10 replies to this topic

[mythicalireland]

A new book challenges the claim that the 5,200-year-old Stone Age monument at Newgrange was a burial tomb. Chris O'Callaghan, author of "Newgrange - Temple to Life" argues that the classification of Newgrange as a passage-grave "seriously misrepresents" what the ancient people who built the monument were about.

O'Callaghan said there was "no sign . . . that Newgrange had been used as a catacomb, a mortuary, necropolis, royal or otherwise, or a crematorium. Despite the assumptions, there is not the faintest evidence that Newgrange had ever been used as any sort of dedicated repository for bodies, bones, burial artefacts or ash."

http://www.mythicali...grange-book.php

[bobtheham]

This is precisely the position I take regarding the megalighic chamber structures of Portugal, as well. There is good evidence that they were used ceremonially, but virtually no evidence for actual burials in them, when built or afterwards. The so-called "grave goods" found ("schist" plaques, pottery sherds, blades, and spear and arrow points) would make perfect sense interpreted as offerings to the Great Earth Mother Goddess. I also think that the orientation of these structures (Newgrange, Knowth, and others included) points clearly to an astronomical connection which need not be explained by their use as burial or mortuary sites when built. Of course they could have been re-used over the millennia in other ways -- most recently as shelters for animal herders!

Bravo to Chris O'Callaghan for bringing this issue to the fore.

[Fred]

Haven't read this book yet will try to get copy. Thomas & Lomas put this view in 'Uriels Machine' published in 1999. Along with other evidence of the megalithic unit of measurement, and how to produce a megalithic yard.
I haven't been able to replicate that.
I visted Newgrange, Knowth and Clava in Scotland. Anyone figured what use the high ceiling in Newgrange was for? And why Newgrange passage faces SE and Clava faces SW?

[Arran and Emma]

Isn’t it strange that simply because bones might have been found somewhere, that place is assumed to have been the intended final resting place?

I think a lot can be made from this. Look at Long Barrows, for example. Many bones were found inside the chambers at West Kennet – mostly human plus a few animal ones.  The bones were in quite a mess, it wasn’t a simple task to reassemble them. We’ve read that many smaller bones were missing from the barrows; it seems there was a preference for larger bones (legs and skulls). These were not simple burials.

Bones from these times were also found in the contemporary ditches at Windmill Hill, the ‘ceremonial’ centre at the time. It’s been suggested they were taken from the barrow and deposited during feasts.

The more significant the bone, the greater the ancestors power. Charge them up in a barrow-battery and stand back! Things changed and the inheritors found the need to fill up the barrows (blocking the forces within?) From bottom to top they pack it in, bones and all. And this is how it was found, in it’s final state.

The need for burial as we understand it has come later, the Bronze Age. Is it due to this that we haven’t come across many Neolithic burials?

(Fred, it was Thomas and Knight who worked on Uriels Machine. If you’ve had trouble with this, try Civilization One [2004] also by Knight and with Butler. It too deals with Thom's Megalithic Yard, but is much easier to follow and taked the implications further!)

[BuckyE]

Dear Friends,

Weren't the Neanderthals performing "burial as we understand it"? As in the Shanidar flower graves? I think there's plenty of evidence that burial of whole bodies, with grave goods, was being done in the Upper Paleolithic.

But by the time of the Neolithic, "burial" was all over the place. Look at this:

www.bard.bg/fragment.php3?BookID=546

People buried under the floor, between houses, bits and pieces of them scattered in odd places, bones in "passage graves," empty ones too. And then, for all the Neolithic sites, so few human remains. By the Neolithic, "burial" obviously didn't mean what it meant before, and probably didn't mean what it does today. Have we gone back to the earlier, Paleolithic concepts? Odd, huh?

The charging was probably the other way round: the barrows or pits or what have you were gathering and storing the power of the bones and skulls, thereby marking and legitimating the Place as belonging to the people, protecting their claims to the land and their use of it. Those Neolithic folks were weird.

[dyn coed]

just a quick note to fill in, according to Uriels machine, newgrange is a dying/birthing chamber and a precise measuring device that tracks the cycle of venus. light from venus shines through the box above the lintel and illuminates the inner chamber walls, and explains the use of the spiral pattern, the track of venus.
well worth a read, as these guys have some interesting (and quite credible theories) which should give some theorists a run for their money.

[Fred]

Just finished reading Civilisation One for the 2nd time after having to wait months for it to be Shipped(literally) from USA to Oz. (Thanks for the recommendation Aaron & Emma).  Perhaps there's a new way of looking at the uses/purposes of some of these Circles, Stone rows, and more particularly the Mounds with Passages.  Maybe our builders needed windless, stable temperatures to conduct their very accurate calibrations based on stars/planets/venus' movements. Was the doorway 1 degree high? Could drips of water been used instead of a pendulum. What would be the signifance of counting the number(366) of drips falling a certain distance during Venus' movement across one degree. Would that distance be meaningful?
All good stuff eh?

[Fred]

Since posting the note above I've done some sums.
Following on from the deductions of Thomas & Knight in Uriels Machine and Knight & Butler in Civilization One, I’ve been wondering about two things and trying to link them up. Maybe someone else is interested enough to offer some input here.
As a bowl has been found in a passage mound, it suggests that water was used for some activity within the central chamber, (other than for birthing uses), and the phrase
‘an ear of corn beside a fall of water’ has me wondering if this may be a reference to an alternative calibration method.

We know from d= half a t squared that it takes 1 second for a drip of water to fall 16ft.
There are 192 inches in 16ft (16 by 12).
There are 32 inches in one megalithic yard (MY).
Therefore there are 6MY in 16ft and so it takes one second of time for a drip to fall 6MY.

Without even knowing that a fall rate of 32ft  per second, per second exists, adjusting the fall distance so that 366 drips occurred whilst Venus moved across one degree would give a repeatable length of 6 Megalithic yards or 16ft. This length can easily be divided into lesser lengths as required.
Could this be why the inner chamber of Newgrange needed to be so high?
Over to the experts.....

[Fred]

Correction...Lomas & Knight wrote Uriels Machine.
Using seeds as counters as an aid to calculations could have given rise to the instruction relating to an 'ear of corn (beside a fall of water)'
Could the word 'ear" have once been "year'? which could have meant count 366...beside a fall of water.

i.e 366 and the word year would then have been synonymous.
Just a thought!

[barrowman]

As far as I'm aware there WERE human remains found at Newgrange. Cremations, I believe. Some  remaining teeth. Not  an awful lot though.
  Definitely these mounds were not just sepulchral,there was a lot more to them that that....

[Glen'Ys Living-Stone]

And there is this book too:
"Islands of the Setting Sun: In Search of Ireland's Ancient Astronomers"  by Anthony Murphy and .... ? ( forgotten). It was published November 2006 and  builds on Martin Brennan's pioneering work, weaving together a thesis that the monuments and certain stone pillars in the vicinity of the Boyne Valley are an earthly representation of the Milky Way itself.