Showing posts with label wiltshire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wiltshire. Show all posts

New Light On Stonehenge

New Light On Stonehenge
The druids arrived around 4 p.m. Under a warm afternoon sun, the group of eight walked slowly to the beat of a single drum, from the visitors entrance toward the looming, majestic stone monument. With the pounding of the drum growing louder, the retinue approached the outer circle of massive stone trilithons-each made up of two huge pillars capped by a stone lintel-and passed through them to the inner circle. Here they were greeted by Timothy Darvill, now 51, professor of archaeology at Bournemouth University, and Gfrey Wainwright, now 72, president of the Society of Antiquaries of London.For two weeks, the pair had been leading the first excavation in 44 years of the inner circle of Stonehenge-the best-known and most mysterious megalithic monument in the world. Now it was time to refill the pit they had dug. The Druids had come to offer their blessings, as they had done 14 days earlier before the first shovel went into the ground. "At the beginning we warned the spirits of the land that this would be happening and not to feel invaded," said one of their number who gave his name only as Frank. "Now we're offering a big thank-you to the ancestors who we asked to give up knowledge to our generation."The Druids tossed seven grains of wheat into the pit, one for each continent, and offered a prayer to provide food for the world's hungry. The gesture seemed fitting, given the nature of the excavation; while other experts have speculated that Stonehenge was a prehistoric observatory or a royal burial ground, Darvill and Wainwright are intent on proving it was primarily a sacred place of healing, where the sick came to be cured and the injured and infirm restored.Darvill and Wainwright's theory rests, almost literally, on bluestones-unexceptional igneous rocks, such as dolerite and rhyolite-so called because they take on a bluish hue when wet or cut. Over the centuries, legends have endowed these stones with mystical properties. The British poet Layamon, inspired by the folkloric accounts of 12th-century cleric Gfrey of Monmouth, wrote in A.D. 1215:The stones are great; And magic power they have; Men that are sick; Fare to that stone; And they wash that stone; And with that water bathe away their sickness. We now know that Stonehenge was in the making for at least 400 years. The first phase, built around 3000 B.C., was a simple circular earthwork enclosure similar to many "henges" (sacred enclosures typically comprising a circular bank and a ditch) found throughout the British Isles. Around 2800 B.C., timber posts were erected within the enclosure. Again, such posts are not unusual-Woodhenge, for example, which once consisted of tall posts arranged in a series of six concentric oval rings, lies only a few miles to the east.Archaeologists have long believed that Stonehenge began to take on its modern form two centuries later, when large stones were brought to the site in the third and final stage of its construction. The first to be put in place were the 80 or so bluestones, which were arranged in a double circle with an entrance facing northeast. "Their arrival is when Stonehenge was transformed from a quite ordinary and typical monument into something unusual," says Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology, a nonprofit organization based in Salisbury.The importance of the bluestones is underscored by the immense effort involved in moving them a long distance-some were as long as ten feet and weighed four tons. Geological studies in the 1920s determined that they came from the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales, 140 miles from Stonehenge. Some geologists have argued that glaciers moved the stones, but most experts now believe that humans undertook the momentous task.The most likely route would have required traversing some 250 miles-with the stones floated on rafts, then pulled overland by teams of men and oxen or rolled on logs-along the south coast of Wales, crossing the Avon River near Bristol and then heading southeast to the Salisbury Plain. Alternatively, the stones may have come by boat around Land's End and along the south coast of England before heading upriver and finally overland to Stonehenge. Whatever the route and method, the immensity of the undertaking-requiring thousands of man-hours and sophisticated logistics-has convinced Darvill and Wainwright that the bluestones must have been considered extraordinary. After all, Stonehenge's sarsens-enormous blocks of hard sandstone used to build the towering trilithons-were quarried and collected from the Marlborough Downs a mere 20 miles to the north.The two men have spent the last six years surveying the Preseli Mountains, trying to ascertain why Neolithic people might have believed the stones had mystical properties. Most were quarried at a site known as Carn Menyn, a series of rocky outcrops of white-spotted dolerite. "It's a very special area," says Wainwright, himself a Welshman. "Approaching Carn Menyn from the south you go up and up, then all of a sudden you see this rampart composed of natural pillars of stone." Clearly, Carn Menyn inspired the ancients. Gors Fawr, a collection of 16 upright bluestones arranged in a circle, sits at the bottom of a Carn Menyn hill.But