Michael, thanks for parsing out the ways information is presented by the press. Nowadays there are sooo many outlets for “press releases” that compete to entertain, it is impossible to keep up or stay ahead of some outlandish, illogical claims. That is one very good reason that I LOVED you & Rupert’s excellent production, Standing with Stones. It provided practical-what I think of as realistic-visualizations of past times-times without iron, steel, plastic, absorbent diapers-but with people whose days were full with coping-feeding families, keeping warm & dry & clothed. I still think rituals came only later, with larger, more crowded populations and in climates more amenable to sitting when starving (and hoping for gods in the sky).
My feeling is that belief systems, and the rituals that are often associated with such beliefs, were (and still are in most societies) an *active* way of coping with all the difficulties and vicissitudes associated with just 'coping' and having to deal with the constant attempt to survive in an unforgiving environment with all its attendant difficulties. If you need all the help you can get, then why not ask the Sun, for example, to be on your side? I suspect the sceptic and the naysayer would not be welcome in such a society.
@ No, it’s better to keep making sewing awls and tree-chopping axes, while burning logs from trees for warmth and trying to figure out how to have a fairly fat mammal available for slaughter in March (spring equinox) in the northern hemisphere. By the way, the baby is wet but has to be dried and warmed, and oh my, fed. And another little kid is growing and hungry and cold. Our ancestors survived , not because they imagined something in the sky would somehow help them-they figured out themselves how to warm, catch, tame, slaughter, sew, grow, harvest and cook. The only time people have to demand payment (sacrifice) for things like prayer /ritual is when there are repeated times of first plentiful crops, then widespread hunger-as in drought. Did that happen in Britain? The winter solstice in the north, though, is a welcome marker of time that signals more cold that will require care, but will end.
@@caroletomlinson5480 You may well be right, but I doubt they had your 21st Century rationalism to rely upon. On the other hand, perhaps they could be both practical and have a belief in the supernatural at the same time. Anthropology teaches us that has almost always been the way in most human societies in all places and at all times.
Hi Guys. I love the Channel, but have a personal request that may help other fans with hearing difficulties as well, and is worth noting as until recently, as well as being stone deaf I was also legally blind as well, so became reliant on a large screen TV as a Monitor as well. On a very positive note, when I was in intensive Care, I got pumped with such a large range of antibiotics etc, plus for the first time in over 30 years started being given the actual medicines I needed, both my vision and hearing have started coming back, and hearing is almost there for the TV Monitor, but I have to make sure that the Volume isn’t high enough to annoy the Neighbours.So the issue, Audio from Rupert’s Mike is almost there, but Michael, could you please increase the Mike Gain and adjust the Tone to match a slightly increased audio from Rupert’s Mike please, as right now you have a pretty much Complete disappearance of audio from your Mike ? Note, with wired earbuds plugged into a Tablet computer, I can up the volume enough , but the screen isn’t big enough for me to see the details of what you are showing. Given the number of hearing impaired people around - a heck of a lot - hopefully this is of help to others, as well as a benefit for your Channel ? Hoping you all had a great Christmas, and wishing you a very Happy New Year. Bob. 🤔🌟🌟🌟👍
I live in the Pacific Northwest where you'll find large boulders deposited across the landscape that originated up in Canada. Referred to as "erratics", glaciers picked up these boulders during the ice age and deposited them hundreds of miles away. What we do know is that Neolithic people have been building megalithic monuments for many thousands of years prior to the construction of Stonehenge and that they had developed means of transporting and erecting large stones for their purposes. But I can't help but think that thousands of years ago, Neolithic builders would have had easy access to these erratics that were deposited in the open for their building purposes. The Altar Stone may well have come from Scotland as chemical analysis suggests. We don't know how it was transported.
You're onto something. It's possible that they original inhabitants came across it and said, "Wow, this stone is very different. It must be special so let's use it!" Also, if it was brought down by people then I have to wonder if the idea of "unity" could really be a token of subjugation. In the glacial case, I can understand why mainstream media would think that's "uninteresting" for their purposes.
Not on Salisbury plain. We have plenty of erratics in the Northern counties but not this far south. There has even been some thought given to the so called altar stone having been brought south as an erratic but it appears that the ice sheets in the Orkneys were moving toward the East, Not the south west. Neolithic people had been moving large boulders around the landscape to make monuments, like long barrows, for at least 1000 years before Stonehenge so had lots of practice.
@@cuteswanno nothing to do with mmm. Just that the ice sheets never got that far south over Britain. There was ice and frost of course but not ice sheets. I love glaciation. Lived on the Fylde Coast of lancashire and could look north and see the anticline of the south lakes looking just like the text book diagram.
i do believe that this was a point of discussion at the time of the announcement of the alter stone's origin. my understanding is that it was dismissed as a possible explanation for its transport.
Are the writers of that article aware that there were ice ages? here in the Netherlands gigantic boulders were used to build neolithic graves, over 40 of them originally? Test these boulders , without knowing we had Ice ages, and you must conclude they imported the enormous boulders from Norway and Sweden... The cap- stones fro the "Hunnebedden", Neolithic long graves, are of the same size as that "alter-stone" My theory...The Ice transported some of these stones south..
The Sarsen stones that make up the largest stones of Stonehenge are the remains of glaciation. The chance of only one stone, the alter stone, coming from Scotland is pretty slim to nil.
This brings to mind the difference of meaning in 'simple' and 'simplistic'. Rather than leaving options open, some people seem to need a stripped-down, easy, answer lacking in nuance or character.
Thank you for bringing up the difference between simple and simplistic. I have noticed recently that there are many people using these words interchangeably, as if simplistic is just a fancier way of saying simple. It has become one of my pet peeves.
I recall hearing, a little while ago, another 'suggestion' that the whole concept of stone circles spread south to Stonehenge etc from the Orkneys. Whether or not that was so, there seems to have been far more mobility of both people and ideas than we sometimes are prepared to acknowledge.
As far as I can see, the only reason people need to build impressive stuff is that it impresses other people -- as in the "look what I can do" class of power displays. People still do that sort of thing for exactly the same reason. It attracts attention. No further motive is needed to explain any of all the crazy stuff people have done throughout the historic times, and still do.
I agree BUT ... :) Why do countries, leaders, of today want to impress people. I would argue its usually to demonstrate economic power, political power, authority over the populace etc. In other words they want to show that, they are in charge and intend to stay that way, anybody who thinks differently is in for a fight with someone who is capable of defending.
The scale of Stonehenge implies it had a relevance to a very large population over a large area over a long period of time. I am inclined to think those who built it did indeed have social unification in mind - although we will never know how much unity they achieved. Basically, mankind changes little because material needs are driven primarily by geography and other little-changing material criteria. It's certainly odd that Stonehenge is so close to the heartlands of Wessex that tried (and eventually succeeded) in doing that very same thing.
Thoroughly enjoyable and well reasoned debate, as always. Just wish I didn't have to sit 20 cm away from the computer to be able to hear you guys... I've said it before and I'll say it again: please, for the love of god, produce your videos with higher volume audio! I'm subscribed to several channels and yours is the ONLY one I can't listen to while cooking, eating or washing up. There are some of your videos that I haven't been able to complete watching because I've had to switch to something I can hear, and no, I am not hard of hearing.
@@malcrussell5292no, she's right. I have to crank the sound up all the way to hear them, and then get blasted by the ads. Other channels I hear fine at a much lower volume.
Obviously it was a gift from the refugees from Atlantis who moved it there with the help of their alien friends. Sheesh. To make a leap from where the stones come from to a political union when we know virtually nothing concrete about the people and cultures at the time is, at best, a "headline grabber". Throw enough theories at the wall and see which sticks.
Thank you. I like your critical approach towards this preliminary article, that ‘no one’ has read yet. I know you are not grumpy, as you like to laugh. It is the right approach. The people making headlines are not the writers of these press articles. They are always screaming and they don’t know much. (Once I saw an ‘abri’ or rockshelter was translated as ‘bus stop shelter’, which are also called abri.) so I hope the scientific article has more arguments about the dates etc. The idea of a monument with the still visible part coming from different parts of the British island being a symbol of unity is not something unimaginable. Earlier I hinted at the recumbent stone circles as possible background of the Altar stone. I’m glad I’m not the only one. Their dating started about 3000 BCE, was what I read. The only thing that worries me a bit, is that if or when Scotland got its independence back, they could claim the Altar stone, like a sort of Elgin marbles.
