hills, it begins moving to the right each morning, until the midwinter Solstice, we are almost there.
Behind the viewer, to the West, there are also some interesting features, but leave them for now, and several other things could be said. But what I would like to do, is try and convince you, that far from being some somewhat arbitrary erection of a couple of stones, at some point on the past, by some rural oik, who had no particular purpose in mind, this is in fact a precision instrument of a high order of accomplishment.
I have a debt of gratitude to a certain woman who had studied these stones independently, and noted something most extraordinary, which is that at midday the shadow of the one touches the base of the other. Which means that an exact time can be established. I have the photos and details somewhere, but again, I have to find them in due course.
If you still have doubts, here’s some more….
I did say leave what is behind the viewer, for now. But as I’ve found it, here it is, too interesting to skip over.
You’ll see, in the right hand partner of the pair above, there is the pointed tip, and then a stepped shoulder. If you walk around that stone and look at it from the other side, this is what you see.
That is the top of Carningli, pleasingly symmetry, exactly West, peeping over the near horizon. Behind Carningli is about sixty miles of sea, and then Ireland, some more sea, and then America.
[Sorry about the dismal quality, this was all done with cameras made in the Stone Age.]
Here’s an enlarged view.
So this shoulder step is quite a common feature or characteristic, and sceptics could argue that it just happens, that with this type of stone, the geology happens to produce these shapes, quite naturally, the result of fractures from frost, weathering, whatever, and when the man came along and found the boulder, he’ll naturally choose the big end down, and the pointy end up, when he wants to erect a rubbing post for his oxen to chafe themselves against, that being a task that was always a high priority in days gone by.
Here you can see it again, the same stone, and this time the top of the pointer is touching the skyline of the Preselis, and with some difficulty, you can just make out some tiny lumps up there. They are the cairns where the Stonehenge bluestones were said to originate. By various archaeological experts over many decades. Before this new recent team decided that they had found the real source, the ‘quarry’, down in the valley below.
And here is a Photoshop silhouette
I’m not a great one for statistics, nor even for mathematics, or probability and chance, in general, and I do not know, really, how you could apply Bayesian statistics or any similar approach, to shapes, the shapes of stones, found on the surface of the land, thousands of years ago, and then selected, for their shape. I’ve given it thought, but if there is some way forward in that direction, it’ll need someone smarter and more proficient than myself.
But look, what are the odds ? If you were a gambling man, and betting on some deal or other.
Start with this stone. It has to be found. With that point and that step. Or else, someone has to have made that point, and that step. (And also, a partner, with a neat notch.)
And then, look at this. Remember the rifle view to the horizon ? Well, that is actually a ancient prehistoric trackway, it has been the north-south route over the Preselis for as long as people have been trekking up and down. Nobody notices anymore, because there’s a tarmac main road that cars and lorries zoom along. But for thousands of years, it was on your legs. And it is a long slog. And pack ponies. And herds of sheep and cattle and then carts and wagons.
So, of you follow that sightline, it points to where the track goes over the horizon. I do not know if that is what it was meant to do, of course. But if you keep going, over the top, down the other side, about ten miles, if I recall, across the mountains…. Guess what ?
On the exact north south line, you meet ANOTHER pair of stones. And guess what ? One of them has a profile and top that looks like this.
What are the odds ? Seems to me the only reasonable conclusion to draw, someone shaped these stones, almost identical in profile, for a specific purpose, whatever that my have been.
But again, here in this area, we have the same tragic story. You read the county records, there used to be a whole complex of burial chambers, dolmens, standing stones, mounds, all kinds of stuff, but the farmers and others have wreaked the usual havoc and destroyed it all. 🙁
But, there we are. This is what we find. And, we must make the best of what we have, and so ulvfugl went all around, inspecting the stones, and it just got weirder and weirder.
Recall, in the previous thread, I mentioned Giraldus Cambrensis. This is the Catholic view.
Perhaps the most serious accusation levelled against Giraldus, next to the indictment of bias and dishonesty, is that wherein he is impeached of being addicted to the cult of the superstitious and the practice of witchcraft. If this be true, and Merlin would seem to have exercised a considerable sway over the mind of de Barry, then it would be vain to seek in the writings of the latter the reflex of that calm discrimination and sober balance of judgment which should characterize the historian. Finally, it may be said that the student of Irish history, by reading the works of Giraldus in the light of “Cambrensis Eversus”, cannot fail to derive a helpful knowledge of the period which they embrace.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06568d.htm
Gerald the Welshman. Who wrote The History and Topography of Ireland. He called Stonehenge the ‘The Giant’s Dance’ because he had heard stories that giants brought the stones from Africa to Ireland, and built the monument by some accounts on Mount Kildare, and by others “at Ophela, near the castle of Nas” (O’Meara, ). Later, Gerald said, Aurelius Ambrosius, king of the Britons, had Merlin bring the stones to Britain.