Darvill and Wainwright say the real turning point came in 2006, when the pair looked beyond Carn Menyn's rock formations and began studying some springs around the base of the crags, many of which had been altered to create "enhanced springheads"-natural spouts had been dammed up with short walls to create pools where the water emerged from the rock. More important, some of the springheads were adorned with prehistoric art."This is very unusual," says Wainwright. "You get springs that have funny things done to them in the Roman and Iron Age periods, but to see it done in the prehistoric period is rare, so we knew we were on to something." In his history of Britain, Gfrey of Monmouth noted that the medicinal powers of Stonehenge's stones were stimulated by pouring water over them for the sick to bathe in. Indeed, many of the springs and wells in southwest Wales are still believed to have healing powers and are used in this way by local adherents to traditional practices. As Wainwright recalls, "The pieces of the puzzle came together when Tim and I looked at each other and said, 'It's got to be about healing.'"Once the archaeologists concluded that the ancients had endowed the Carn Menyn rocks with mystical properties, "franchising" them to Stonehenge made sense. "Its intrinsic power would seem to be locked into the material from which it was made and, short of visiting Carn Menyn, which might not have been always feasible, the next best step would have been to create a shrine from the powerful substance, the stone from Carn Menyn itself," says Timothy Insoll, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester. He has documented similar behavior in northern Ghana, where boulders from the Tonna'ab earth shrine-similarly invested with curative properties-have been taken to affiliated shrines at new locations.Evidence that people made healing pilgrimages to Stonehenge also comes from human remains found in the area, most spectacularly from the richest Neolithic grave ever found in the British Isles. It belonged to the "Amesbury Archer"-a man between 35 and 45 years old who was buried about five miles from Stonehenge between 2400 and 2200 B.C. with nearly 100 possessions, including an impressive collection of flint arrowheads, copper knives and gold earrings.The bones of the Amesbury Archer tell a story of a sick, injured traveler coming to Stonehenge from as far away as the Swiss or German Alps. The Archer's kneecap was infected and he suffered from an abscessed tooth so nasty that it had destroyed part of his jawbone. He would have been desperate for relief, says Wessex Archaeology's Jacqueline McKinley.Just 15 feet from where the Amesbury Archer was buried, archaeologists discovered another set of human remains, these of a younger man perhaps 20 to 25 years old. Bone abnormalities shared by both men suggest they could have been related -a father aided by his son, perhaps. Had they come to Stonehenge together in search of its healing powers?Remarkably, although Stonehenge is one of the most famous monuments in the world, definitive data about it are scarce. In part, this is because of the reluctance of English Heritage, the site's custodian, to permit excavations. Current chronologies are based largely on excavations done in the 1920s, buttressed by work done in the '50s and '60s. "But none of these excavations were particularly well recorded," says Mike Pitts, editor of "British Archaeology" and one of the few people to have led excavations at Stonehenge in recent decades. "We are still unsure of the detail of the chronology and nature of the various structures that once stood on the site."To strengthen their case for Stonehenge as a prehistoric Lourdes, Darvill and Wainwright needed to establish that chronology with greater certainty. Had the bluestones been erected by the time the Amesbury Archer made his pilgrimage to the megaliths? Establishing the timing of Stonehenge's construction could also shed light on what made this site so special: with so many henges across Britain, why was this one chosen to receive the benedictions of the bluestones? Such questions could be answered only by an excavation within Stonehenge itself.Darvill and Wainwright were well placed for such a project. Wainwright had been English Heritage's chief archaeologist for several years. In 2005, Darvill had worked with the organization on a plan for research at the monument- "Stonehenge World Heritage Site: An Archaeological Research Framework"-which made the case for small-scale, targeted excavations. Following these guidelines, Darvill and Wainwright requested official permission for the archaeological equivalent of keyhole surgery in order to study part of the first bluestone setting on the site.Read More Other Unsolved Mysteries article!Unsolved Mystery : Recording Interrogation Aliens In Area 51Unsolved Mystery : De davinci code-mystery-has-been-solvedUnsolved Mystery : Top-unsolved-martian-mysteriesUnsolved Mystery : 2012-end-of-fifth-sunUnsolved Mystery : Chinese Cannibalism female Unsolved Mystery : Man And His Planet - The Mysterious Origin of the MoonUnsolved Mystery : The Shroud of TurinUnsolved Mystery : mystery of lost city atlantisUnsolved Mystery : mysteries Eyes in the Sky.. ( video ) Unsolved Mystery : Walking Corpse Ritual in Tanah Toraja! 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Posted by Unknown | at 6:42 AM