It might be an idea to have Mike Parker-Pierson on to explain what he actually said as opposed to what the media say he said. They may not be identical. As to the idea of stones from Wales and Scotland being taken down to Wiltshire to 'unify the island' I say nonsense. There was no Wales or Scotland or England at this time, there were small scattered communities. If you want to unite the island where are the stones from what we now call Cumbria, or the Pennines, or Cornwall?
The framing of Stonehenge 'uniting Britain' against a 'foreign' invasion is also wildly anachronistic. This is thousands of years before we even had the idea of nation states. Britain was an island with lots of different people living on it. We have little idea how widely they shared languages, belief systems or forms of political organisation. They had certain aspects of their material culture in common, but they also shared that with the people living in Northern France at the time. Saying it was intended as some kind of proto-national symbol may appeal to tabloid newspaper readers, but it's imposing a modern mindset onto neolithic people, which is just absurd. For all we know the people who built Stonehenge may have felt greater kinship with the Beaker people than they did the Orcadians. Maybe they attacked the Orcadians and the Welsh and nicked their magic rocks to try to impress the Beaker people so they'd tell them how to make metal. That honestly makes more sense than assuming that a bunch of neolithic tribes had some kind of premonition that in 4000 year's time the island they lived on would have been turned into an organised political unit.
Agree…..I doubt they were even aware that they lived on an island! They would not be “holidaying up north”, they’d be focused on farming and developing their small local areas (in my opinion) But map writing or trying to geographically locate themselves and the length and breadth of their land, I doubt that was top on their list of priorities. This imposition of modern social norms and ideas upon a people we know almost nothing about, should be taken with a pinch of salt and should be heavily debated against before historians begin to take this narrative on board as factual…..hopefully not
I have just watched the beginning of the video, but my initial reaction (as a retired Swedish archaeologist) was that the stone orginating from Scotland could just be a glacial erratic.
Stonehenge is the link to the biggest archeological mystery of all. I look forward to one day hopefully chatting with you two honourable gentlemen about it, soon as I have my own channel set up 😬🤞🏻 This absolutely fits a narrative I've been working on for years, so exciting 🎉
Here in Aberdeenshire I am surrounded by stone circles some as you mention are recumbent, plus the huge centre of population around Tap O Noth… Plus of course the inhabitants of Orkney, So a connection to the stone henge builders is no surprise….
It seems unlikely to me that people of any age would build a structure on the scale of Stonehenge to have people no, or hardly ant people visit it. Why would they?
If my guess is as good as yours, then it is that the people around Stonehenge would be unlikely to make a distinction between "foreigners" from way north in Scotland and those from way east in mainland Europe and would have no concept of a united Island.
So these six Scottish farmers from the north of Scotland who wanted to unite with their fellow farmers down south decided to bring them an alter stone as a gift but on their arrival the were murdered upon the very stone they had carried for six days and their livestock take from them but ; one man who witnessed the terrible deed made it his life's dream to find the people from where the Scottish farmers came from and after many year and many adventures he found them . He told them what had happened to the Six Farmers and from that Day onwards the Scottish people kept their distance from those down south !
Well, I know some people don't believe in bluestones coming down to the south, but actually they've even found Devensian giant erratics offshore... Virtually all the reconstructed ice streams surrounding the area point at Stonhenge. To me it would be way way more interesting to imagine the original structure of the monument. I know I risk of sounding dismissive, but it's so likely that they've picked stones that were all around them - even if not exactly were they are now - and didn't need to be traced back to north.
Maybe visitors came bearing gifts. A project like Stonehenge being undoubtedly well known to those in the region even a significant distance away. I can imagine there might have been some prestige in having a stone from your region included in the sight. I would love to read the original article. It seems to me the authors may have been on to something.
From medieval times the stones were called the Giants Dance. Perhaps an ancient folk memory that predates English. Heul means sun in Welsh... The Heel stone. Giant is Cawr or Gawr and Dance is Corelw. OK. Given the many soft mutations and different meanings in this ancient tongue...... Gwawn means Dawn and awr, see above means hour or time. Cor, means round or circle , and college ,choir. Gorel means aperture. So, the oldest known name for the stones, Gorel Gwawr, means Aperture of the dawn, college or circle of time. Does what it says on the tin.
Thanks for your reply. Strangely enough, this also works for Gobekli Tepe. Type.... Tep is projecting rock, ledge or shelf, and PE is causitive, doing something. By breaking Gobekli down using the corresponding Welsh......For example, lle, lli and llu, and so on with the rest of the word...... Gob, Cob means mound and Co is roundness. Be or Pe means agent which s causitive. Lle or Lu is light, sun or moon. Llu is flux or stream, indicating the heavenly bodies. So, Gobekli means Circular Mound Monitoring the Sun Moon and Stars, and as explained, Tep Pe, is a causitive projecting rock. It all fits much better than the Pot Belly Hill translation. This is not my work. For a far better explanation look up Hugh Evans , Origin of the Zodiac, Origin of Time and The Origin of Numbers and also Star Maps of Gwynedd. The Welsh language is a living fossil. Heddwch, which means Peace in the ancient tongue.
Speaking with my Dowser hat on - yes I was very Sceptical too, until a borehole driller trained me, while, while finding then drilling into Springs to give me a Water supply on my Off Grid Smallholding and I think nothing about sites like Stonehenge was accidental, and not just the selection of Stones for their specific and unique properties - so why not old red Sandstone from more accessible Gower Peninsula and what is different about Scottish old red Sandstone ?and what accounts for the precise positioning of very specific stones with unique properties? I think there is a possibility that Combined with alignments with the Cosmos above, there could well be a reflected alignment with what is below ground at specific points to ensure desirable effects from the Stones at Ground level,,with potential instructions being given by what we call “Crop Circles” which can be far more complex than just Circles, and you don’t have to be growing Crops to see them frankly. Our ancestors were much more finely tuned to observing the significance of such things, than we presently seem to be. As a side note, when you get really good at Dowsing, it starts really taking it out of you, but the things you can find tend to be worth it. There is a vein of something really valuable on my neighbour’s land for example, and Trees on hilltops are really significant and to keep Springs flowing in a region, those trees have to be replaced when they die. Springs also have spiritual and other properties, which is why things like Pyramids, and maybe Stone Henge, etc, were built over them ? Best Wishes. Bob. 👍
A thought occurs to me, just because the altar stone came from N.Scotland, doesn't mean it came directly from there to Stonehenge. May have been moved to another location (let's say Wales for the sake of argument) hundreds of years before being moved to Stonehenge.
Love this review and sensible but amusing points made. I wonder if any Orkadian stone circles contain monoliths from the Presselis or Marlbourough downs? That may support this hypothesis as an exchange between peoples?
The good thing is boscombe down and porton down are relatively undisturbed in modern times and might hold a shed load of interesting things from the same time period. I know they have an archaeologist (s?) but wonder how much LiDAR and satellite temperature data (no doubt classified) has been used to survey the wider area?
Come on you two, just say it - it is main stream media and the general public 'dumming down', aided by researchers who are looking for a headline or at worse, click-bait headlines. So thank goodness for you both bringing some logic to it all. Thanks!
The Stonehenge sight was already a regarded sight before farmers gathered. The natural caulk features aligned with astronomical events. So, it was already chosen by the local people's believing it was an unnatural site. Then, later used to unite farmers and others after the stones were erected. Then other rituals were incorporated to further it's otherworldlyness. Like building woodhenge and the path to the nearest river for rituals. They built the old-school version of the county fair.
If fell asleep watching this video and then another came on about a beautiful Bronze Age ship. I also know you guys sometimes refer to Irving Finkel of the British Museum, the unparalleled expert on cuneiform. Did you see the video (I don’t remember what TH-cam channel it was on) about his translation of the directions to Noah for building the Ark. The project when on to actually build it as a giant caracal but only about a third of the size that Noah would have built. They had to reapply the bitchumen (sp?) in that case too. It’s a fun video.