Some folks are much too literal minded, left brained, when approaching this sort of info. So they dismiss it, because it does not match up neatly to the standard orthodox ‘scientific’ account of what is supposed to have happened in the past.
But it is logos and mythos, isn’t it. You have to read between the lines.
We have Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur published in 1485 by Caxton. And in that story there is the motif of pulling the sword out of the stone. If you have that power, you become king.
For us, that tale is already 500 years old, which is ancient, and romantic.
But look, where did those guys get that idea from ?
It’s not literal truth, is it. It is not science. It’s poetic truth. Mythos. It’s about the Bronze Age. When people made stone moulds, into which they poured molten metal, to make swords and axe heads. Whoever had the knowledge of that technology was the ruler over all. Because then you could arm your soldiers and defeat your enemies, and sell those weapons and become wealthy and powerful. Just like being Steve Jobs and having the secrets of how an Apple Mac works and was made. All around pre 1000 BC when the Iron Age began, and a new, superior weapons technology was developed, which was cheaper and easier.
So the Malory story is just a faint trace of something that is some 1500 years or so old, and has been passed down through the generations.
So, when Giraldus says that he heard that giants brought the stones from Africa to Ireland, what might that mean ?
The literalists – we all know them – will imagine very very large men carrying boulders from Nigeria, and insist it could not happen. But those people are…..
Look, what it means. The IDEA, the CONCEPT, came from Africa, or from The South, and those people were Great Men. Large in character, spirit, knowledge. Not necessarily nine feet tall, although they might have been taller than the people they met.
Anyhow, let’s go with that understanding, for a while.
Europe was covered in ice. But the Sahara was fertile and lush. Around 12000 BC the glaciers begin to retreat, sea levels begin to rise, and people can begin to move north, hunting and gathering.
There are very ancient stone circles in the Sahara. All sorts of incredible stuff. Predating the Egyptian civilisation. Read the mythical history of Ireland, and the various invasions.
I’m digressing. But the idea of the stone circles. Gors Fawr. It’s nothing like Stonehenge, except that it is a circle of stones. The concept, or a related concept, is there.
I’ll refer you to the Megalithic Portal, because although I do have some pics, they cannot compare with the resources on offer there.
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=326
Relative to Stonehenge and many standing stones, the Gors Fawr stones are very small, almost like markers.
If you check out that info, you’ll notice it mentions the larger ‘outliers’, so back to my own photos of those two much larger stones.
Here is a pic of one of the pair, which has very sharp, clear angles, and shows the sort of work I was doing, trying to figure out what might be going on
I spent hours and hours, months and months, a manic obsessive ulvfugl, working on this crap. It was driving me mad. I was chasing the Eureka Moments. It was actually a relief when the crazy American woman collided with my life and gave me a severe savage lecture. I mean, she is a PROPER qualified anthropologist and archaeologist with all the degrees and qualifications and expertise, and she said that all I was doing was indulging bourgeouis curiosity, when what was needed was a revolution to change EVERYTHING before it was TOO LATE, and how did this work help the people in the barrios and favellas and the turtles that wanted to lay their eggs on beaches and couldn’t because of the fucking tourists and fucking pollution from the fucking luxury hotels for fucking millionaires who owned fucking corporations selling fucking weapons and and and… so I put my hands up and surrendered… 🙂 What else could I do ? She was very very beautiful. And red hair. 🙂
Funny thing, I saw her once, in a vision, many years before I met her. I told a guy I knew at the time, said ‘I had a remarkable vision of a woman’s face, in my mind’s eye, very clear, for about five minutes… never had anything quite like it’
I know, I know. This does not help anyone, or anything. It is idle curiosity. And we have a pig fucker for a prime minister, and people who address one another as ‘My noble lord, the right honourable…’ who bugger and murder little boys and lie and get away with it, and defraud the public and conceal the most disgusting conspiracies and crimes… and so I revisit all this stuff to take my mind off nuclear armageddon and the extinction of species… for a while….
So, where was I ?
I made no progress, for a long time, because every hypothesis that I applied, whilst it worked in some cases, was useless in others.
So this was fascinating, psychologically, from a zen buddhist point of view. Because I’d get tired and lose heart, and be filled with doubt. Was I just imagining all these things, or had I actually discovered something that nobody else had seen ? Because when I read the literature, there was no mention anywhere of anything like this. Confidence in your own personal judgement is something that can be removed, abstracted, from any particular case or circumstance, isn’t it. That’s a universal and fundamental human dilemma that everyone has always had to face and grapple with. Made harder if your choices, decisions, judgements, involve life, death, other people.