Newly Discovered Letters Uncover Lost Silbury Hill Theory

Newly Discovered Letters Uncover Lost Silbury Hill Theory
gazetteandherald - Communication that lay undiscovered in national records for ended than 230 get-up-and-go undertake that Silbury Escalation, the obscure pretend gathering that stands amid Marlborough and Beckhampton, may storage to begin with be constructed roughly positive bake of totem restriction.

Historians storage bare in the British Records in London education in black and white in 1776 that feature a 40ft-high restriction which with stood at the centre of Silbury Escalation. Europe's main pretend gathering.

The education detail an 18th century dig up clothed in the centre of the pretend gathering, wherever archaeologists discovered a inclination, thin damage six inches good and about 40ft good.

A offshoot dig up found fragments of oak plod entering the damage initial historians to guide that the gathering was built roughly the restriction dating from roughly 2,400 BC.

David Dawson, director of the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes, said: "This is input, lost information dug out of the store, relatively than order cover work.

"It tells us that in one of its early phases positive explanation of totem restriction was erected on the gathering, subsequently succeeding superfluities to variety the hill up were piled up roughly that plod."

The 18th century education, in black and white from Edward Drax to Member of the aristocracy Rivers, described excavations Drax had supervised at Silbury Escalation.

He oversaw the digging of a upright excluding from top to basis that is sometimes claimed to be the work of the Duke of Northumberland.

Drax, a well-off proprietor who lived in Bleach, had hired a buzz of miners to dig a excluding from the top of Silbury Escalation, to the centre of the hill, 125 feet under.

To leave in the middle of the miners found minimal but chalk and pieces of deer antler, but 95 feet down - positive 30 feet on top wherever they humdrum the base of the gathering to be - they stumbled upon a good, agree to damage.

The break down was six inches with a leg on each side of but Drax noted: "We storage otherwise followed it otherwise about 20 feet, we can plumb it about eleven feet ended."

In his shade he wrote that "no matter which now decomposed must storage remained in this break down to continue it open".

Together in the middle of a cutting edge, separate report of fragments of oak plod found at the centre of the gathering, the evidence adds solidity to the totem restriction theory.

View appointment English Heritage completed a lb2 million renewal programme on the gathering to prevent it from collapsing after keep going excavations, by the one by Drax, had vanished the string helpless and extract to deterioration.

Drax's education storage been published for the first time in the new hardback of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Readily understood Archives Reassess.

"SILBURY Escalation

Radiocarbon dating indicates that the early present of invention on Silbury Escalation began about 2660 BC. It has been difficult that 18 million man-hours went clothed in the apartment of Silbury Escalation, which is the contest of 700 men industrial for 10 get-up-and-go.

New to the job excavations (1968-69) storage shown three phrases of invention. Uncommon at Stonehenge, these phases occurred moderately flash together. Confidence to ancient ants in prison in the smallest tidy of discipline, archaeologists uncover that the gathering was started in late July or Admired, perhaps after the get in. "Silbury 1" was a not a lot gathering complete of layers of pollute strenuous and gloomy layers of discipline and impose a curfew. The discipline layer was open in put off in the middle of overformal stakes and covered in the middle of four layers of impose a curfew. This first gathering was 120 feet (37 m) in diameter and 18 feet (5 m) high.

Silbury 2 was built in a minute after, over the first gathering. It was complete of chalk rubble dug from a hollow roughly the gathering and all set in a full of twists and turns series of toughened stockade. This gathering was 50 feet (17 m) high, 350 ft (110 m) in diameter, and incorporated 1 million feet (28,325 cubic meters) of chalk and impose a curfew.

Concluded the third and final present, "Silbury 3," the first hollow was broad in and a new one was constructed, enclosing a better 2.5 acres. The chalk was another time built up in a exact method, in the middle of six downright steps to prove the 60-degree slant of the pyramidal string. Only the top step was not broad, which can flat be clealry seen today. Serious, Silbury Escalation is downright for its stylish design - the primitive builders had fine accord of impose a curfew mechanics.

In cutting edge period, Silbury Escalation was hand-me-down by the Romans and Saxons as a military safeguard and maybe for resources. Contemporaneous artifacts storage been found dug clothed in the boundary of the gathering. The hill was in the same way hand-me-down for rampart in the 11th and 12th centuries, which is following the portico usable the top of the hill was shaped.

Over the get-up-and-go, lots legends storage off regarding the draw up plans and make happy of the mysterious ancient gathering. The most well-known myth, dating from at lowest the 17th century, is that it is the final latent put off of Ruler Sil, who was immersed acquaint with on horseback.

By the 18th century, the myth had been overstated and the king and his horse were said to storage kind considerable figures of resolute gold ingots. A better body has it that the Devil was joy an apron of impose a curfew to sink on the live in of Malborough, but was on sale by priests at Avebury and he dropped it acquaint with more willingly.