I think I prefer the day dream . Of the altar stone being brought down the west side of the country (due to the terrain) because the stone has a ritual significance. Only for the 'Welsh' to point out we've got some stone that looks like that locally. So it's probably just as ' spiritual' ' as the one you've dragged down here. So .... we might as well use this stuff if it's just as magical and closer and... we need a fair few of them,
I heard that the stone that came from Scotland, was transported to "near" the Salsbury plain by a glacier, which would mean during the last Ice Age. Then around 3000BC it would have been moved by humans possibly with oxen to its final location. Moving all these stones from these different areas was important to someone. But then theses people were just out of the Stone Age.
Not in the last glaciation, but more likely in previous ones, tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. The low parts of Southern England were under a shallow sea for most of that time. (That was when the current limestone bedrock of the region was formed, as well as a couple of other sedimentary layers above it.) Much larger glaciers are known to have flowed south from massive ice caps over Scandinavia and the North Sea, and the thousands (millions?) of "foreign" stones scattered all over Southern England prove that rock-carrying glaciers and/or icebergs flowed over it.
@@helenamcginty4920 It is the other way around. The presence of all those "foreign" rocks in Southern England is strong evidence that glaciers and/or icebergs flowed that way from the original rock sources in Wales and Scotland. Not in the last glaciation, but in older ones, tens or hundreds of millions of years ago -- including all the time that Southern England was undewater.
I quite like the idea of the Orkney Stone having moved from one monument to another from Orkney to Stonehenge over hundreds of years. I dont accept it as definitive but find it reasonable.
I get the feeling that 'Temple' without a dedication is a euphemism for 'We have no idea'. Astronomically aligned stone circles are to be found all over the place but Stonehenge is the big one. I'm sure any structure that took that much effort to build had varied uses but I'm wondering if they were schools and maybe Stonehenge was a University.
Is the piece of Altar Stone which was recently tested (and found to have come from the Orcadian Basin) most definitely known to be genuinely from the Altar Stone at Stonehenge? I understand it was maybe a sample obtained from somewhere in the US where it had been stored for years....
"...a monument of unification ... celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos" lol I wonder if Professor Parker Pearson would apply such a blithe characterization to that far more recent episode of Scottish stone-snatching, i. e. from Scone
Yes, the claim about all the stones coming from all four corners of the UK did seem a bold claim. An untrue claim even. I used to live in Aude back in 1980, in a commune in a little village called Lapradelle-Puilaurens. Ah, memories.
Personally I'm convinced that the altar stone was the first item placed at StoneHenge. Also, last I knew they didn't have proof that it wasn't from the Shetland Islands, so maybe they figured out how to get a Shetland Pony powered boat to carry it to StoneHenge! 🙂
To my mind, at least part of the mystery of how the stones were transported and erected at Stonehenge, has been solved - by you guys! The distances, sizes and weights are different, but huge stones were cut, moved and erected at Göbekli Tepe and for thousands of years beforehand. So there was clearly the knowhow to create Stonehenge based on over 10,000 years of previous knowledge. And knowledge is easily transportable. So, throw in a few dozen Auroch cattle and the task seems far more manageable, surely?
Maybe they were more in tune with the structure of the rock or how different they are to local stones ie the northern stones are more holier than the local stones, and the Scottish being the masters of stone monuments at the time
The jump from big, renowned sanctuary, bringing pilgrims and offering from quite far away to political center willing and able to unify the entire island is way too big.
That's the thing, isn't it: it's a good story! Archaeology is fascinating because it is ground zero for the human need to craft a storied context for found objects: shows we can make a story out of nearly anything! It seems the story often reflects a contemporary perspective, or historical need projected back in time to help make sense of the present moment. Stonehenge is a fantastic canvas for story telling. Isn't history just the current story? Maybe the "truth" hardly matters. Of course the process, the scientific endeavor, will always give us new bits to weave in, and the Press will choose their own favorites. People will adopt the stories they like the best no matter what the official telling is. Debating the validity of versions will always be immensely satisfying and entertaining. Good stuff!! Thank you!!!
The press will interpret (and misinterpret) material that is published in the open literature. The science community (including the prehistory guys) cannot control the media. However, the press cannot really be blamed when the peer reviewed scientific papers do not clearly distinguish between scientific facts and speculation (even informed speculation). It would be desirable that peer reviewed publications contain a specific section where informed speculation is allowed and is labeled as what it is. The prehistory guys could play an important role in defining what this might mean and how it might be implemented.
Editors usually strip that stuff out of the research article, and if the authors are lucky, one of them (or some other big name in their field) is asked to provide an editorial piece speculating about its significance. Many journals don't have such editorials at all. The referees, who are competing academics, would probably object to the interpretation anyway.
The natives of Britain coming together to build a monument to resist the immigrants from Europe? I’m paraphrasing, but that sounded suspiciously biased and grasping at straws.
It is a well known fact, that the stones were positioned, by the Sabe People, of North America, whose massive size and strength, made the task, relatively easy. Their use of portals, enabled, the transportation of the stones, almost instantly, across vast distances. The structure, was covered, with a woven, thatch like, roof, preventing rain from touching the sacred ground beneath. Ventilation was provided by the gaps, between the perimeter stones, giving the entire structure, a light and airy atmosphere. All other explanations, as to the building, of the structure, are now considered outdated, and in some cases, downright silly.
Stonehenge and the many Woodhenges from the same time period, were probably time pieces, to make sure people knew when to harvest and sow their crops, nothing more can be said about it, they did not leave behind anything in writing... In Egypt and probably Malta, the Star Sirius played the same role..In Egypt people could write...
PPS.Someone mentioned Atlantis ? That Global Empire had many names around the World, and my Tribal Ancestors were part of it, hence that part of the Indus Valley Civilisation’s spread West, was called the Atlan, later Allan, or when it split off again, the MacAllan Clan in Scotland. The First King of Sumeria, and the First King of Egypt, were the Same Indus Valley Emperor, of that Trading Enpire, which was peaceful and Cooperative until the Bastard Psychopaths turned up again and turned into a bunch of Warmongering Slavers and Cannibals, which the World still has a problem with. Thankfully the really Ancient Greeks allied especially with the Maltese and others, beat the living Crap out of them in to Commenorate that victory, the British Allies gave an annual Tribute as a memorial to Malta and Greece in the form of gold coinage, a hoard of which was discovered on the Religious Centre that was Anglesey, though the coins were minted in what today is called England,or otherwise East Britain British Tribes, as the Anglo Saxon’Thing’ never actually happened, hence almost zero Anglo Saxon DNA in Britain, other than in two tiny pockets close to Brighton - which likely originated from enslaved Camp followers, after King Arthur 2nd Slaughtered there Army on what is today the North Coast of France, as they were poised to invade across the Channel. Seems what we call “Anglo Saxon” Is really the New Styles and Fashions in Clothes, jewellery, armour and weapons after the fall of the Western Roman Enpire, and the People in the East of England who were there to benefit from this new trade, didn’t originate on the Continent at all, but according to the DNA evidence from Cemeteries of the time,,almost all had moved there from the West of Britain, and into the Thriving widespread high population settlements that existed then. Those Dark Ages don’t appear to have been very “Dark” at all really. Bob.🤔
I was waiting for Mike Parker Pearson to pop up. And hey presto! He's lead author. I like Mr Parker Pearson. He tends to think outside the box. In fact I dont think hes even ever within 10 miles of the box. But I do wonder if his bubbling enthusiasm for his novel ideas sometimes detracts from what he has to say. Right. Just check the dinner cooking in the kitchen and back to the video.....
Coming up with lots of new ideas is no bad thing. It's inevitable that many, possibly most of them will turn out to be wrong. But if you keep your mouth shut you will never be right.
The Media are quite awful these days! There's a good sweeping statement for you! It's not as if they even define SCIENCE! And, for sure, Archeologists, per se are not scientists. MSM would do better to refer to such as Academics, Researchers, Archeologists, Anthropologists, etc - but it's too hard, so resort to SCIENTISTS as a catch-all to lend credence to their "newsworthy' proclamations... If this information had come to light pre-War, I don't think you'd see the spin being worked into the narrative. I think peoples moved about more than has been commonly assumed, but that doesn't mean Britain was a harmonious Love Boat adrift in the North Sea! People would have traded - after all England wasn't called a nation of shopkeepers for naught - I'll bet even in Neolithic times, some people had an eye for the exotic - certainly doesn't mean Stonehenge was a melting pot of peoples & Ideas. I think it's well accepted, Britain was pretty tribal and they weren't always the best of mates! In this fast-paced age, it might be more helpful if we thought about distance in Time - time to walk, time to herd, time to drove, maybe time to run a message between fixed points - people get confused between Ks & miles - and walking 5-miles along a well worn mainly level trail with just a knapsack is quite different from trying to trek 5-miles, with a 25-ton chunk of granite over mountain & mire. Even in early Medieval times it was easier to travel by sea, say from Holy Island up & down the Northumbria coast, than it was to do it over land...So not only was distance & time a factor, but terrain and tribes - no one ever seems to mention them! I don't think it's straight-forward looking back on earlier times through our modern prism. Interesting discourse, Thank you!