Look again. What do YOU think ?
There is this stone, from the first pair, that makes a sight to fit into the notch, and has the step. And then you follow that line, due south over the mountain top, down the other side, to another pair, and find the next one… (with a hawthorn bush in the way)
If you look closely at this second one, (which if I recall correctly is approx 10 miles due south of the first) it appears to have scribed lines going up to the point, which could be manmade. What would be nice, would be if it had a partner with a notch, but, although it is listed as one of a pair, I think this is because there are two remaining in the field, The partner does not seem to align, I have photos somewhere but cannot find, so refer again to Megalithic Portal, although there’s not much to see there. There could well have been a notched partner for sighting, but the site has been damaged.
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=5903
It would be very much better to put this question of the shape onto a solid scientific basis.
However, I confess, that is beyond my scope. I think it needs someone with fluency in topological or topographical geometry, mathematics, and statistics. But also, the nature of the substance, because it must make a difference, whether the form is composed of steel or cheese, I think.
I mean, if all stones, laying on the surface, were all regular oblongs, if equal dimensions, and composed of a similar substance, then if we found that those that had been put into an upright vertical position were always triangular, then we could safely propose that human workmanship had intervened and caused the state of affairs.
But stones come in a variety of shapes and sizes. But it is not an infinite variety, it’s actually quite limited. But we don’t know what it was like, what was available at the time.
What time ?
Well, very few standing stones have been securely dated. Those that have been properly studied by the most modern archaeological techniques, that provide things like burned nutshell or other material that can give accurate radio carbon date, from packing material used to secure the stone’s foundation when it was erected, are rarities. But they exist, and so it is generally presumed, justifiably, that they date from the Neolithic and Bronze Age, and a few from the Iron Age, and some from much later, even mediaeval times, but these later ones typically have a different character, they are more like boundary stones or grave markers and that sort of thing, and the practised eye can tell.
So I am at a loss to know how one could confine this matter of variations of shape within the domain of mathematical criteria and numerical discipline, rather than my intuitive bet. There are probably minds suited to the task, but they are being paid vast sums to work on financial derivatives and drone weapons, and the present day Guptas and Al Birunis are busy doing computer cryptography for GCHQ…. alas. But as the red haired woman would say, this is all a frivolous indulgence, in any case. 🙂
Let’s move on.
Here us one of the pair of so called outliers, near to Gors Fawr circle. (They are about average person height, very roughly). With the angles matched to horizon lines. This would be a comfortable and natural view for the human eye, as it meets the stone.
Here with background removed to see the profile more starkly.
So does this look like a ‘natural’ rock, or like one that has been shaped for a purpose ?
That’s a hard question, but possibly could be answered by very close technical inspection of the surface by someone with suitable experience and qualifications. Note the very precise angles which are easily measured.
Then, we have this, one of a pair, at Dan y Garn, about half a mile or so distant.
Same sized stone, same angles, the top tip obviously damaged.
So these very similar stones, just happened to get these angles and shapes, by way of chance and natural forces ? Or some human agency wanted 145 degrees, and knew how yo shape the rock surface to get it.
But the puzzle is very far from over, back to this one.
Contemplating this for long hours, it struck me, what of that ‘line up the left side’ so to speak, is saying, ‘walk this line across to where the angle meets the near horizon’.
And then, at the angle, it is saying ‘Then travel up this line, to the skyline’.
So, you have a hypothesis. And then you test it. This is the scientific method, put into practice.
Guess what there is, at that angle point, where it meets the near horizon ? EXACTLY at that point. A standing stone. It is a small one, recorded on all the official records as such.
I have photos. But cannot find. It was a memorable visit, the farmer’s wife, very splendid and Welsh took me and wonan to view the thing, of which she was quite proud, except that a JCB had just dug a huge ditch right by it, and one winced about the archaeology…. they keep their stock on the mountain and tend them from horseback, although they have ATVs as well, and they have an amazing wild lifestyle there…
A modest humble little thing. Not even MENTIONED at the Portal. But there are many more large stones all around.
And, it has the same clearly cut angled faces, and a strange knobby ‘nose’ on the top, which points up the hill toward the skyline. Well, actually, first, you come to this pair, they are quite famous, because it is a dramatic setting. They are big and impressive, with a very potent sense of presence.
Here’s their page
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=1448
But to jump back to Gors Fawr for a moment, this is the other outlier, I have so far neglected and a photo taken at the Equinox, so facing exact West at sunset, and you see that the Sun is sitting in the notch in the top of the stone. Then as the year proceeds, it will be moving down that slope to the left.
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