You mean Stonehenge is just a...a...

[orbitalfreak]

I really gotta get me a woman...

Nah, just get a pet rock!

 

[Mark]

Nah, just get a pet rock!

...then circle the waggins'

Well, played!

 

[WanderingMonster]

The puns before the fun-police lock this

The guy who built it must have been a laborer majoris indeed!

***

I heard that to dampen the pagan associations with Stonehenge, the Church used to send worshippers there and break into hymns. They could only do this once.

***

Maybe it's a gateway to the Nether-lands?

***

Maybe the Druids found that it was easier to see Uranus from there?

Thank you! Thank You!

 

[Desdichado]

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

A lot of the early scholarship on proto-European Goddess religions supposed a link between England and the Balkans that followed various trade routes.

Take that as you well, but there are some links for the crackpots to work off of.

Archaeo and Anthro do have some proving ability, but one thing I have yet to see is a student who came out of their specialized education with a profound faith in their field's ability to create..., er, 'find' truth.

Of course I also have yet to see a student who, when forced to defend their field for professional reasons, didn't suddenly develop one.

Ah Doctors in history, sometimes they're good, sometimes they're just doctors.

So what do the correlations with astronomical events have to do with all of this?

Was there some sort of cosmo se..., er, 'love' astrologer heading up this project?

 

[David Argall]

Stonehenge has no particular meaning

Stonehenge was built over several centuries, possibly a full thousand, by a variety of people who seem to have had different plans. Any resemplance to anything other than an impressive display in the final result is in the eye of the beholder, not in the mind of the builder.

The idea of as the interior of a wooden building is also right out. Look at the size of those rocks. Way too much trouble to move them to be support braces. A good sized tree will work better and be a tenth the work.

As a side point, one reason the pizza man arrives faster than the cop is that he can expect a tip.

 

[RSKennan]

Not to be a killjoy, but I don't see what's so far-fetched about this theory. Granted the final version of stonehenge was completed centuries after the original construction, and there were numerous iterations fo the final layout, but what's so hard to believe about the druids, who *were* incredibly mindful of cycles creating a monument to the ultimate cycle? I think the modern tendency to scoff at such things is a factor of our current culture. Any 'obscenity' is in our minds, not that of the culture using such symbolism. In fact, ancient Rome was very tied to phallic symbols, and they could be seen everywhere one went, on the walls of buildings. They were a decorative motif, which symbolised the virility he Empire ascribed to itself. I guess I don't see what the fuss is about.

 

[RSKennan]

Re: Stonehenge has no particular meaning

The idea of as the interior of a wooden building is also right out. Look at the size of those rocks. Way too much trouble to move them to be support braces. A good sized tree will work better and be a tenth the work.

Actually, that's not the theory. They have found separate post holes that would have held the supports for an entirely wooden structure, long before the first, and then the second stone blocks were brought in. The wooden structure is believed to have been a roofed circle, with a hole in the center.

 

[Desdichado]

Not to be a killjoy, but I don't see what's so far-fetched about this theory. Granted the final version of stonehenge was completed centuries after the original construction, and there were numerous iterations fo the final layout, but what's so hard to believe about the druids, who *were* incredibly mindful of cycles creating a monument to the ultimate cycle? I think the modern tendency to scoff at such things is a factor of our current culture. Any 'obscenity' is in our minds, not that of the culture using such symbolism. In fact, ancient Rome was very tied to phallic symbols, and they could be seen everywhere one went, on the walls of buildings. They were a decorative motif, which symbolised the virility he Empire ascribed to itself. I guess I don't see what the fuss is about.

The fuss (at least on my end) isn't about the plausibility of the idea -- it's certainly very plausible, but it simply fails any test of scientific rigor. Linking druids (who occured thousands of years later) to the builders of Stonehenge is also ludicrous -- see the following quote from britannia.com:

The question of who built Stonehenge is largely unanswered, even today. The monument's construction has been attributed to many ancient peoples throughout the years, but the most captivating and enduring attribution has been to the Druids. This erroneous connection was first made around 3 centuries ago by the antiquary, John Aubrey. Julius Caesar and other Roman writers told of a Celtic priesthood who flourished around the time of their first conquest (55 BC). By this time, though, the stones had been standing for 2,000 years, and were, perhaps, already in a ruined condition. Besides, the Druids worshipped in forest temples and had no need for stone structures.

The best guess seems to be that the Stonehenge site was begun by the people of the late Neolithic period (around 3000 BC) and carried forward by people from a new economy which was arising at this time. These "new" people, called Beaker Folk because of their use of pottery drinking vessels, began to use metal implements and to live in a more communal fashion than their ancestors. Some think that they may have been immigrants from the continent, but that contention is not supported by archaeological evidence. It is likely that they were indigenous people doing the same old things in new ways.

 

[RSKennan]

The fuss (at least on my end) isn't about the plausibility of the idea -- it's certainly very plausible, but it simply fails any test of scientific rigor. Linking druids (who occured thousands of years later) to the builders of Stonehenge is also ludicrous -- see the following quote from britannia.com:

Thanks Joshua, now I know. I guess the druid thing was yet one more peice of High School inoctrination I have to unlearn. I have heard of the Beaker Folk, I just wasn't aware of their possible link to stonehenge.