Good points near the end regarding the use/misuse of language. Perhaps the press should stick to good old-fashioned journalese and just say 'boffins'. 😆
The narrative of all the prehistoric peoples coming together for Stonehenge can be used to reinforce the notion of a United Kingdom. But history shows that humans are not that united. We are much more comfortable with much smaller tribal groups around us. We don't mind a loose confederation for safety. We do love self-rule of our own tribes. Cheers
@@drew2324 As near as I can tell. In my 71 years, people like the convivence of the city life and they still can feel tribal within the neighborhoods or jobs or community affiliations they make. City life offers more opportunities for someone than small town life does. Just income alone brings so much into each life. Cheers
They disgust me, as a Brit my heart goes out to those who lost everything. The handbag carrier knows better yet there he is with her using such a sad situation to their advantage😡
Who's to say the stones weren't raided from other people's stone circles as a means of asserting conquest and dominance a la Stone of Scone, and that the feasting wasn't some sort of display of submission and tribute payment? Also, much easier to take a stone already chiseled into shape than to do it yourself.
They know where the Sarsens came from. Mike Parker Pearson thought he had found evidence for a Stone Circle at Presseli and thought the circle had been transplanted but later research, with which Parker Pearson concurs, has shown this not to have been so. Also that there was more than one quarry in the Welsh hills.
Depressing but that seems more likely than a unifying action of cooperation or gifts. Stealing your enemy's stone or imposing one of yours on them could bring prestige to a ruler.
I can't help finding the idea of "political unification" at that time very implausible. What on earth would they have needed it for? I don't think there would have been much gain from it, at that time - not even in taxes (much to difficult to enforce?). I would need some more evidence, quite a bit of it, to believe a story like that one. To me, it's mostly conjecture and maybe wishful thinking…
Stonehenge is one of the important locations on earth-grid of alignments . Together with Glastonbury Tor, Silbury Hill and many others structures like hillforts and stone circles .
It's baffling how they come to these conclusions and go for a hypothesis without the knowledge of other fields, for example that cattle thing, glaring holes when they don't think through how you would do these things yourself in those times. I think that of course these things are political too when people gather there, like it's some kind of new thought which just came up now in these studies. Of course as many here have said that the problem might be the media exaggerating things, but sometimes it just feels that some archeologist want their name on the list of other stonehenge researchers and jump into conclusions, to fill the article quota of the year. Or then it's problem of communicating these things properly.
I believe these people knew how to tune into the earths frequencies. There ancestor Spirit. The high metal content of the blue stones from Wales acted like an antenna. That's why they were chosen Just like we tune into a radio today using a metal antenna. We cant see radio waves but we know they are there. The earth also has these radio waves. These people knew how to tune in by listening to there minds a skill we have lost due to the dogma of modern religions.
So many papers from so many fields suffer from this sexed up phenomenon. Academics chasing citations, the measure of academic clout, is the cause. The effect is to add to the growing distrust of the Academy in general.
Why do people create so much fiction? No one knows why the stones are there, or what was there purpose. Keep with the science, please. How much actual fact, can be determined on the ground? That will be the sum total of knowledge about the subject.
Would a national pilgrimage site have a politically unifying effect? In our times, Muslims are expected to visit Mecca once in their lives if they can manage it (i.e. are rich enough). That probably does unify the Muslim community, but it does not give the custodians of the holy sites as much political clout as their oil reserves do. To a lesser extent Catholics go to Rome, or make pilgrimages to Lourdes, Santiago da Compostella, and many other places. I don't think that unifies Europe politically, though it may have a cultural effect, like the Hindu and Buddhist sites in Asia do.
Nice work. I think I will put my hypothesis here as your post will make a nice lead in. My hypothesis is (as has been since the Scottish origin of the stone was demonstrated) that there was a very important site in Scotland that everybody of that culture knew about and possibly made pilgrimage to. At some stage the people in the Stonehenge area become the richest most powerful people in the country. As a demonstration of that power they do something that lets everybody know how powerful and important they are. They take the altar stone from the most well known site in Scotland (a holy stone if you will) and use it in Stonehenge. Now there can be no arguments about who has the power. For example the religious power cant say "well OK you have the money but you dont have the religion", because, they do. I guess you could call it unifying but I think of it more as a way of taking religious power away from Scotland and securing it in your own territory. Basically just solidifying your own rule in your own part of the world.
@@Reginaldesq An example of just that closer to our own time is the 19th century Englishmen who seized religious and cultural artefacts from all over the world to put them on public display in the British Museum. Other countries did that too. They were not placed in a cathedral because we had largely stopped believing in that mumbo jumbo and the nation state had become the object of worship.
@@Reginaldesq If we regard that stone as "property," there are at least three ways we could imagine it being moved from one community to another: gift, trade or theft. Some societies, such as ours, glorify the last as "armed robbery," the thing that warriors do.
@@faithlesshound5621 Yes, those are possible options. Might have been political also. So the 2IC of the religious order is offered the IC position for sanctifying the relocation.
Accepting history is like believing that you are the only one feeding your cat.
Brilliant, reminds me of the time I saw my cat sunbathing in my neighbours window😂
@Daragh-x3d I'm sure you went out to get the better cat snacks as well lol
4:20 Hmmm, so sort of "bring your own stone", perhaps? 🤔
I like it.😁
Hah, bring your own stone and 420
Gobleke tepe was not buried, its just what happens when you leave the sweeping for so long.
Michael, thanks for parsing out the ways information is presented by the press. Nowadays there are sooo many outlets for “press releases” that compete to entertain, it is impossible to keep up or stay ahead of some outlandish, illogical claims. That is one very good reason that I LOVED you & Rupert’s excellent production, Standing with Stones. It provided practical-what I think of as realistic-visualizations of past times-times without iron, steel, plastic, absorbent diapers-but with people whose days were full with coping-feeding families, keeping warm & dry & clothed. I still think rituals came only later, with larger, more crowded populations and in climates more amenable to sitting when starving (and hoping for gods in the sky).
My feeling is that belief systems, and the rituals that are often associated with such beliefs, were (and still are in most societies) an *active* way of coping with all the difficulties and vicissitudes associated with just 'coping' and having to deal with the constant attempt to survive in an unforgiving environment with all its attendant difficulties. If you need all the help you can get, then why not ask the Sun, for example, to be on your side? I suspect the sceptic and the naysayer would not be welcome in such a society.
@ No, it’s better to keep making sewing awls and tree-chopping axes, while burning logs from trees for warmth and trying to figure out how to have a fairly fat mammal available for slaughter in March (spring equinox) in the northern hemisphere. By the way, the baby is wet but has to be dried and warmed, and oh my, fed. And another little kid is growing and hungry and cold. Our ancestors survived , not because they imagined something in the sky would somehow help them-they figured out themselves how to warm, catch, tame, slaughter, sew, grow, harvest and cook. The only time people have to demand payment (sacrifice) for things like prayer /ritual is when there are repeated times of first plentiful crops, then widespread hunger-as in drought. Did that happen in Britain? The winter solstice in the north, though, is a welcome marker of time that signals more cold that will require care, but will end.
@@caroletomlinson5480 You may well be right, but I doubt they had your 21st Century rationalism to rely upon. On the other hand, perhaps they could be both practical and have a belief in the supernatural at the same time. Anthropology teaches us that has almost always been the way in most human societies in all places and at all times.