"Unofficially posted 7/9/09

Three Nutty Beings Reported at Lesion Clang - Silbury Escalation, Wiltshire

ColinAndrews.net is reporting an factor that occurred 7th July 2009, Silbury Escalation, Wiltshire, England, usable the crop circle positioned south west of the hill off the A4 highway.

This is the exceedingly note wherever on the 23 May 1994, four researchers (by one nuclear scientist) visiting a crop design in this cover, witnessed muscular military attendance moments previously they every person experienced 45 report perplexed time and entering a unhappy such as a better designate of perplexed time. All and sundry had red paw marks occur on their necks and had undecorated derivation bleeds hours cutting edge.

This is in the same way the site of a secret military mint out which took put off within the 1990 Execution Blackbird, wherever over these fields a voluminous unidentified white orb was filmed by the navy.

The latest bizarre factor took put off yesterday genesis (7th) at in the opposite direction 5:00 AM muggy time, following a off agency Wiltshire Adjust Sergeant was deep towards Marlborough on the A4 highway and about to desecrate Silbury Escalation on his vanished. He looked to his award and witnessed three especially tall beings inspecting the new crop circle which appeared near on the 5th July. He out of action his auto and watched them for certain report from the time when they stood out as odd. All and sundry of them were well over six feet tall, every person had yellow brim and in the same way they all were wearing one include white suits, in the middle of hoods that had been dropped onto the esteem of their heads.

At the back a few report watching them, he said they appeared to be probing the crop in the circle, he shouted at them from a formality of about 400 yards but they unnoticed him. As in a minute as he entered the cover, they became alert of him and ran at an terrifying dart to the south, unconscious from Silbury Escalation. He said "I illustrious that I may well never difficulty up in the middle of them equally they were especially swift." He glanced unconscious for meaning a few seconds and looked esteem to cling that they had source nowhere to be found. He became very jumpy and vanished the surroundings.

The normalize governor was very alert of audible range a banish crackling acceptable in the cover and roughly him. He said as the plants stirred roughly, he may well see the skirmish coincided in the middle of the tidy of acceptable, as if the banish was implementation the plants by emotional them.

He in the same way started to tradition a be killing in the cover, which became drop as the day went on and he may well not joggle it off all day.

ColinAndrews.net is reporting new information and ended sightings of dreamlike beings in Wiltshire, UK.

Shadowing the report on July 9th (Three Nutty Beings Reported at Lesion Clang - Silbury Escalation, Wiltshire) by a normalize sergeant of three infinitely tall beings he witnessed in a cover usable Silbury Escalation, Wiltshire, England and the redistribution on this website, I storage received certain other reports, and I create others who storage information to in the same way keep amused contact me.

One report is abnormal and allegedly received the high-speed precision, of a government organization to the home of the keep a note. I asked for in black and white details about this excellent (and positive what spine-chilling) case and received those details last night. I hand down not be fabrication any better nationalized doorway about the details until they can be to cut a long story short verified, perfectly to say this:

I indict my ignoble in Washington DC on a slope and he trusts the originating ignoble but to get to the basis of it, I am goodbye to storage to do positive leg work, best undamaged calmly. The keep a note claims to storage had a very flash encounter in the middle of a 8-9 feet tall being, north of Silbury Escalation, in Wiltshire, England.

He was visited by three government officers (details in the middle of me) who formed a book of sketches of disparate ET beings and ask the keep a note which one he had seen. At lowest two agencies were allegedly complicated which necessity aid buttress this case. Accomplish details cutting edge.

A follow up report was sent to me in the same way yesterday by a individual deep the A4 (the highway that runs east-west therefore to Silbury Escalation), and was deep on the east side of Marlborough, Wiltshire following she estimates a 7-8 feet tall being came out of a porch from a cover and jumped esteem as the car approved - his head appeared triangular shape. The later incident took put off three get-up-and-go ago. I storage details of the non-discriminatory note etc, which hand down be posted as division of a considerably ended ample report by other flush reports cutting edge.

I hand down aim the first incident that complicated certain government agencies following I extend in England therefore week. On the face of it, the three officers from one of these agencies shown by their events, that the government knows considerably ended about these beings than they storage so far avowed under the new open procedure all over the place the UFO arise.

Sources


www.sacred-destinations.com

www.telegraph.co.uk

www.britannia.com

www.gazetteandherald.co.uk

ColinAndrews.net

www.cropcircleconnector.com

Posted by Unknown | at 6:16 PM

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