Hi Guys. I love the Channel, but have a personal request that may help other fans with hearing difficulties as well, and is worth noting as until recently, as well as being stone deaf I was also legally blind as well, so became reliant on a large screen TV as a Monitor as well. On a very positive note, when I was in intensive Care, I got pumped with such a large range of antibiotics etc, plus for the first time in over 30 years started being given the actual medicines I needed, both my vision and hearing have started coming back, and hearing is almost there for the TV Monitor, but I have to make sure that the Volume isn’t high enough to annoy the Neighbours.So the issue, Audio from Rupert’s Mike is almost there, but Michael, could you please increase the Mike Gain and adjust the Tone to match a slightly increased audio from Rupert’s Mike please, as right now you have a pretty much Complete disappearance of audio from your Mike ? Note, with wired earbuds plugged into a Tablet computer, I can up the volume enough , but the screen isn’t big enough for me to see the details of what you are showing. Given the number of hearing impaired people around - a heck of a lot - hopefully this is of help to others, as well as a benefit for your Channel ? Hoping you all had a great Christmas, and wishing you a very Happy New Year. Bob. 🤔🌟🌟🌟👍
I live in the Pacific Northwest where you'll find large boulders deposited across the landscape that originated up in Canada. Referred to as "erratics", glaciers picked up these boulders during the ice age and deposited them hundreds of miles away. What we do know is that Neolithic people have been building megalithic monuments for many thousands of years prior to the construction of Stonehenge and that they had developed means of transporting and erecting large stones for their purposes. But I can't help but think that thousands of years ago, Neolithic builders would have had easy access to these erratics that were deposited in the open for their building purposes. The Altar Stone may well have come from Scotland as chemical analysis suggests. We don't know how it was transported.
You're onto something. It's possible that they original inhabitants came across it and said, "Wow, this stone is very different. It must be special so let's use it!" Also, if it was brought down by people then I have to wonder if the idea of "unity" could really be a token of subjugation. In the glacial case, I can understand why mainstream media would think that's "uninteresting" for their purposes.
@@cuteswan I don't claim to know anything but sometimes the simplest explanation is the best.
Not on Salisbury plain. We have plenty of erratics in the Northern counties but not this far south.
There has even been some thought given to the so called altar stone having been brought south as an erratic but it appears that the ice sheets in the Orkneys were moving toward the East, Not the south west.
Neolithic people had been moving large boulders around the landscape to make monuments, like long barrows, for at least 1000 years before Stonehenge so had lots of practice.
@@cuteswanno nothing to do with mmm. Just that the ice sheets never got that far south over Britain. There was ice and frost of course but not ice sheets.
I love glaciation. Lived on the Fylde Coast of lancashire and could look north and see the anticline of the south lakes looking just like the text book diagram.
i do believe that this was a point of discussion at the time of the announcement
of the alter stone's origin.
my understanding is that it was dismissed as a possible explanation for its transport.
Are the writers of that article aware that there were ice ages? here in the Netherlands gigantic boulders were used to build neolithic graves, over 40 of them originally? Test these boulders , without knowing we had Ice ages, and you must conclude they imported the enormous boulders from Norway and Sweden... The cap- stones fro the "Hunnebedden", Neolithic long graves, are of the same size as that "alter-stone" My theory...The Ice transported some of these stones south..
Helemaal mee eens!
Yes I concur.
The Sarsen stones that make up the largest stones of Stonehenge are the remains of glaciation. The chance of only one stone, the alter stone, coming from Scotland is pretty slim to nil.
We don't have any signs of that, which is why that theory hasn't been talked about. We have signs of quarrying.
This brings to mind the difference of meaning in 'simple' and 'simplistic'. Rather than leaving options open, some people seem to need a stripped-down, easy, answer lacking in nuance or character.
Thank you for bringing up the difference between simple and simplistic. I have noticed recently that there are many people using these words interchangeably, as if simplistic is just a fancier way of saying simple. It has become one of my pet peeves.
I recall hearing, a little while ago, another 'suggestion' that the whole concept of stone circles spread south to Stonehenge etc from the Orkneys. Whether or not that was so, there seems to have been far more mobility of both people and ideas than we sometimes are prepared to acknowledge.
Have a look at the older stone circles
As far as I can see, the only reason people need to build impressive stuff is that it impresses other people -- as in the "look what I can do" class of power displays. People still do that sort of thing for exactly the same reason. It attracts attention. No further motive is needed to explain any of all the crazy stuff people have done throughout the historic times, and still do.
I agree BUT ... :) Why do countries, leaders, of today want to impress people. I would argue its usually to demonstrate economic power, political power, authority over the populace etc. In other words they want to show that, they are in charge and intend to stay that way, anybody who thinks differently is in for a fight with someone who is capable of defending.
Or a big sports arena to entertain people.
@@nomadpurple6154 The upright pillars with top lintel do look like soccer goals. Coincidence?
Speculating on the motives of the ancients is just that
Until it isn’t
Great to hear about the latest research so we can make our own interpretation without the click bait.
The scale of Stonehenge implies it had a relevance to a very large population over a large area over a long period of time. I am inclined to think those who built it did indeed have social unification in mind - although we will never know how much unity they achieved. Basically, mankind changes little because material needs are driven primarily by geography and other little-changing material criteria. It's certainly odd that Stonehenge is so close to the heartlands of Wessex that tried (and eventually succeeded) in doing that very same thing.
Thoroughly enjoyable and well reasoned debate, as always. Just wish I didn't have to sit 20 cm away from the computer to be able to hear you guys... I've said it before and I'll say it again: please, for the love of god, produce your videos with higher volume audio! I'm subscribed to several channels and yours is the ONLY one I can't listen to while cooking, eating or washing up. There are some of your videos that I haven't been able to complete watching because I've had to switch to something I can hear, and no, I am not hard of hearing.
Turn your hearing aid up , this may help 😅 who knows it may change your life 😂
@@malcrussell5292no, she's right. I have to crank the sound up all the way to hear them, and then get blasted by the ads. Other channels I hear fine at a much lower volume.
Volume is a tad low I agree.
I second this request.
It's far too loud for me..........I have to listen to it from way down the garden.
Publishing press releases ahead of the availability of the research paper is a huge problem in all academic fields.
I totally agree. Sadly these habit is increasing.
Obviously it was a gift from the refugees from Atlantis who moved it there with the help of their alien friends. Sheesh. To make a leap from where the stones come from to a political union when we know virtually nothing concrete about the people and cultures at the time is, at best, a "headline grabber". Throw enough theories at the wall and see which sticks.
Perfectly said. My thoughts as well. Thank you.
you forgot to mention the goat........ :)
They found a body there too. They obviously had human sacrifices…
How many more conclusions can we jump to?
Thank you. I like your critical approach towards this preliminary article, that ‘no one’ has read yet. I know you are not grumpy, as you like to laugh. It is the right approach. The people making headlines are not the writers of these press articles. They are always screaming and they don’t know much. (Once I saw an ‘abri’ or rockshelter was translated as ‘bus stop shelter’, which are also called abri.) so I hope the scientific article has more arguments about the dates etc. The idea of a monument with the still visible part coming from different parts of the British island being a symbol of unity is not something unimaginable. Earlier I hinted at the recumbent stone circles as possible background of the Altar stone. I’m glad I’m not the only one. Their dating started about 3000 BCE, was what I read.
The only thing that worries me a bit, is that if or when Scotland got its independence back, they could claim the Altar stone, like a sort of Elgin marbles.
@@ugetsu2093 Why assume there were sacrifices and not just someone important who helped build it, who was ceremoniously buried there?
It might be an idea to have Mike Parker-Pierson on to explain what he actually said as opposed to what the media say he said. They may not be identical. As to the idea of stones from Wales and Scotland being taken down to Wiltshire to 'unify the island' I say nonsense. There was no Wales or Scotland or England at this time, there were small scattered communities. If you want to unite the island where are the stones from what we now call Cumbria, or the Pennines, or Cornwall?
The framing of Stonehenge 'uniting Britain' against a 'foreign' invasion is also wildly anachronistic. This is thousands of years before we even had the idea of nation states. Britain was an island with lots of different people living on it. We have little idea how widely they shared languages, belief systems or forms of political organisation. They had certain aspects of their material culture in common, but they also shared that with the people living in Northern France at the time. Saying it was intended as some kind of proto-national symbol may appeal to tabloid newspaper readers, but it's imposing a modern mindset onto neolithic people, which is just absurd. For all we know the people who built Stonehenge may have felt greater kinship with the Beaker people than they did the Orcadians. Maybe they attacked the Orcadians and the Welsh and nicked their magic rocks to try to impress the Beaker people so they'd tell them how to make metal. That honestly makes more sense than assuming that a bunch of neolithic tribes had some kind of premonition that in 4000 year's time the island they lived on would have been turned into an organised political unit.
Agree…..I doubt they were even aware that they lived on an island! They would not be “holidaying up north”, they’d be focused on farming and developing their small local areas (in my opinion)
But map writing or trying to geographically locate themselves and the length and breadth of their land, I doubt that was top on their list of priorities.
This imposition of modern social norms and ideas upon a people we know almost nothing about, should be taken with a pinch of salt and should be heavily debated against before historians begin to take this narrative on board as factual…..hopefully not
I have just watched the beginning of the video, but my initial reaction (as a retired Swedish archaeologist) was that the stone orginating from Scotland could just be a glacial erratic.
I believe that has been discounted.
Stonehenge is the link to the biggest archeological mystery of all. I look forward to one day hopefully chatting with you two honourable gentlemen about it, soon as I have my own channel set up 😬🤞🏻 This absolutely fits a narrative I've been working on for years, so exciting 🎉
Here in Aberdeenshire I am surrounded by stone circles some as you mention are recumbent, plus the huge centre of population around Tap O Noth… Plus of course the inhabitants of Orkney, So a connection to the stone henge builders is no surprise….
It seems unlikely to me that people of any age would build a structure on the scale of Stonehenge to have people no, or hardly ant people visit it. Why would they?
If my guess is as good as yours, then it is that the people around Stonehenge would be unlikely to make a distinction between "foreigners" from way north in Scotland and those from way east in mainland Europe and would have no concept of a united Island.
So these six Scottish farmers from the north of Scotland who wanted to unite with their fellow farmers down south decided to bring them an alter stone as a gift but on their arrival the were murdered upon the very stone they had carried for six days and their livestock take from them but ; one man who witnessed the terrible deed made it his life's dream to find the people from where the Scottish farmers came from and after many year and many adventures he found them .
He told them what had happened to the Six Farmers and from that Day onwards the Scottish people kept their distance from those down south !
Well, I know some people don't believe in bluestones coming down to the south, but actually they've even found Devensian giant erratics offshore... Virtually all the reconstructed ice streams surrounding the area point at Stonhenge.
To me it would be way way more interesting to imagine the original structure of the monument. I know I risk of sounding dismissive, but it's so likely that they've picked stones that were all around them - even if not exactly were they are now - and didn't need to be traced back to north.
The sunrise and sunset alignments make sense if the observance was of the longest day and the longest night
Thanks, whenever I hear MPP's name I just chuckle to myself and raise my eyebrows
Got to love him.
Maybe visitors came bearing gifts. A project like Stonehenge being undoubtedly well known to those in the region even a significant distance away. I can imagine there might have been some prestige in having a stone from your region included in the sight. I would love to read the original article. It seems to me the authors may have been on to something.
From medieval times the stones were called the Giants Dance. Perhaps an ancient folk memory that predates English. Heul means sun in Welsh... The Heel stone. Giant is Cawr or Gawr and Dance is Corelw. OK. Given the many soft mutations and different meanings in this ancient tongue...... Gwawn means Dawn and awr, see above means hour or time. Cor, means round or circle , and college ,choir. Gorel means aperture. So, the oldest known name for the stones, Gorel Gwawr, means Aperture of the dawn, college or circle of time. Does what it says on the tin.
The people of Stonehenge didn't speak an indo european language. but I don't doubt your idea isn't a bad one.
Thanks for your reply. Strangely enough, this also works for Gobekli Tepe.
Type.... Tep is projecting rock, ledge or shelf, and PE is causitive, doing something. By breaking Gobekli down using the corresponding Welsh......For example, lle, lli and llu, and so on with the rest of the word...... Gob, Cob means mound and Co is roundness. Be or Pe means agent which s causitive. Lle or Lu is light, sun or moon. Llu is flux or stream, indicating the heavenly bodies. So, Gobekli means Circular Mound Monitoring the Sun Moon and Stars, and as explained, Tep Pe, is a causitive projecting rock.
It all fits much better than the Pot Belly Hill translation.
This is not my work. For a far better explanation look up Hugh Evans , Origin of the Zodiac, Origin of Time and The Origin of Numbers and also Star Maps of Gwynedd. The Welsh language is a living fossil. Heddwch, which means Peace in the ancient tongue.
The druid's gave a bad link🤣🤣🤣
What do you guys think of Geoffrey Drums work and his chemical analysis of ancient sites? Its a very interesting study, worthy of your time
Wow! Rupert's camera! Good job boys.
Speaking with my Dowser hat on - yes I was very Sceptical too, until a borehole driller trained me, while, while finding then drilling into Springs to give me a Water supply on my Off Grid Smallholding and I think nothing about sites like Stonehenge was accidental, and not just the selection of Stones for their specific and unique properties - so why not old red Sandstone from more accessible Gower Peninsula and what is different about Scottish old red Sandstone ?and what accounts for the precise positioning of very specific stones with unique properties? I think there is a possibility that Combined with alignments with the Cosmos above, there could well be a reflected alignment with what is below ground at specific points to ensure desirable effects from the Stones at Ground level,,with potential instructions being given by what we call “Crop Circles” which can be far more complex than just Circles, and you don’t have to be growing Crops to see them frankly. Our ancestors were much more finely tuned to observing the significance of such things, than we presently seem to be. As a side note, when you get really good at Dowsing, it starts really taking it out of you, but the things you can find tend to be worth it. There is a vein of something really valuable on my neighbour’s land for example, and Trees on hilltops are really significant and to keep Springs flowing in a region, those trees have to be replaced when they die. Springs also have spiritual and other properties, which is why things like Pyramids, and maybe Stone Henge, etc, were built over them ? Best Wishes. Bob. 👍
A thought occurs to me, just because the altar stone came from N.Scotland, doesn't mean it came directly from there to Stonehenge. May have been moved to another location (let's say Wales for the sake of argument) hundreds of years before being moved to Stonehenge.
Love this review and sensible but amusing points made.
I wonder if any Orkadian stone circles contain monoliths from the Presselis or Marlbourough downs? That may support this hypothesis as an exchange between peoples?
The good thing is boscombe down and porton down are relatively undisturbed in modern times and might hold a shed load of interesting things from the same time period. I know they have an archaeologist (s?) but wonder how much LiDAR and satellite temperature data (no doubt classified) has been used to survey the wider area?
Come on you two, just say it - it is main stream media and the general public 'dumming down', aided by researchers who are looking for a headline or at worse, click-bait headlines. So thank goodness for you both bringing some logic to it all. Thanks!
The Stonehenge sight was already a regarded sight before farmers gathered. The natural caulk features aligned with astronomical events. So, it was already chosen by the local people's believing it was an unnatural site. Then, later used to unite farmers and others after the stones were erected. Then other rituals were incorporated to further it's otherworldlyness. Like building woodhenge and the path to the nearest river for rituals. They built the old-school version of the county fair.
sight = site, and caulk = chalk? Is that what you meant?
You ask "what do you think"? I think, that was a pretty decent rant 🙂 Enjoyed that a lot thanks
As always, you guys are a hoot.🤩
"simple" is where things usually go straight off track.
If fell asleep watching this video and then another came on about a beautiful Bronze Age ship. I also know you guys sometimes refer to Irving Finkel of the British Museum, the unparalleled expert on cuneiform. Did you see the video (I don’t remember what TH-cam channel it was on) about his translation of the directions to Noah for building the Ark. The project when on to actually build it as a giant caracal but only about a third of the size that Noah would have built. They had to reapply the bitchumen (sp?) in that case too. It’s a fun video.
I think I prefer the day dream . Of the altar stone being brought down the west side of the country (due to the terrain) because the stone has a ritual significance. Only for the 'Welsh' to point out we've got some stone that looks like that locally. So it's probably just as ' spiritual' ' as the one you've dragged down here. So .... we might as well use this stuff if it's just as magical and closer and... we need a fair few of them,
I heard that the stone that came from Scotland, was transported to "near" the Salsbury plain by a glacier, which would mean during the last Ice Age. Then around 3000BC it would have been moved by humans possibly with oxen to its final location. Moving all these stones from these different areas was important to someone. But then theses people were just out of the Stone Age.
Brian John
I read that but it was a suggestion. Apparently the actual ice sheets moved in the wrong directions. So its a no go.
Not in the last glaciation, but more likely in previous ones, tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. The low parts of Southern England were under a shallow sea for most of that time. (That was when the current limestone bedrock of the region was formed, as well as a couple of other sedimentary layers above it.) Much larger glaciers are known to have flowed south from massive ice caps over Scandinavia and the North Sea, and the thousands (millions?) of "foreign" stones scattered all over Southern England prove that rock-carrying glaciers and/or icebergs flowed over it.
@@helenamcginty4920 It is the other way around. The presence of all those "foreign" rocks in Southern England is strong evidence that glaciers and/or icebergs flowed that way from the original rock sources in Wales and Scotland. Not in the last glaciation, but in older ones, tens or hundreds of millions of years ago -- including all the time that Southern England was undewater.
These people were IN the stone age. The last part of it.
I quite like the idea of the Orkney Stone having moved from one monument to another from Orkney to Stonehenge over hundreds of years.
I dont accept it as definitive but find it reasonable.
The Orkney settlement and monuments were deliberately abandoned at around 2500BC. Big clue.
I get the feeling that 'Temple' without a dedication is a euphemism for 'We have no idea'. Astronomically aligned stone circles are to be found all over the place but Stonehenge is the big one. I'm sure any structure that took that much effort to build had varied uses but I'm wondering if they were schools and maybe Stonehenge was a University.
I heartily agree with your first sentence…
Is the piece of Altar Stone which was recently tested (and found to have come from the Orcadian Basin) most definitely known to be genuinely from the Altar Stone at Stonehenge? I understand it was maybe a sample obtained from somewhere in the US where it had been stored for years....
Surely oxen rather than cows?
"...a monument of unification ... celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos" lol I wonder if Professor Parker Pearson would apply such a blithe characterization to that far more recent episode of Scottish stone-snatching, i. e. from Scone
All who wander are not lost…some are just looking 👀 for cool stones.
Humans Vs Cattle. Imagine trying to feed 1000 people for an extended period of time or you could use cattle and let them graze on the local grass.
Not to mention boats and rivers, perhaps ocean travel.
Yes, the claim about all the stones coming from all four corners of the UK did seem a bold claim. An untrue claim even. I used to live in Aude back in 1980, in a commune in a little village called Lapradelle-Puilaurens. Ah, memories.
Was there 'cattle' in 3kBCE, or did they deal with Aurock. Slightly different proposition .
There was.
Personally I'm convinced that the altar stone was the first item placed at StoneHenge. Also, last I knew they didn't have proof that it wasn't from the Shetland Islands, so maybe they figured out how to get a Shetland Pony powered boat to carry it to StoneHenge! 🙂
(If you had trouble reading that it was because my tongue was so firmly in my cheek!!!)
To my mind, at least part of the mystery of how the stones were transported and erected at Stonehenge, has been solved - by you guys! The distances, sizes and weights are different, but huge stones were cut, moved and erected at Göbekli Tepe and for thousands of years beforehand. So there was clearly the knowhow to create Stonehenge based on over 10,000 years of previous knowledge. And knowledge is easily transportable. So, throw in a few dozen Auroch cattle and the task seems far more manageable, surely?
Maybe they were more in tune with the structure of the rock or how different they are to local stones ie the northern stones are more holier than the local stones, and the Scottish being the masters of stone monuments at the time
The jump from big, renowned sanctuary, bringing pilgrims and offering from quite far away to political center willing and able to unify the entire island is way too big.
Sounds like a lot of British exceptionalism in the science paper and press release…
Here we stone again
That's the thing, isn't it: it's a good story! Archaeology is fascinating because it is ground zero for the human need to craft a storied context for found objects: shows we can make a story out of nearly anything! It seems the story often reflects a contemporary perspective, or historical need projected back in time to help make sense of the present moment. Stonehenge is a fantastic canvas for story telling. Isn't history just the current story? Maybe the "truth" hardly matters. Of course the process, the scientific endeavor, will always give us new bits to weave in, and the Press will choose their own favorites. People will adopt the stories they like the best no matter what the official telling is. Debating the validity of versions will always be immensely satisfying and entertaining. Good stuff!! Thank you!!!
Is it true that unusually large skulled bodies were excavated near stone henge?
The press will interpret (and misinterpret) material that is published in the open literature. The science community (including the prehistory guys) cannot control the media. However, the press cannot really be blamed when the peer reviewed scientific papers do not clearly distinguish between scientific facts and speculation (even informed speculation). It would be desirable that peer reviewed publications contain a specific section where informed speculation is allowed and is labeled as what it is. The prehistory guys could play an important role in defining what this might mean and how it might be implemented.
Editors usually strip that stuff out of the research article, and if the authors are lucky, one of them (or some other big name in their field) is asked to provide an editorial piece speculating about its significance. Many journals don't have such editorials at all. The referees, who are competing academics, would probably object to the interpretation anyway.
The natives of Britain coming together to build a monument to resist the immigrants from Europe? I’m paraphrasing, but that sounded suspiciously biased and grasping at straws.
would giant oryx have been involved in dragging the stones? its a nice thought anyway.
Wondering if the alter stone could have been a glacial erratic .picked up on the way from Wales .... just sayin'
Maybe it was built as a joint effort when the country and people used to be united?
It is a well known fact, that the stones were positioned, by the Sabe People, of North America, whose massive size and strength, made the task, relatively easy. Their use of portals, enabled, the transportation of the stones, almost instantly, across vast distances. The structure, was covered, with a woven, thatch like, roof, preventing rain from touching the sacred ground beneath. Ventilation was provided by the gaps, between the perimeter stones, giving the entire structure, a light and airy atmosphere. All other explanations, as to the building, of the structure, are now considered outdated, and in some cases, downright silly.
oh, for goodness' sake. Grow up - and learn some puncutation, too.
@@nightlyshift puncutation ?
@@nightlyshift PUNCUTATION ?
Stonehenge and the many Woodhenges from the same time period, were probably time pieces, to make sure people knew when to harvest and sow their crops, nothing more can be said about it, they did not leave behind anything in writing... In Egypt and probably Malta, the Star Sirius played the same role..In Egypt people could write...
what makes you think "nothing more can be said about it"???
We can only assume, we'll never truly know, but what have we lost as a species that we can't do today things the ancients did?
Every thing started in Scotland 😂🏴🧐👍
Good old Ritual Parker.
Do we know that the 'altar' stone was not originally standing upright?
PPS.Someone mentioned Atlantis ? That Global Empire had many names around the World, and my Tribal Ancestors were part of it, hence that part of the Indus Valley Civilisation’s spread West, was called the Atlan, later Allan, or when it split off again, the MacAllan Clan in Scotland. The First King of Sumeria, and the First King of Egypt, were the Same Indus Valley Emperor, of that Trading Enpire, which was peaceful and Cooperative until the Bastard Psychopaths turned up again and turned into a bunch of Warmongering Slavers and Cannibals, which the World still has a problem with. Thankfully the really Ancient Greeks allied especially with the Maltese and others, beat the living Crap out of them in to Commenorate that victory, the British Allies gave an annual Tribute as a memorial to Malta and Greece in the form of gold coinage, a hoard of which was discovered on the Religious Centre that was Anglesey, though the coins were minted in what today is called England,or otherwise East Britain British Tribes, as the Anglo Saxon’Thing’ never actually happened, hence almost zero Anglo Saxon DNA in Britain, other than in two tiny pockets close to Brighton - which likely originated from enslaved Camp followers, after King Arthur 2nd Slaughtered there Army on what is today the North Coast of France, as they were poised to invade across the Channel. Seems what we call “Anglo Saxon” Is really the New Styles and Fashions in Clothes, jewellery, armour and weapons after the fall of the Western Roman Enpire, and the People in the East of England who were there to benefit from this new trade, didn’t originate on the Continent at all, but according to the DNA evidence from Cemeteries of the time,,almost all had moved there from the West of Britain, and into the Thriving widespread high population settlements that existed then. Those Dark Ages don’t appear to have been very “Dark” at all really. Bob.🤔
It’d be funny if it turned out to be nothing more than an under cover cattle market and the “alter stone was just the auctioneers lecture.
I was waiting for Mike Parker Pearson to pop up. And hey presto! He's lead author. I like Mr Parker Pearson. He tends to think outside the box. In fact I dont think hes even ever within 10 miles of the box. But I do wonder if his bubbling enthusiasm for his novel ideas sometimes detracts from what he has to say.
Right. Just check the dinner cooking in the kitchen and back to the video.....
Coming up with lots of new ideas is no bad thing. It's inevitable that many, possibly most of them will turn out to be wrong. But if you keep your mouth shut you will never be right.
The Media are quite awful these days! There's a good sweeping statement for you! It's not as if they even define SCIENCE! And, for sure, Archeologists, per se are not scientists. MSM would do better to refer to such as Academics, Researchers, Archeologists, Anthropologists, etc - but it's too hard, so resort to SCIENTISTS as a catch-all to lend credence to their "newsworthy' proclamations... If this information had come to light pre-War, I don't think you'd see the spin being worked into the narrative.
I think peoples moved about more than has been commonly assumed, but that doesn't mean Britain was a harmonious Love Boat adrift in the North Sea! People would have traded - after all England wasn't called a nation of shopkeepers for naught - I'll bet even in Neolithic times, some people had an eye for the exotic - certainly doesn't mean Stonehenge was a melting pot of peoples & Ideas. I think it's well accepted, Britain was pretty tribal and they weren't always the best of mates!
In this fast-paced age, it might be more helpful if we thought about distance in Time - time to walk, time to herd, time to drove, maybe time to run a message between fixed points - people get confused between Ks & miles - and walking 5-miles along a well worn mainly level trail with just a knapsack is quite different from trying to trek 5-miles, with a 25-ton chunk of granite over mountain & mire. Even in early Medieval times it was easier to travel by sea, say from Holy Island up & down the Northumbria coast, than it was to do it over land...So not only was distance & time a factor, but terrain and tribes - no one ever seems to mention them!
I don't think it's straight-forward looking back on earlier times through our modern prism.
Interesting discourse, Thank you!
Is there any reason why we can't be wrong about the creation of the wheel?
Good points near the end regarding the use/misuse of language. Perhaps the press should stick to good old-fashioned journalese and just say 'boffins'. 😆
The trouble with Professor Parker Pearson is he is prone to flights of fantasy.
Been waiting for this gents
The narrative of all the prehistoric peoples coming together for Stonehenge can be used to reinforce the notion of a United Kingdom. But history shows that humans are not that united. We are much more comfortable with much smaller tribal groups around us. We don't mind a loose confederation for safety. We do love self-rule of our own tribes. Cheers
Why are so many ppl attracted to city life then ? Although I do agree with u that hierarchies were much more localised in the past.
@@drew2324 As near as I can tell. In my 71 years, people like the convivence of the city life and they still can feel tribal within the neighborhoods or jobs or community affiliations they make. City life offers more opportunities for someone than small town life does. Just income alone brings so much into each life. Cheers
I would argue that native Britons were well capable of adopting the fashion of beaker style pots and the extent of immigration was probably limited.
DNA tells a different story.
They disgust me, as a Brit my heart goes out to those who lost everything. The handbag carrier knows better yet there he is with her using such a sad situation to their advantage😡
Who's to say the stones weren't raided from other people's stone circles as a means of asserting conquest and dominance a la Stone of Scone, and that the feasting wasn't some sort of display of submission and tribute payment? Also, much easier to take a stone already chiseled into shape than to do it yourself.
They didnt chisel the stones. They hammered them. The work area at Stonehenge has been excavated. Its in the books.
They know where the Sarsens came from. Mike Parker Pearson thought he had found evidence for a Stone Circle at Presseli and thought the circle had been transplanted but later research, with which Parker Pearson concurs, has shown this not to have been so. Also that there was more than one quarry in the Welsh hills.
Thank you
I see your point, however I think it would be much harder to transport a stone from Scotland than to chisel some local stone yourself.
Depressing but that seems more likely than a unifying action of cooperation or gifts. Stealing your enemy's stone or imposing one of yours on them could bring prestige to a ruler.
Was it MPP who suggested that the blue stones came from an existing stone circle, a theory, now I believe discounted.
Oh, thats my hypothesis as well.
We WANT, we are desperate for Stonehenge (and the pyramids around the world and the barrows and and and) to mean what they would mean if we did them.
I can't help finding the idea of "political unification" at that time very implausible. What on earth would they have needed it for? I don't think there would have been much gain from it, at that time - not even in taxes (much to difficult to enforce?). I would need some more evidence, quite a bit of it, to believe a story like that one. To me, it's mostly conjecture and maybe wishful thinking…
Stonehenge is one of the important locations on earth-grid of alignments . Together with Glastonbury Tor, Silbury Hill and many others structures like hillforts and stone circles .
Do you have a primary source for that?
I think they just used stone henge for smoke breaks
So there would be stones from England in Scotland then?. Found any?.
It's baffling how they come to these conclusions and go for a hypothesis without the knowledge of other fields, for example that cattle thing, glaring holes when they don't think through how you would do these things yourself in those times. I think that of course these things are political too when people gather there, like it's some kind of new thought which just came up now in these studies. Of course as many here have said that the problem might be the media exaggerating things, but sometimes it just feels that some archeologist want their name on the list of other stonehenge researchers and jump into conclusions, to fill the article quota of the year. Or then it's problem of communicating these things properly.
a clickbate on stonehenge.. with not much soils to be built on 😂 thanks Stone-guys to set this straight yonder, cheerio rants
I believe these people knew how to tune into the earths frequencies. There ancestor Spirit. The high metal content of the blue stones from Wales acted like an antenna. That's why they were chosen Just like we tune into a radio today using a metal antenna. We cant see radio waves but we know they are there. The earth also has these radio waves. These people knew how to tune in by listening to there minds a skill we have lost due to the dogma of modern religions.
So many papers from so many fields suffer from this sexed up phenomenon. Academics chasing citations, the measure of academic clout, is the cause. The effect is to add to the growing distrust of the Academy in general.
Holy emphysema, Batman !
Its a calendar of sun shadows !!?
Why do people create so much fiction? No one knows why the stones are there, or what was there purpose. Keep with the science, please. How much actual fact, can be determined on the ground? That will be the sum total of knowledge about the subject.
Ir a spoil of war? Just a thought.
Would a national pilgrimage site have a politically unifying effect? In our times, Muslims are expected to visit Mecca once in their lives if they can manage it (i.e. are rich enough). That probably does unify the Muslim community, but it does not give the custodians of the holy sites as much political clout as their oil reserves do. To a lesser extent Catholics go to Rome, or make pilgrimages to Lourdes, Santiago da Compostella, and many other places. I don't think that unifies Europe politically, though it may have a cultural effect, like the Hindu and Buddhist sites in Asia do.
Nice work. I think I will put my hypothesis here as your post will make a nice lead in. My hypothesis is (as has been since the Scottish origin of the stone was demonstrated) that there was a very important site in Scotland that everybody of that culture knew about and possibly made pilgrimage to. At some stage the people in the Stonehenge area become the richest most powerful people in the country. As a demonstration of that power they do something that lets everybody know how powerful and important they are. They take the altar stone from the most well known site in Scotland (a holy stone if you will) and use it in Stonehenge. Now there can be no arguments about who has the power. For example the religious power cant say "well OK you have the money but you dont have the religion", because, they do. I guess you could call it unifying but I think of it more as a way of taking religious power away from Scotland and securing it in your own territory. Basically just solidifying your own rule in your own part of the world.
@@Reginaldesq An example of just that closer to our own time is the 19th century Englishmen who seized religious and cultural artefacts from all over the world to put them on public display in the British Museum. Other countries did that too. They were not placed in a cathedral because we had largely stopped believing in that mumbo jumbo and the nation state had become the object of worship.
@@faithlesshound5621 interesting. I cant agree with your last couple of points there.
@@Reginaldesq If we regard that stone as "property," there are at least three ways we could imagine it being moved from one community to another: gift, trade or theft. Some societies, such as ours, glorify the last as "armed robbery," the thing that warriors do.
@@faithlesshound5621 Yes, those are possible options. Might have been political also. So the 2IC of the religious order is offered the IC position for sanctifying the relocation.